Photograph courtesy uGOgelato
When Maria Liliana Biondo, owner of uGOgelato at Findlay Market, packed her bags for the Gelato Festival World Masters North America Finals in Los Angeles over Labor Day weekend, she took more than just sunny-weather clothing.
Secured in two travel-ready containers were all the dry ingredients she’d need to create her award-winning MandorLand gelato with almond paste, chocolate, orange glaze, and almond nougat.
While she also shipped the same ingredients straight from Sicily to the contest, Biondo didn’t want to take any chances. The Masters Finals are a huge undertaking and the crucial last step in a four-year culmination to the 2026 World Finals in Italy this coming spring.
Photograph courtesy uGOgelato
While that sounds like a long time to participate in one contest, you could say Biondo has been training for this moment all her life. Growing up in Venezuela, the daughter of a Portuguese mother and a Sicilian father (a gelato master and gelateria owner himself), Biondo developed an appreciation for all kinds of food and flavors, both with her family and during her extensive travels.
Although she went on to earn a psychology degree, she found herself straddling two careers as a young adult—practicing psychology in the morning and helping at her family’s gelato business in the afternoons. In 2014, Biondo moved to Pittsburgh to spend a year learning English. Then, after marrying beau Hugo Biono back in Venezuela in 2015, the duo moved to Miami, eventually opening the flagship uGOgelato in 2018. However, due to the high costs of operating a business there, they made the decision to close after a year.
Photograph courtesy uGOgelato
It was during their time in Florida that the couple came to Cincinnati to visit good friend, fellow Venezuelan and Findlay Market business owner Daniel Noguera (of Urbana Cafe).
“We visited Daniel and we fell in love with Findlay Market,” Biondo says. “We loved the experience of walking around and discovering the city. It’s just like what we would do in Italy on a Sunday, so thought it would be a good idea to open a gelato place around OTR.”
In 2020, the couple moved to town, eventually landing on their current Elm Street storefront where they opened another uGOgelato in 2022.
Photograph courtesy uGOgelato
Biondo’s travels to Italy once or twice a year to explore, taste, and train in everything gelato helped bolster her confidence enough to enter the Gelato Festival World Masters, an international competition for gelato artisans. The contest is part of a series of competitions that began in 2022, taking place across five continents over four years and culminating in the finals in Italy.
After taking third place in the Chicago regional competition in 2022, Biondo clinched her trip to the semi-finals in Los Angeles in 2023, then the American finals in Los Angeles this past summer, placing in the top three out of 10 total competitors, securing her spot in the 2026 Gelato World Finals.
Biondo entered using her popular MandoLand gelato—a flavor she created and submitted four years ago and has had to compete with every time. (If the recipe changes at all over the course of the competition, you will be disqualified.)
Once in Los Angeles, her ingredients secure, she and Hugo set about recreating MandorLand, the perfect mashup of her heritage in one delicious cup—a 100 percent vegan gelato made with natural, toasted and bitter Sicilian almonds, 70 percent cocoa Venezuelan chocolate, Sicilian blood orange glaze, Sicilian almond nougat, and a Sicilian orange zest spray.
Photograph courtesy uGOgelato
Entrants were given two days to prepare their entries in a facility with the proper equipment. The first day they had four hours to pasteurize 331 pounds of gelato. The following day they again had only four hours to make and freeze their gelato entries.
The contest then provides them with a cart from which to serve their entries to both the technical jury and attendees. Each chef was voted on by both the jury (70 percent of the vote) and the attendees (30 percent of the vote). If you can’t make it to Italy to taste Biondo’s award-winning creation, the good news is you can head down to uGOgelato any time you want.
“[Her] success at the world stage on the gelato scene is such a benefit we all have here in Cincinnati,” Noguera says. “You don’t have to go to Italy to have the best gelato. You just need to come to Findlay Market.”
Facebook Comments