La Strega Nocciola Gelateria Artigianale - Firenze Ponte Vecchio — Restaurant in Florence

The gelato is exceptional. However, my wife and I were treated badly during the order process.

We are a regular to their franchise near the Cathedral. The queue there starts from choosing the flavours and cup/cone size, and you pay afterwards. This shop queues the other way round without any instructions. When we enter the shop, there were only a few customers choosing flavours so we started queueing after them, not at the counter, just as usual. When it comes to our turn, the server want to serves us but a women who queued at the counter, absolutely comes in later than us, tell the server they came first and mocked us for not knowing how to queue. We explained ourselves to the server and let them order anyways. Just when we thought the server will start taking our order, she moved to the next customer and ignored us for the rest of the time, even when we try to talk to her. She clearly heard our explanation but still treated us as if we cut queues.

We felt that we were treated unfairly, but we really wanted to try the new flavours so we queued again at the new line. When it comes to our turn, the server treated us coldly. She smiled, greeted, and thanked the other customers but not us.

My wife and I are extremely polite all the time, and we speak clear English with little accent. The server took orders from other customers in English too, so it’s unlikely she didn’t understand what we said. The whole situation made us feel like the server treats us as “the Asians who don’t know how to queue”. The server could have let us know if she wants us to queue again at the new line, rather than ignoring us and treated us impolitely afterwards.

The gelato was great but the event ruined the...

Is kindness the secret ingredient? We rushed here tonight, on a Sunday night at 10pm, as the poor lady who worked here alone was visibly closing the store. We tried our chance and asked if we could still grab one last ice cream before she closed. Not only did she let us in, but she was absolutely sweet about it. Honestly, if she is an employee and her boss is reading this, I want to make sure he knows she was amazing (and if you were this person and you are reading this… well this is what you get for being an amazing person). This alone could be worthy of the 5 stars… but the ice cream itself was also delicious. I had lavender ice cream here for the first time, and oh boy was it insanely good. All this for a price that seemed definitely reasonable. We definitely recommend it, and thank you again for the person in this ice cream parlor for making our last night in Florence...

So happy to have looked this place up on Google. It’s the best gelato I’ve tasted in Florence, and it has the nicest ambiance and the friendliest staff. Also open ‘til late night! Near it across Ponte Vecchio are a bunch of scammy no-name gelato shops with generic-looking “ice cream” and aggressive sales personnel. One was trying to sell me a Piccolo (smallest size) for 8 Euros, knowing instantly that I’m a foreigner.

Prices here are reasonable. I even made a mistake and asked the server to change my order from cup to cone and she did it with pleasure. I tried an Italian flavor with mascarpone cheese, orange cream, and lemon. All were perfect. I would visit this place again if I get the chance. I hardly write reviews but I was so happy with this shop that I actually want to help them succeed in my own small...