Gelato Carlo The ice-made life story of Carlo Maghakian

You can tell if an ice cream parlour is excellent by its pistachio ice cream: it should be pale green, with a hint of brown. Sweet and buttery in taste, slightly salty in the finish. Just like here, at this ice cream parlour in the 8th district. Gelato Carlo and I - it was love at first sight. That's right, at first sight.

Just looking at the display made my ice cream heart beat faster. The bright yellow mango. Deep red cassis. Dark, almost black chocolate studded with candied orange peel and creamy white vanilla infused with black dots of bourbon vanilla. From Madagascar, of course, where the queen of the pods grows, which is why this variety is called "Queen Vanilla".

Gelato Carlo also attaches great importance to the best ingredients: The cassis comes from France, the pistachios and lemons from Sicily, the hazelnuts for the Gran Torino from Piedmont and only the sweet Alphonso fruits are allowed in the mango sorbet.

The result: intense, unadulterated flavour. Combined with the perfect consistency (softly melting and creamy), it becomes the ideal ice cream treat! After discovering Gelato Carlo, I went there four afternoons in a row. As I said, love at first sight. But who is this Carlo who makes this gelato that makes you fall in love?

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Carlo Maghakian is actually a designer. But since for him, gelato means "the happiness of this world", "fun, play, dreams, illusions, dolce vita, freedom, childhood memories, love and a whole lot of fantasy", in other words, the essence of everything that makes life worth living, he went to Italy for an internship, where he was introduced to the art of ice cream making and then opened his own ice cream parlour in Vienna.

The fact that ice cream is linked to memories and love for him is evident in the extraordinary flavours he has created, which tell his life story. His mother comes from Austria, and his father is from the Armenian community of Aleppo. Through his job as a designer, he has spent a lot of time abroad.

And so the Fernando variety tastes like the cortado he drank every day at Fernando's café when he lived in Cordoba, Spain. Dio Mio (Greek yoghurt with lime) reminds him of a summer day on the beach in Mykonos, and his latest creation, Byblos (fior di latte, pistachio, orange blossom water and tree resin from the Greek island of Chios), tastes like the Lebanese ice cream of his childhood.

Because ice cream is also associated with fun and games for Carlo Maghakian, there are always imaginative creations like the "Oxymoron Bite", for which an Italian brioche is filled with ice cream and briefly toasted, or colourful ice cream on a stick. Small culinary delights that make life worth living.