Classic flavors at DeLuca Gelato (Photo courtesy DeLuca Gelato)
The Purists
Duo Nick and Terry DeLuca began making gelato in 2007 in Gayton Crossing — far from the Roman gelaterias that inspired them. DeLuca Gelato’s base blasts traditional flavors — spumoni, for example — across the tongue. Because gelato is served at a warmer temperature than ice cream, its nuances bloom, rather than chill, on the papillae; the taste buds aren’t shocked by the cold, but awakened.
“The beauty of gelato is its crisp, clean, pure taste,” Nick DeLuca says. “We preserve this by not covering it with toppings to mask the flavor.”
The base of milk, cream and sugar is made and pasteurized in house, and has a fat content of just under 7%. “Due to lower fat and less air, gelato doesn’t hold its structure as ice cream does; it must be made in smaller batches,” DeLuca explains. In the summer, this means blending more than 30 five-liter pans daily.
Ice cream typically has a fat content of at least 10% and is usually closer to 14% in artisanal shops, resulting in a silky mouthfeel with a slight pull as it’s lifted from spoon to mouth. DeLuca’s gelato, however, holds its stoic shape, caving under a small-serving spatula into bites that explode with macerated cherries, chocolate or pistachio. Linear and crisp, DeLuca’s more than 50 flavors are texturally akin to taffeta.
The Bullock family of Alter Ice Cream in Petersburg (Photo by Ash Daniel)
The Foragers
Alter Ice Cream in Petersburg is the new age brainchild of Corey and Lori Bullock, the husband-and-wife team behind Euterra, a chef-driven pop-up they hope to eventually insert into the space.
Production at Alter Ice Cream (Photo by Ash Daniel)
A Disney-esque queue often forms inside the checkerboard-floored shop, the line curving out its door during Thursday-Sunday operating hours. Customers crowd the case, which often includes ice cream flavors from foraged ingredients, such as wild fig, spruce tips, bitter orange and shiso, an herby, leafy plant with anise undertones that’s native to Petersburg.
The couple loves to bounce potential combinations off each other. Corey, a chef who helped open the now-shuttered Aziza’s on Main and Maple & Pine, and previously worked at Longoven, credits his wife with many of their better tastes. For her part, Lori says, “I don’t have Corey’s foraging knowledge, but now I can put elevated flavor components together.”
Corey describes the fat content of Alter’s ice cream as “cozy,” explaining that it hovers around 14% but can be up to 20% in the winter, when the ratio of cream in the milk from Richlands Dairy & Creamery tends to be higher. He believes that the richness of their ice cream enables flavors, such as tart green strawberry, to linger in the mouth longer than gelato.
The Visionary
Area native Layne Montgomery churns out up to 300 pounds a week of 6.5% fat, dairy-free gelato at her lilliputian Lakeside shop, Davvero Gelato. She’s guided by one principle: “Our gelato needs to be as good as what you can find in a good gelateria in Italy,” she says. Helming the space is an Electro Freeze machine that hums through housemade cashew, pistachio and hazelnut creams, which collapse, cling and spread across the spoon like pudding-esque frozen custard.
Montgomery describes flavors such as vanilla and ube creme brulee as intense, with their potency front and center. She uses premium ingredients that aren't masked or muted, including nut bases with up to 14% nuts and fruit flavors made with 50% fruit, which is “high even by Italian standards,” according to Montgomery.
Other offerings, such as dark chocolate Black Forest gelato and the wildly popular mango sticky rice parfait, are crafted with rice milk.
Good Vices owners Omar and Emma Ansari (Photo courtesy Good Vices)
The Chemists
Philadelphia water-ice power pair Emma and Omar Ansari wanted to step up the no-nut, allergen-free frozen treat they often craved, but give it a softer, more decadent texture. Leaning into Emma’s chemistry background, they did just that. In 2024, they introduced mobile concept Good Vices, pulling up to local festivals and parties. They recently expanded into retail at Shields Market in the Fan and began producing white label pints for other businesses.
When developing flavors, Emma quickly found that shaved ice responds better to table sugar and fresh fruit purées than flavored syrups, which tend to produce a gummier texture and overly saccharine taste.
Explaining her process, Emma says, “I looked at a lot of labels. I thought of how I could modify and balance citric acid and fresh fruits for brighter flavors. If you just use syrups, the water ice will taste flat.”
She describes Good Vices’ process as “water fronting,” meaning the treats are kept at a colder temperature than ice cream or gelato, making them icier and more “refreshing” during the dog days of Virginia summers. Good Vices’ pressed, linen-like texture, along with the dimmer blue hue of the blue raspberry, make it more aligned with the ethos of gelato than shaved ice.
