Antica Gelateria Gentile: Five Generations of Ice Cream in Bari
Five generations behind one counter. In a trade where places change their name with every new tenant, that is the kind of continuity you measure in eras rather than seasons. Antica Gelateria Gentile is a family ice cream shop by the Castello Svevo castle on the edge of old Bari; the Gentile family has been selling ice cream there since 1880 - and even by the standards of Italy, where a trade routinely passes from parent to child, that is a decent run.
Five Generations, from a Granita Stall
As the family tells it, the story starts with Michele Gentile, the descendant of a line of confectioners, who put up a small stall by the castle in 1880; his granita is said to have won the city over. That is the family's own account and no independent archive backs it up, so the word "supposedly" is doing a lot of work here. The craft did get handed down, at any rate: his son Francesco ran a pastry shop with his wife in the 1920s, and his grandson Luigi, known as Gigino, opened a shop right on the square by the castle in 1947. So the year 2009, which often gets attached to the place, does not mark a move to new premises - that was simply the year the founder's name went back up on the front of the 1947 shop. Today the fifth generation is behind the counter, and the name has since travelled as far as a branch in New York.
The surname Gentile, as it happens, means "kind" in Italian. There is no etymology behind it - the family is simply called that - but the staff do the coincidence proud: they were kind and helpful on every one of my visits.
Toritto Almonds, Fiorone Figs and Two Cones out of Three
The selection is wide but easy to read: every ice cream is labeled for gluten and lactose content. Ice cream made from milk, cream and fruit is gluten-free almost by default, but here they have taken the trouble to spell it out, and about half the flavors do without milk as well. Reviews most often single out the pistachio, but the local character comes through in other flavors: antica crema made to the old family recipe, almonds from Toritto, a town just outside Bari whose almonds are a byword across Apulia, and the early fig, the fiorone.
Tourist rankings and reviews make Gentile the best in Bari. A recent critical ranking of the twenty-one best ice cream shops in Apulia does not mention it at all - only two young experimental places in Bari made the cut. Those are two different yardsticks: one measures a personal signature and novelty, the other a craft that has lasted. The Gambero Rosso guide gives Gentile two cones out of three, a solid score if not full marks. Multigenerational "antiche" ice cream shops turn up all over southern Italy anyway - in Sorrento, for instance, Antica Gelateria Sorrentina.
With a Cone in Front of the Castle
I stop at Gentile every time I come to Bari - most recently in February, on the way to Matera, when the weather in Bari is already pleasantly spring-like. I carried a cone with three scoops - hazelnut, chocolate and one a deep pink - the few steps over to a bench in front of the castle: the terrace outside is pleasant enough, but a view of Castello Svevo is the better side dish. The ice cream was dense and creamy, it melted slowly, and it was just sweet enough not to drown out the hazelnuts. It is a few hundred meters from the street where they dry orecchiette, so both stops fit comfortably into one afternoon. I have been to Bari four times and to this ice cream shop twice as often. I intend to keep that ratio.
Antica Gelateria Gentile
