There's an authentic new gelato shop now open in Plano: Botolino Gelato, the artisan gelateria founded in Dallas in 2017, has opened a location in the Preston Park Shopping Center, at the northwest corner of Preston Road and Park Boulevard, in a former Starbucks where it opened on May 12.

This is the fourth location for the chain, following the original on 2116 Greenville Ave., a second that is at Preston & Royal in North Dallas, and a third that opened in Bishop Arts in December 2023. The company also has Botolino Gelato Lab, a facility near Fair Park where many of their offerings are made.

In a release, owner Carlo Gattini says that fans have been asking for a location in Collin County; his wife is also from Plano and has ties to the community.

Gattini, who trained at Carpigiano Gelato University in Bologna, has roots in both Dallas and Italy. He was born in Milan and raised on a farm in Tuscany. His grandmother had her own gelato shop, and she and her sisters famously resurrected the epicurean magazine La Cucina Italiana. Carlo's family moved to Dallas, and his father opened the beloved MoMo Italian Kitchen, where Carlo helped serve the restaurant's classic Italian cuisine for more than 30 years, until the family sold the business in 2016.

Each Botolino shop offers 16 flavors of gelato and sorbetto, with eight classics and eight seasonal flavors in rotation. They use high-end authentic ingredients such as Valrhona chocolate and Tonde Gentile della Langhe hazelnuts from Nocciola d’Elite farm in Piedmont, Italy.

Classic flavors include pistachio (made from Bronte pistachios from Marullo Pistachio in Sicily), white coffee with cold-infused coffee from whole-bean Noble Coyote Coffee Roasters coffee, mascarpone & figs, milk chocolate, coconut straciatella with dark Valrhona chocolate slivers, and vanilla with Sava Bourbon vanilla beans from Madagascar.

Rotating flavors include tiramisu, Alpine almond bar with Sicilian almonds, Turkish coffee, and sorbets such as blueberry and lemon-rose.

They also do espresso drinks and indulgent desserts including cakes, sundaes, decadent brownies, and sticky toffee pudding topped with ice cream.

To mark the opening, customers who visit before May 21 can enter drawings for hands-on classes. The 2,000 square-foot shop, located a few doors north of Whole Foods Market, has a covered patio and ample parking.

“I look forward to welcoming guests to the new Plano Botolino - a great place for family gatherings, a place for first dates, a place to make meaningful memories with friends,” Gattini says.