Ice Cream With an Italian Accent

Danny Meyer’s daughter opens a shop that marries Rome’s gelato culture with America’s mix-in mania.

if you happen to be in Gramercy and find yourself craving ice cream or coffee, you could always dart into Danny Meyer’s Daily Provisions, or his Maialino, or head a couple blocks north to his Caffe Marchio. But Meyer is about to get some very friendly competition: His 26-year-old daughter Hallie is opening her own, unaffiliated café-bargelateria in the very same neck of the woods. The younger Meyer, who has cooked and worked in food-related ventures for much of her life, has apparently inherited the hospitality gene. “I always wanted to open an icecream shop,” says Hallie. She began as a hobbyist and started churning professionally last year at a Mott Haven pop-up near the elementary school where she was serving as an AmeriCorps volunteer. That led to debuts at Bronx Night Market and Hester Street Fair, the Penn State ice-cream short course, and a monthlong gig at Otaleg, a new-school gelateria in Rome. It was in that city, on a sojourn cooking at the American Academy, that Meyer first fell in love with Italian gelato culture—how the product was churned daily and not allowed to harden overnight, the fruitforwardness of the flavors, the way it was ingrained into the whole of society’s daily life. But especially, Meyer says, with panna, or whipped cream, the topping that inspired the name of her new shop, Caffè Panna. There, the high-fat cream of Piemontese cows will be whipped fresh and offered for free, as it is in Italy. It will also be used to crown Meyer’s signature dessert, composed affogato sundaes that combine their Italian roots with Meyer’s all-American love of mix-ins, crunch, and swirls. “I just have so much fun pairing coffee and ice cream, and figuring out all the different things that go really well in an affogato,” she says. “And it tastes like Rome to me. It makes me really happy.” Caffè Panna; 77 Irving Pl.; Sept.