Pa‘ia shop combines a traditional Italian dessert with fresh flavors of Hawai’i.
Melissa Mosi is cutting up Kula strawberries. Shortly, the fruit will be combined with other ingredients, then made into gelato, an Italian ice cream. At the moment, Mosi’s husband, Stefano, is taking out the latest batch from the gelato machine, a flavor called Seamist. In the backroom, Valerie Kane is handling the phones. It is just before the afternoon rush at the Ono Gelato Company in Pa‘ia, and all three owners of the shop are in their rhythm, a smooth island pace of daily gelato making, addressing business inquiries, and dishing up gelato for customers.
It is a far cry from their previous life in Victoria, British Columbia, where all three owned and ran a popular bakery.
“We had five locations and a hundred employees,” said Melissa. “A bakery is a 24-7 operation, and it is always evolving with a lot of products to bake and track.” Vacations to Maui became their annual escape from the bakery business.
It was on a recent trip here that they found a reason to stay. On a tasting tour of Hana’s Ono Organic Farms in 2006, they were taken with the organically-grown fruits such as liliko‘i, mango and strawberry papaya. They thought it would be a brilliant idea to combine these tropical fruit flavors with Italian gelato, and so the idea for Ono Gelato Company was born.
The owners are no strangers to gelato-making. Stefano uses a family recipe that his grandfather brought over from Italy. The owners also made and sold gelato at their Victoria bakeries, though like most frozen treats, gelato wasn’t so popular during the cold months in Canada.
“Our decision to open a gelato shop on Maui was a lifestyle choice,” said Melissa. They found the space in Pa‘ia last June, then opened up shop in December. Located at the intersection of Hana Highway and Baldwin Avenue, the bright, cheery shop offers 27 different flavors of gelato. In addition to traditional Italian flavors such as torrone (Italian nougat), gianduia (chocolate and hazelnut), and stracciatella (vanilla with chocolate shavings), tempting tropical fruit flavors abound. From the popular liliko’i, sweet, pungent passion fruit, to the antioxidant-rich acai, a deep, dark berry, the shop’s flavor selection can sometimes be overwhelming because everything looks so good.
Luckily, tasting is encouraged. Newcomers to gelato will find that it is quite different from ice cream. The texture is denser and creamier because there is no air whipped into it. Gelato also has less fat content than ice cream. Because of these differences, the flavors are intensified. “Gelato tends to represent the true flavor of its flavor,” said Valerie.
The shop offers dairy and non-dairy flavors. The dairy selections, which include all of the traditional Italian flavors, are made from a base of organic whole milk. Chocolate wins hands down as the most popular dairy flavor. It is decadent and intense. Other dairy flavors include rich and creamy coconut, pistachio and tiramisu. The most surprising oh-wow flavor is sour cream, which tastes like a tangy cheesecake.
The non-dairy selections, which include all of the fruit flavors, are made from a base of filtered water. All of their fruit flavors are non-dairy and vegan—the glycerin they use in the gelato base is plant-based.
“We choose not to use dairy in our fruit flavors because it masks the flavor of the fruit,” said Valerie. Liliko‘i is one of the most popular non-dairy flavors. The passion fruit seeds are left in and they provide a subtle crunch. In addition to tropical mango, Maui pineapple and strawberry papaya, other fruit flavors offered include tangerine, raspberry, lemon and blood orange.
The most popular flavor of all is Seamist. Made from a base of brewed organic tea containing lemongrass, seaweed, peppermint and lime, seamist is refreshing, and because it is also vegan, the texture is icier than the others.
Organic ingredients are used whenever possible, and nearly all of their fruit comes from local providers. Chuck Boerner of Ono Organic Farms—where their idea for the gelato shop first came to fruition—is a main supplier.
“Chuck will drop fruit off all the time and ask if we can make something from it,” said Melissa, who noted he recently brought rambutan. One customer even brought by a bunch of jackfruit from their garden.
Creating new flavors is one of the fun parts of the job, and they are always open to suggestions. Recent creations include peanut butter, and also a guava-strawberry papaya combination. They even created a raw, or unpasteurized flavor—apple banana—to support the community’s raw food movement.
“Fresh fruit is tricker in gelato production because you have to account for the ripeness and quality of the fruit which may change the water and sugar content from one batch to the next,” said Valerie.
All gelato is made on-site in small batches, and the owners are constantly making two flavors at once—one is pasteurizing while the other is freezing. A new batch of each flavor is made almost every day.
“At the end of each day, 90 percent of the flavors in the freezer case are gone,” said Valerie. Because they’re constantly making gelato, they’re never completely out of a flavor for more than an hour.
That is, unless the fruit is not in season. Relying on fresh produce means than some fruit flavors are not always available.
“When we first opened, we caught the last few weeks of the persimmon season and were able to make a persimmon gelato. But we won’t get that fruit again until the end of this year.” Even now, those looking for liliko‘i will also have to wait until it is back in season. But with 27 flavors to choose from, there is always something else to try.
