Stefano Guizzetti

Stefano Guizzetti, is a gelatiere and owner of Ciacco, two shops in Parma and one in Milan. He loves breaking the rules, and as soon as he has a chance he offers the ice cream version of mixed boiled meat, including head, tongue and cotechino, as well as beef stew. No milk, and no cream either. These are liquid meat sorbet. And everything is excellent, like the more classic flavours.

Guizzetti was born in Sovere, Bergamo, in 1982. After attending the Liceo Scientifico he was offered a job in an office where they made mechanical designs. He had a job and a salary but no motivation, so in 2009 he decided to enrol in Agricultural Studies in Parma. Three years later, in 2012 he graduated with a dissertation on the chemistry of gelatos that was also published in the "Journal of Diary Science", a bible for this field.

His philosophy is easy to explain, difficult to accomplish: no use of additives or semi-finished products, as well as natural products such as carob flour which affect the structure and the final outcome. Stefano, with his brother Massimo, seven years his junior, who’s in charge of communication and brand identity, adds the following words, "Gelato senz'altro" [Gelato and nothing else] to the Ciacco brand. So that it’s clear that there’s nothing more than the essential.

Guizzetti’s aims to research the structural and taste truth of ice creams and sorbets. A work that goes far beyond chilling everything in paco-jet jars. He loves sorbets made without fruit, such as pistachio and gianduia, and is not yet satisfied with the yogurt flavour, a question of milk.

His flavours include the extraordinary "uovo al tegamino", that is to say egg, butter, and sage, which works as an entrance to unusual worlds. Gelatos or sorbets with cured meat such as cotechino and mortadella, fried scallop and passion fruit, and fish such as sea bass, salmon and tuna «as well as steamed cod, later mixed with oil and garlic».