You've got to have plenty of faith in your gelato to be confident enough to open a store in the middle of a Canberra winter.
When Anita Gelato opened on June 22, it was minus five that morning but Canberra's ice cream loving community were still lined up out the door to get a taste of the boutique flavours.
"The Canberra store is the first one we have in Australia that isn't somewhere warm so we didn't know what to expect," says general manager Andreea Corban. The company has other stores in Brisbane and Sydney, as well international stores in New York, London, Los Angeles, Barcelona, Puerto Rico and Tel Aviv.
"But we've been blown away by the response from people here in Canberra, everyone who's been coming in has been patient and we've been so busy from day one."
The best-selling flavour so far has been "cookieman", a crunchy mix of chocolate, hazelnuts, meringue and biscuit. On opening day, they went through 36kg of pistachio.
While there are a few traditional flavours such as vanilla and chocolate, for those vanilla palates, make sure you sample some sesame halva and pistachio cream, marscapone ricotta and strawberry, even tiramisu and hazelnut mousse, or popcorn with honey and caramel, even salted caramel with toffee cream.
Among the 36 rotating flavours in store, there are vegan and sugar-free options, even low-fat frozen yogurt you can pimp with different toppings, from fresh fruit to Anita's home-made jam. There are close to 150 flavours on the full Anita menu, so we dare you to sample them all before summer.
Anita's world-famous boutique ice cream had modest beginnings in a small Mediterranean kitchen, almost 20 years ago. Mama Anita, with the help of her youngest son Nir, would whip up tasty frozen treats for friends and neighbours.
He'd prepare the ice cream base, while she made the addictive jams they mixed in, to give Anita's ice cream its delicious home-made flavour.
In time, Nir began to sell their ice cream from a cart at a weekly, local market and it was a huge success, which eventually led to the opening of the first store in 2002.
It's not only the gelato that's boutique. The store itself is chic and glamorous with touches of mint green, gold and baby pink.
There's seating for 76, inside and out. Large heaters are working outside during the cooler months.
One customer said she thought it was going to be an actual clothes boutique but was happy to discover it was a gelato company.
So too were the many, many customers lining up on a cold winter's day for a tasty treat.
Just spare a thought for Corban, who's had to go and buy a puffy jacket. Welcome to Canberra Anita.
