AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.
Carlo “Botolo” Gattini learned to measure flavor the way other kids learned chores. On a farm in the Tuscan hills, milk arrived still warm, fruit had a deadline, and his grandmother ran a latteria that also made gelato. She kitchen like a lab.
“Get to the point!” she’d say, meaning a dish should have one clear idea, not a brawl of competing notes. Gattini absorbed the rule and let it become his personal thesis, a statement that would define him.
Gattani is now the owner of Botolino, the gelato shop that has multiplied across Dallas, plus a Gelato Lab near Fair Park. To understand how that’s happened, start with the child who treated gelato as a daily right rather than a treat. “For me, gelato wasn’t so much a special reward as it was a way of life,” he says. He gravitated to the simple flavors, fior di latte, stracciatella, and lemon sorbetto to cut the heat of summer. That affection for clarity became a blueprint. Botolino isn’t selling novelty; it’s selling focus.
Gattani arrived in America at 14 years old, transplanted from Tuscany to North Texas. His father’s first dream of a gelateria seemed too difficult to source the right ingredients, so the family opened MoMo Italian Kitchen, and Carlo and his brother went to work.
Three decades there taught him the math of restaurants and the diplomacy of service. He loved the craft but didn’t yet see his future in it. He studied archaeology at the University of Texas at Austin, which in hindsight reads less like a detour than a signpost. He flew as a professional pilot until the world changed after 9/11. Eventually, the pull of that farm kitchen got louder.
Carlo Gattini
He credits his wife with the push she gave him in the early 2010s that changed everything. “She made it clear that I would always regret not trying,” he says. Gattani went back to Italy to do the work properly: Carpigiani Gelato University in Bologna, then an apprenticeship with a master. Absorbing the science of gelato became religion; fat ratios for silk without heaviness; sugars balanced so aromas bloom at warmer serving temperatures; honest overrun so the texture stays dense and true.
Gattini’s Nonna
When Botolino opened in the heart of Lower Greenville in 2017, the menu read like a statement of purpose. Classics anchored the case. Seasonal flavors rotated with what made sense that month. He sourced hazelnuts directly from Piedmont, pistachios from Sicily, vanilla from Madagascar, Valrhona for chocolate, and local organic milk to bind Italy to Texas. What makes it Dallas isn’t a gimmick. It’s the sensibility. He serves gelato the way a pitmaster serves brisket, by respecting the ingredient, honoring the method, and letting the result make the argument.
“No gelato, no bread—how do these people live?” he remembers thinking when he first landed in Texas. So he set out to fix that.
The city listened. A second shop opened at Preston & Royal in 2020, a third in Bishop Arts in December 2023, and the Gelato Lab—across from Fair Park—came online that summer to expand production without sanding off the edges. The fourth store arrived last spring. Along the way he turned teacher, hosting seminars to explain why gelato’s lower butterfat and slightly warmer service deliver flavor with a softer landing, and why the air whipped into many American “premium” formulas is the enemy. Ask him what tastes like home and the answer snaps into place: “Gianduia… has always been a favorite of mine,” he says. “We import our hazelnuts directly from producers in Piedmont… with a distinct taste and aroma that immediately brings me back to Italy.”
If there’s a circle to close, he’s closed it. “I think I’ve found the perfect profession for me,” he says. His grandmother’s directive—get to the point—survives in every pan. The point, as he sees it, is simple: authenticity made legible. “Most of what is offered here in the gelato business is made with industrial pastes and powders,” he says. “I wanted to present Americans with an authentic, artisanal product made only with the best ingredients.” It’s not nostalgia he’s selling. It’s authenticity, one dense, satin curl of gelato at a time.
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