The CTA's Dempster Street station, on the same street as the new shop. Photo: EEHigginsPhotography / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Frío Gelato, the Argentine gelato maker that began selling from its Evanston production kitchen last summer, said it would reopen that space on Friday, April 17, 2015, and open a second shop at 517 Dempster St. the following Friday, April 24.
The Simpson Street site, at 1701 Simpson St., makes gelato for restaurants and grocery stores year-round. The retail counter there opened in 2014 and drew neighbors and the teams that use nearby parks for games and practices. The Daily Northwestern reported that the owners, Sebastian Koziura and Enrique Schcolnik, closed that counter over the winter for lack of business, and that the Dempster Street shop would sell gelato all year while Simpson Street went back to wholesale production.
The owners got final city approval for the Dempster space a few weeks before it opened. The new shop is a few steps from Chicago Avenue, a main walking route, and close enough to Northwestern University to draw students. A ribbon cutting with Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl was scheduled for April 30 at 4 p.m.
What the shop sells
Gelato arrived in Argentina with Italian immigrants in the late 1800s and stayed a popular dessert. It generally has less fat than ice cream, is churned more slowly and is served a little warmer, which gives a denser texture and stronger flavor. Frío’s flavors run from vanilla, coffee and chocolate to Argentine-style choices such as Malbec con frutos del bosque, which is Malbec wine with berries, sambayón, an egg custard flavored with Marsala, and a lemon sorbet.
The gelato can be served in a waffle cone swirl the shop calls a cucurucho, or as an alfajor, a sandwich made with the soft Argentine cookies of the same name. The Dempster menu also included coffee and pastries, along with drinks the owners called café-latos, which use melted gelato in place of artificial sweeteners.
Where the business went next
The Dempster shop was not the last move. The company opened a Chicago location in 2017, and the Daily Northwestern reported in 2018 that the Evanston store had relocated from 517 Dempster St. to 1301 Chicago Ave. In spring 2015, though, the story was simpler: a small food maker with a following in one neighborhood was moving its retail counter to a busier street.
Details on the Dempster shop’s approval, ownership and menu from the Daily Northwestern.
Rachel Lindqvist covers community life, the lakefront, dining and the arts for The Evanston Edge.
