1961

Guido’s Famous Gelato, which the Pellicciari family ran at the Bondi Pavilion for 41 years, is said to be Australia’s first food outlet at which traditional Italian gelato was served. Elder brother Guido and younger Gianni produced traditional gelato at a time that people thought of the ice confection as an artisanal product. The pair, who also sold ginormous pizzas and naughty desserts, were notable and well-loved local personalities, and their family businesses became synonymous with Bondi Beach.

Guido and Gianni emigrated from Italy to Australia in 1951 and didn’t waste time getting into the business of making espresso coffee, gelati and pizzas. Guido claims to have been the first person to make traditional gelato in Australia, having decided to apply missionary-like zeal in educating Aussies to appreciate it. He learned to make the authentic Italian gelato recipe in Rome, at a famous restaurant called Gigi Fazzi, and passed his knowledge on to Gianni, who passed it on to his children, who passed it on to theirs.

‘Gelato’ is the Italian word for ice cream and is derived from the Latin word ‘gelatus’, which means ‘frozen’. The product is made with whole dairy milk and butterfat (cream), various sugars, and other ingredients such as fresh fruit and nut purees. Compared with full-dairy ice cream, gelato is lower in fat because it contains less cream and more milk. The mixture is churned more slowly, so the gelato contains less air and has a richer flavour. When the Pellicciari brothers were advertising “Guido’s famous gelato ice confection”, they boasted that it was “non-fattening”.

Guido and Gianni arrived in Bondi in 1961, and when Guido first visited the Bondi Pavilion, he saw that it housed a café located right opposite the beach – perfect for gelato, traditionally a beach food in Italy, where gelato and pizza are the order of the day. During the Pavilion’s construction in 1928, that end of the building had been set aside to be a dedicated beach-food outlet, and over the years, it’d been a refreshment room, a pie shop and eventually a café.

Guido approached the Pavilion café’s operator, Dick Parter, to ask permission to hire a corner of the outlet in which to make gelato and to use the café’s window from which to sell the product in cones, to beach goers walking along the building’s front verandah. Dick gave the enterprise his blessing, and Guido later took over the whole cafe and renamed it Guido’s Famous Gelato.

The brothers put a price tag of 1 shilling – about 10 cents – on their first gelati and worked from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day. It didn’t take too long for the business to thrive, thanks to the winning location; the quality, choice and quantity of the gelati – up to 10,000 cones were shifted on a typical summer’s day; and the brothers’ determination to have a go.

In the 1960s, the Pellicciaris introduced Bondi Beach patrons to Italian specialities such as tartufo: two or more flavours of gelato with either syrup or frozen fruit in the centre and covered in a shell made of chocolate, cinnamon or nuts, and cassata: gelato containing candied or dried fruit and nuts. The café’s sweet, creamy desserts – especially the famous, mouth-watering lemon-meringue pie – were also a big drawcard.

The café remained a family business from the start, and after Guido died, in 1969, Gianni continued to run it with his wife Anne and later their children Mario and Nadia. The family members expanded the Bondi Beach enterprise by establishing three other food outlets: Pellicciari’s, Guido’s Beach House and Licensed Taverna, and Gianni’s Beach House.

On any given day, whoever was on duty would fire up the pizza oven at 7 a.m., and half an hour later, any salivating customers would be able to buy their favourite pizza straight off the tray. The pulling out of the trays wouldn’t cease till 9 or 10 p.m., and on a busy day, there’d be more than 100 trays of pizza ‘to go’.

Waverley Council lifeguards dubbed the Pellicciaris’ large, meal-size pizza the death slice because of its exceedingly dense, rich flavour. The family members built a close relationship with the lifeguards and went so far as to put on a lunch for them every Christmas Day, to give them a family-style break on one of the beach’s most notoriously difficult days. One famous regular was media tycoon Kerry Packer, who liked a lemon gelato, and whenever the crew from Italy’s airline Alitalia touched down at Sydney International Airport, they did the 17K dash to Bondi Beach to get a Guido’s gelato into them.

In 2002, when the doors to Guido’s Gelato Café were closed for the last time in the business’s 41-year run, the shock news radiated out from Waverley and was deemed important enough to warrant stories in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Daily Telegraph … but wasn’t that Audrey and Gregory scootering down Campbell Parade for a Roman Holiday shoot last Friday?

Courtesy of the Waverley Library Local Studies Collection.