Popular Italian Gelato Chain Arrives on Upper West Side

The artisanal gelato that has Italians queuing up in Turin, Milan, and Florence is arriving on the Upper West Side.On Saturday, Grom, a rapidly expanding chain of all-natural ice cream and sorbet shops, will open its first location outside Italy, on Broadway at West 76th Street.Launched four years ago by a pair of childhood friends from Turin, Grom now boasts two gelaterias in that city and eight other stores in northern and central Italy. The owners, Federico Grom, 34, and Guido Martinetti, 32, said they are planning to roll out four more outlets in Italy this summer — and, if their concept takes off here, they will open many more such sweet shops stateside.Grom already has one famous fan here in New York: Katie Couric. The “CBS Evening News” anchor discovered the store’s gelato last year while in Italy covering the Olympics for the “Today” show. “Unfortunately for my waistline, I’ve been spending far too much time at Grom, which is Guido Martinetti’s gelato shop here in Torino,” Ms. Couric said at the time.Gelato, made of a whole milk and sugar base, is generally denser than American-style ice cream and contains less air and butterfat.Like many good ideas, the Grom concept was born over beers. “I said, ‘No one makes gelato come una volta, like once upon a time,” Mr. Martinetti, then a winemaker, recalled telling Mr. Grom, who at was working in finance at the time.“We started talking about starting a gelato store, making gelato with all of the best ingredients from all over the world,” Mr. Grom said. “It was like a joke.”But a week later, Mr. Grom had drafted a five-year business plan to open gelato stores throughout Italy, and within a year the pair opened their first shop in Turin.Messrs. Grom and Martinetti and their respective girlfriends take frequent trips to seek out fruits, nuts, and chocolate products for their gelato. They purchase lemons from the Amalfi coast, pistachios from Sicily, and chocolate from Ecuador and Venezuela. And they recently bought a 20-acre organic farm in northern Italy to grow their own gelato-bound produce.The gelateria offers about 20 flavors, and the menu changes seasonally. The most popular flavor, available year-round, is Grom Cream, which has an egg cream base mixed with corn biscuits from a Piedmont bakery and chocolate flakes from Ecuador.A cup of the creamy dessert comes at a price: $4.75 for a small portion, which the owners said contains 8 to 10 grams of fat, depending on the flavor. Larger servings sell for $5.75, $6.75, and $9, respectively.While Americans have a love affair with ice cream — they consume more than 1.5 billion gallons of ice cream and related frozen desserts a year, International Dairy Foods Association statistics show — gelato is in its infancy stateside. But a food-marketing consultant with Technomic, Joseph Pawlak, said Italian ice cream is quickly gaining a foothold in the dessert market, as Americans become more adventurous and sophisticated eaters. “What we’re seeing is people moving away from value products and consuming premium or superpremium products,” he said. “They figure that if they’re going to cheat, if they’re going to indulge, they’re going to get the good stuff.”Messrs. Grom and Martinetti said they are optimistic that their idea will be successful in America and that their new Upper West Side location — two blocks from Fairway and Citarella — will attract foodies willing and able to drop $5 or more for a serving of gelato.The president of the Gelato & Pastry Institute of America, Andrew Seabury, who has tasted Grom gelato, said he thought that the dessert would win over discerning palates in the neighborhood and beyond. “They’re going for the highest end of the market, using natural and organic products to produce what they would claim, and many would agree, is the highest-quality product,” he said. “It’s outstanding.”

Popular Italian Gelato Chain Arrives on Upper West Side

Popular Italian Gelato Chain Arrives on Upper West Side

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