Popping by the D’Ambrosio Gelato Instagram web page, the slogan, “Since 1957” jumped out at me. I used to be doing my fundamental fact-check on a tidbit of meals information—the unique Ballard location closed on the finish of final 12 months—on a spot I believed I knew properly. Properly sufficient to know that it had not been round “Since 1957.” At the very least as shocking was that the Ballard store gave the impression to be the least of the corporate’s issues: Its web site boasts of almost 20 areas, primarily in Asia.
Understanding I hadn’t hallucinated my good friend (and fellow meals author) Geraldine DeRuiter telling me again in 2010 about her household opening a gelato store, I shot her a textual content. “Uhhhh my uncle was 9 in 1957,” she responded, laughing. That might be Enzo D’Ambrosio, the gelato maker who opened the Ballard candy store in 2010 together with his son Marco.
Marco and Enzo left the gelato enterprise in 2016, promoting it to native chef Jordan Barrows and his spouse, Rebecca, and transferring again to Italy. (Barrows opened a shave-ice truck close to Bend, Oregon, final 12 months.) In 2020, the D’Ambrosio Gelato’s enterprise license modified fingers once more, this time to Nomura Enterprise Capital.
Since then, the model’s candy purple emblem (“Since 2010”) has been changed by a modern black-and-white script and that “Since 1957” that had caught my eye. It has areas in Virginia, Taiwan, and Japan. It has an internet site that hocks franchise alternatives and weaves a romantic story of the corporate’s dedication to its Italian dairy roots with the occasional VC time period, like “synergy.” In distinction, the menu web page states that every one its components are from Italy aside from milk and cream. (Below each the D’Ambrosios and Barrows, the gelateria sourced from Recent Breeze Natural Dairy in Lynden.)
It’s hardly the one time a reputation lives on, lengthy divorced from the one that bestowed it—the McDonald brothers left their well-known identify behind in 1961. Nearer to residence, Ezell Stephens misplaced a authorized battle to his former companions within the fried rooster enterprise, leaving him to open Heaven Despatched whereas his ex-brother-in-law, Lewis Rudd, runs Ezell’s Well-known Rooster.
Maybe much more apt are two smaller scale companies. D’Ambrosio, a clearly Italian identify, ties the corporate to these romantic beliefs of gelato’s homeland, whether or not actual (as in Enzo and Marco’s lived expertise) or imagined (as by the enterprise capital agency). Equally, Rubinstein Bagels and Westman’s Bagel & Espresso, each serve overtly Ashkenazi Jewish–American meals below the identify of their Jewish cofounders, every of whom left not lengthy after the enterprise opened. (This week, Andrew Rubinstein opened his personal enterprise, Hey Bagel, in College Village.)
In every of those circumstances, the particular heritage of the identify provides a specific amount of legitimacy to the enterprise, signifying that this can be a place that is aware of bagels as a result of the proprietor teethed on pumpernickel, or gelato as a result of it’s as a lot Italian birthright as speaking together with your fingers and judging individuals who drink cappuccinos after midday. That’s not how issues work, clearly. And, as Ezell’s demonstrates, it’s unlikely anyone did something unsuitable from a authorized standpoint. It’s all simply form of bizarre and disingenuous, like whenever you study that Häagen-Dazs is actually a made-up pseudo-Danish identify by a Jewish man from the Bronx.
I reached out to Marco D’Ambrosio by e mail to see if he had heard concerning the journey his identify had been on since he left the gelato store behind or had any ideas on it, however haven’t heard again. His cousin Geraldine provided the next assertion by textual content, which principally sums up the entire affair: “lol, WTF, no.”
