CENTI
Hoppen Hierarchy:★★★★
District: Pop-Up
Gelato/Ice Cream
Perfect For: Baked Goods/Desserts; Casual Dining; Takeout
Standout Dishes: Bourbon Vanilla Gelato; Taro Gelato; Hardy Chip Gelato
What if I told you arguably the best ice cream and gelato in Omaha was being sold out of a coffee shop?
Or that its creator is a former savory cook who fell for ice cream and taught himself the craft?
You’d probably call me either a madman or a liar. But then you’d take a spoonful of one of Centi‘s handcrafted creations and you would understand this burgeoning company is something special.
Erick Landa started his career cooking in restaurants, but it was pastry and dessert courses that drew more of his interest while in culinary school. He also became fascinated by the story of Brian Langbehn, a former savory chef who started Coneflower Creamery, one of Omaha’s most popular ice cream shops.
So he got a job as a pastry chef and started down the road of baking and sweets, creating stunning finishes to meals. Ice creams in particular drew his attention, and in 2019 he began playing around with making his own recipes and flavors.
After about a year of honing his processes and mastering his flavors, Erick was ready to sell them to the public. He struck a deal with the downtown location of Hardy Coffee; customers would place orders online from his rotating list of flavors and pick them up from the coffee shop at designated times.
Despite this unconventional setup, Omaha immediately fell in love with Centi. It’s grown so much that you can now get ice cream and gelato and enjoy it in the shop, either in a cone or one of Centi’s gelato flights.
Though a few of Centi’s offerings are ice creams, most are gelatos, an Italian delicacy that’s more dense and much lower in butterfat than traditional ice cream. Centi’s gelato is extremely creamy, with a velvet-y mouthfeel and a product that melts more quickly in your mouth. It’s also richer in flavor than most ice creams, and this is where Centi truly sets itself apart.
Erick isn’t afraid to play around with flavors you won’t see in most ice cream shops, and the silky, airy nature of gelato amps these flavors up to an 11. Centi’s menu includes unique concoctions like London Fog, Horchata, and Smoked Butterscotch, and each first bite of a new creation is journey. After the initial shock of tasting something completely new, your taste buds move into exploration mode as your brain racks its records for something to compare this to. Eventually, you give up and simply explore the blissful experience.
Among the best flavors are:
- White Mocha: The cooling, fresh flavor of the mint gelato is delightful, and it helps to balance the sweet elements of the white chocolate and homemade toasted coffee caramel.
- Chocolate Absolute: A chocolate lover’s dream, this gelato combines the sweet taste and milky consistency of milk chocolate with the bitter, more intense flavor of dark chocolate.
- Bourbon Vanilla: The vanilla is so sweet and aromatic, it seems the pods were scraped minutes ago. Bourbon vanilla is actually a species of vanilla from Madagascar, so it has no alcohol, but it does have an strong, clear, creamy vanilla flavor.
- Hardy Chip: All the bold, flavorful elements that make Hardy’s coffee beloved are present, and the texture and bitter pops of dark chocolate are brilliant.
- Cherry Jalapeno: The tart, sweet cherry flavor leads the way with the jalapenos adding just a touch of background heat.
- Mexican Chocolate: A rich, chocolatey base combines a slight bitterness with sugar and a bit of warming cinnamon. It’s not spicy as one might expect, but it’s rich and decadent.
- Taro: Sweet and nutty, this purple delight is so creamy it’s more reminiscent of a fresh fruit smoothie than ice cream.
- Sweet Corn: Sweet and buttery, this offering mixes all the brilliant flavors of Miller Dohrmann Farms into gelato.
- Orange Juli: If a Florida orange, just picked off the tree, were squeezed into an ice cream, this is exactly what it would taste like.
- Pumpkin Pine: It’s pumpkin pie, but in ice cream form. There’s no other way to describe it.
Centi really took things to the next level by partnering with Sweet Ash Macs to create its Macaron Ice Cream Sandwich. This beauty features two perfect crispy-shelled yet chewy macarons and Hardy Chip gelato. The sandwich is rolled in toasted pecans and crushed dark chocolate chunks before being dipped in dark chocolate. The rich, nutty flavors of the chocolate and nuts work well with the bitter, creamy gelato, and, unlike most ice cream sandwiches, the inside is firm enough to keep it from erupting out of the sides with each bite.
Centi is a growing business that is constantly evolving. In its few months of operation, it’s already added gelato flights and the ice cream sandwiches to its menu, and the flavor offerings change by the week as Erick experiments with new flavors. It would not surprise me if Centi soon has a standalone location.
But for the time being, it’s absolutely worth the process of ordering online and picking up your order. Centi’s creamy gelato and unique, bold flavors are unlike anything else I’ve found in Omaha. Once you experience Centi, you won’t be thinking about its unique origins. All you’ll be concerned with is placing your next order.