Ciacco

A base tested before it reaches the counter

A gelato base becomes a question in Stefano Guizzetti’s hands. As chef at Ciacco in Centro Storico, Miilan, Italy, he treats the tub not as a display case but as the end of a method. Stefano Guizzetti is the gelatiere and owner behind Ciacco Gelato Senz’altro, the Milan shop at Via Spadari 13, where the discipline of a laboratory meets the quick judgment of counter service. His line into gelato runs through Food Sciences at the University of Parma, where his work included a thesis on replacing emulsifiers in gelato. The house describes him as a scientist, chemist, and gelatiere, and that order matters less than the way the three positions keep correcting one another. Since 2012, he has held the founder, gelatiere, and owner role across Ciacco in Parma and Milan, keeping product decisions close to the bench. In 2016, he taught a gelato masterclass at the University of Parma, Master Comet, Level I, a public form of apprenticeship in which method has to withstand explanation.

Gelato written in families

The program at Ciacco does not lean only on the familiar grammar of pistachio, fiordilatte, hazelnut, chocolate, fig, and fruit sorbetti, though those forms are part of the counter’s daily language. Guizzetti organizes the work through research streams that make flavor carry structure: gelato della memoria, gelato gastronomico, and famiglie botaniche. The first draws on recollection, with names such as Ricordo di un tortello, Corteccia, and Principe a mare. The second treats gelato as a dish, open to the kitchen’s savory logic and to collaboration with chefs, bartenders, fermenters, and food transformers. The third uses botanical kinship as a compositional tool, letting plant relationships guide balance rather than using sweetness as the only measure. This is why the shop can move from classic pistachio to Crema della Bretagna butter gelato, from seasonal fruit gelati to more experimental references such as ragù, bone marrow, rose, pumpkin, guava, and green tea. The point is not provocation. It is authorship through tested ratios, texture, temperature, and restraint.

A small room built around the bench

The room in Milan is modern and spare, closer to a working counter than to a nostalgic parlour. The design keeps the eye on the gelato, the server’s hand, the cup, the cone, the small decision made in front of the guest. Near the Duomo and Piazza dei Mercanti, Ciacco sits inside a dense city rhythm; the queue can include residents, office workers, and visitors who arrive with different levels of fluency in the craft. Counter service makes the exchange brief, so the product has to carry the argument quickly. A spoonful must explain the laboratory without becoming a lecture. The atmosphere stays café-like and lively, but the room’s main gesture is concentration: tubs, labels, samples, and the pass between maker and customer.

The method held in public

Ciacco matters because Guizzetti has made gelato legible as both product and discipline. The Milan address gives that work a daily test: a city-center counter where research has to survive pace, weather, appetite, and repetition. Seasonal baked work extends the same hand beyond frozen texture, with Colomba Tradizionale and Colomba Albicocca e Cioccolato made under the Ciacco name. When the counter turns back to gelato della memoria, the close reading begins again with Ricordo di un tortello.