Ottawa's Stella Luna café takes bronze at Gelato World Tour
Taking bronze at the famed competition in Chicago was sweet for this Ottawa business.
2016
Should you head to the LCBO to get a bottle of Chicago’s artisan Koval single-barrel bourbon, you won’t find any. Anywhere in Ontario.
Tammy Giuliani, owner of Ottawa’s Stella Luna Gelato Café, bought them all, at $95.95 for a 750-mL bottle. The Koval bourbon is one of the key ingredients in her gelato, which just won bronze at the Americas competition of the Gelato World Tour in Chicago.
After three months of practice batches, it took 20 more bottles of the bourbon, 100 pounds of Belgian Callebaut dark chocolate, 50 pounds of Callebaut cocoa, 110 pounds of pecans and 168 cups of Alska maple syrup, from near Wakefield, to make the award-winning gelato in Chicago for the contest.
“It was totally worth it,” says Giuliani, who, with her husband and children, made 687 pounds of her Rich Chocolate Bourbon Ganache Swirl Maple-Candied Pecan gelato in Chicago, with votes from licking public and professional judges. “It was such an incredible opportunity to work alongside 15 other gelato artisans who have that much passion and dedication.”
Giuliani was one of only two Canadian gelato makers (the other is from Calgary) selected to be one of 16 finalists at the competition, culled from about 1,500 applications from North and South America.
After three days of churning and scooping in high heat and humidity, Giuliani learned that she had come third, entitling her to represent Canada at a world competition in Rimini, Italy, in January.
“I’m terrified,” she said Wednesday. “It’s one thing to make your gelato at home, where everyone loves you, but to be on the world stage … it’s to put yourself front and centre and be vulnerable.” First place was won by a gelato maker from Colombia; second place by one from Chicago.
Gelato making is clearly an art. Giuliani, the Ottawa-born graduate of a Carpigiani Gelato University in Italy, who opened Stella Luna in Old Ottawa South five years ago, started experimenting with her award-winning recipe in March, when she first heard that the Gelato World Tour would be coming to Chicago.
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