Spring Street Grocery

Large cup: Blood plum, hazelnut, chocolate, mango/passionfruit - $7.50

Spring Street Grocery

157 Spring Street

Melbourne, VIC 3000

Ph: (03) 9662-1520

I love ice-cream. I mean, I seriously love ice-cream. I love eating it, I love talking about it, I love making it. (Remember the Ice-Cream Party and the Ice-Cream Sundae project?) I love all types of ice-cream - cheap and nasty home-brand vanilla, sickly sweet American-style ice-creams studded with pieces of candy and ribboned with fudge, but most of all: I love proper Italian gelato.

The very first time I went to Europe, on a 6-week backpacking jaunt as a bright-eyed twenty year old, I hadn't even planned to include Italy on my itinerary - but a few months before the trip, an issue of Vogue Entertaining and Travel came out with a feature on Sicilian gelato. I thought to myself: "I've made a huge mistake!", enrolled myself in Italian classes and rearranged my itinerary so that a third of my trip was spent eating my way across la bella Italia. Best decision ever!

Flash forward to the present - I was incredibly excited when I saw this tweet from Alan Campion, sharing the address of a new artisan gelateria (and soon to be fancy-schmancy grocery store) on Spring Street.

We've visited twice now, and I totally love it! They make absolutely excellent Italian-style gelati and sorbets, with a mixture of classic and adventurous flavours that seem to rotate regularly. It is literally the best gelato I have ever had in Australia, and even better than a lot of the gelati I've had in Italy and other parts of Europe. I've been blabbing on endlessly about it to my friends and family - and now, I'm sharing it with you. (The below photos were taken on two separate visits with friends - I didn't eat all that gelato to myself!)

Spring Street Grocery

Flavours

I must admit, on my first visit I was a bit shocked at the prices - $6.50 for a medium, for which you get up to three flavours in a rather small looking cup - however, you can really taste the quality of the ingredients. They're also quite rich and intensely flavoured, so they're definitely satisfying. (Sometimes I feel the medium is actually too much!) Totally worth it. Visit, visit now!

Medium cone: Banana/date, salted caramel and chocolate, fior di latte - $6.50

The salted caramel/chocolate flavour was a great one - it looked like choc chip/stracciatella, but the ice-cream base itself was infused with a salted caramel flavour.

I couldn't resist ordering an espresso to make an impromptu affogato with the fior di latte gelato in the bottom of my cone. (N.B. fior di latte is a milk flavour, not mozzarella gelato!)

Impromptu affogato - $3.50 for the espresso

Medium cup: Watermelon/mint, turmeric/cardamom/pistachio, fior di latte - $6.50

The turmeric/cardamom/pistachio is an unusual one, but very delicious. It's a favourite amongst my friends!

Medium cone: Chocolate, salted caramel/chocolate - $6.50

Large cup: Chocolate, hazelnut, cinnamon/pear/pinenut, coffee - $7.50

My favourite of all the flavours has to be the hazelnut - it has such a pure, intense hazelnut flavour! After I Instagrammed it, I got a comment from their Operations Manager, saying: "glad you loved them! We changed the hazelnut today to a batch of hazelnuts sourced from a small harvest in Piedmont. Such a richer flavour." Pretty cool, huh?

Medium cup: Peach/apricot, hazelnut, chocolate - $6.50

Argh, they're all so, so very good! You know where I'll be all summer...!