Mmm­mm xmas.  Hol­i­days.  Sum­mer sun (we live in hope).  And gela­to.

Gra­ham Joe at Gelis­si­mo has it all sort­ed.

Small batch, hand craft­ed gelatos using Zany Zeus organ­ic milk and real sea­son­al ingre­di­ents.  Watch out for Gelis­si­mo gelatos on menus around town where Gra­ham and var­i­ous chefs (Sco­pa for exam­ple) have col­lab­o­rat­ed to cre­ate a flavour for a par­tic­u­lar dish (blue cheese gela­to with pear dessert any­one?).

GelissimoAnd if you’re quick, the xmas spe­cials are avail­able in 1 litre tubs for a short time (xmas pud, boozy black for­est and boozy zuppe inglese)  — see Gra­ham at his fac­to­ry shop beneath the Stock Exchange at Tarana­ki Wharf.

Oth­er­wise you can try many of his cre­ations at out­lets at Tom­my Mil­lions on Courte­nay Place, the booth at Frey­berg Beach, the ice cream cart at the Sun­day City Mar­ket (from 26 Jan­u­ary after those good folks have all had a well deserved rest), or the orig­i­nal shop at East­bourne.

Espe­cial­ly if you’re a dark choco­late fan (con­sis­tent­ly vot­ed by pun­ters as suit­ably dark and choco­latey), a gin­ger beer fan (Gra­ham relieves Rebec­ca of Hardie Boys of her close-to-date bot­tles), an espres­so fan (the Gen­tle­man’s Bean espres­so put to good use), a dam­son plum fan (one of this year’s ice cream award win­ners), or a speculaas/speculoos/spekulatius fan (spelt the Dutch, French and Ger­man ways to sat­is­fy all who kept point­ing out the spelling mis­takes!).

Mer­ry xmas and enjoy the break.