Named as one of the world’s most promising chefs in Coco (Phaidon, 2009), Kitty Travers runs La Grotta Ices, a small, inventive ice cream company specializing in ice creams and sorbets made from fresh, ripe fruit and seasonal ingredients, all created in a former greengrocers shop in Lambeth called her “ice cream shed.”

During ice cream eating season (April to October) Kitty’s Piaggio Ape is based at the heart of London food production: Spa Terminus in Bermondsey. Tubs of La Grotta ice cream can also be found year-round at several famous London shops, including Leila’s Shop in Shoreditch, General Store in Peckham, and E5 bakehouse in Hackney. The Piaggio Ape regularly returns to its pitch at Frieze Art Fair, and Kitty teaches a long-established class in ice cream making at the multi-award-winning School of Artisan Foods in Nottinghamshire.

Having first tasted how spectacular ice cream can be while working as a waitress in the South of France in her early twenties, she set about discovering the secrets to making great ice cream, learning from the top to the toe of Italy and using diverse influences from ice cream making around the world.

Kitty trained at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City and returned to London to become pastry chef at St. John Bread & Wine before leaving to set up La Grotta. In the meantime she has worked as an ice cream advisor to larger national and international companies.

Outside ice cream season, Kitty works abroad as much as possible—always with some aim of learning more about ice cream. Stints have included cooking at The Rome Sustainable Food Project, a kitchen set up by Alice Waters at the American Academy in Rome; living and working in restaurants and pastry shops in Naples and in Sicily; volunteering on a pig farm in Le Marche; and selling scoops at a lemon festival in Nice. Further afield, Kitty has worked on ice cream making projects in Iceland, Turkey, Brazil, and the United States, using ingredients that grow nearby and experimenting with the always-interesting local idiosyncrasies of ice cream making.

She never leaves home without an essential ice cream making kit.