Da Franco Gelato

Franco Fracasso made gelato in Italy from 1978, including a stint at Palermo's Gelarmony, before meeting his partner Solmaz in Cesme in 2010 and deciding to stay. The pair moved Da Franco out of a Cesme plaza and into its own small Hacimemis room in 2018, where the gelato is still produced fresh every day on Italian-imported pasteurisers and shock freezers, with lower fat and sugar than the buffet-style counters down the road. Solmaz hand-picks the seasonal fruit; there are no artificial flavourings, no syrup pumps, no theatre. The flavour list runs from a proper pistachio and seasonal-fruit sorbets to a few quietly Aegean-leaning numbers, and it sits a street back from the bazaar crush, which is exactly why it stays good.