The Truffle of Pizzo is a typical product of Calabrese ice cream, it consists of a sphere of ice cream that fluctuates between 150gr and 200gr. The ingredients of this product are: hazelnut ice cream, chocolate ice cream and a special chocolate sauce that forms the heart of it. This sauce has a peculiarity, it remains fluid even at very low temperatures, causing half the ice cream to come out of the sphere when the ice is cut. Everything is covered with cocoa. The production is done at the artisan level by Pizzo’s ice cream masters.
The Truffle of Pizzo was born around the middle of the last century. In 1940 the master pastry chef from Messina, Dante Veronelli, took the Gran Bar Excelsior from Jannarelli in the center of Pizzo, which later changed its name to Gelateria Dante in honor of its first owner. To continue his entrepreneurial activity he relies on the collaboration of a young pastry chef from Messina, Giuseppe De Maria, also known as “Don Pippo”. The two thanks to the productive genius of the second and the entrepreneurial one of the first succeed in a short time to attract the attention for the great quality and taste of their products. The genius of the two artisans is expressed within the production laboratory at the end of the Second World War. Following Veronelli’s death, De Maria remains the sole owner of the business. The truffle, in its current form, was born in Pizzo in the laboratory of Gelateria Dante (in about 1952) by pure chance, of which the author was indeed “Don Pippo”, who, on the occasion of a patrician wedding, having exhausted the molds and forms to package the loose ice cream to supply the numerous wedding guests, placed a portion of hazelnut ice cream on a layer of chocolate ice cream in the hollow of the hand, then inserted the melted chocolate inside and wrapped the whole in a sheet of sugar-containing paper giving it the typical shape of a truffle, and everything was left to cool. The success achieved earned him immediate fame. The original recipe is still jealously guarded by the nephews of the master “De Maria”. In 1950, Giorgio Di Iorgi and Gaetano Di Iorgi, who had started their career in ice cream parlor with the role of waiters, began to learn the art of the production of ice cream; 15 years later, following the retirement of the maestro De Maria, Giorgio took over the activity of the Gelateria Dante, while Gaetano continued the production of the Pizzo Truffle in the activity opposite “Bar Ercole” which he acquired together with his brother Antonio in 1965.
From this moment on, the activities of Bar Dante and Bar Ercole are managed as a family business, passing down from father to son the secret recipe for making ice cream products. Thanks to the work of the new generations that are giving a global imprint to the product, the Pizzo truffle attracts thousands of visitors from all over the world and is exported to the main foreign markets (Greece, Germany, Spain, Holland, France, the United States and China) . In addition to the Truffle, the napitini gelatine masters have created over time numerous variants of truffles as to name one, a curious reinterpretation of the Stromboli volcano in gastronomic terms, it is the “Vulcanetto”, a specialty of the Chez toi bar, which consists of a sphere of ice cream with a cherry filling filled with cherry flambé. Our agency has among its partners for the export of this product the gelateria Dante and the gelateria Il Tartufo, direct descendants of the family of Iorgi, owner of the activity in which the truffle of Pizzo. Was born.