Caprese salads are one of Italy’s greatest summer plates. Epitomising the cuisine’s knack for making simple ingredients sing, the tomato, basil and mozzarella salad has since had incarnations in pizza, pasta, even toastie form.
At Doncaster East’s Meno Zero, the Isle of Capri dish has been churned into gelato.
“It’s made with buffalo milk, cherry tomatoes, a sweet caramel sauce and fresh basil,” explains the gelateria’s co-owner Anthony Biviano. “It’s sweet and savoury at the same time.”
Biviano is also behind Zero95 Pizza Bar a few doors up, the same one that was crowned world pizza champion at Naples' 15th Pizza Chef World Championship last year. “We decided to open up a gelateria two doors down from our pizza shop because we think the two best things in the world are pizza and gelato and they go hand in hand,” Biviano says.
Everything is made in-house at Meno Zero using local or Italian ingredients where possible. The caprese may be on the experimental side but for the most part, the flavours are straight out of Italy. “We do stracciatella (milk with shaved chocolate), Bacio (hazelnut and chocolate), sette veli (chocolate on chocolate), and tiramisu. We also do a lot of vegan and sorbet style ones too.”
Also made in house are semifreddo cakes, rotolo (rolled gelato cake), pastries and milkshakes.
In the pipe is a Sicilian mandarin flavour, mango and aperol spritz gelato. “Every week, we’re coming up with new flavours. We had a competition as well where the customer got to choose their favourite flavour,” says Biviano.
Got a secret gelato dream in mind? Head to their Facebook page to propose it and your frozen fantasies could become a reality – that and you could bag a year’s worth of gelato - gratuito.
Meno Zero is open Mon – Sun, 9am – 11:30pm
914a Doncaster Road, Doncaster East
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