Dirk Koeppenkastrop has kept an unwavering eye on the prize — top honors at this month’s 2016 World Gelato Championship, or Coppa del Mondo della Gelateria — as he and his fellow team members have spent the better part of a year prepping, refining and perfecting their culinary creations for the event in Rimini, Italy.
This hasn’t been easy. The team — Koeppenkastrop, three pastry chefs and an international ice-carving champion — is scattered throughout the country, and as captain of the 2016 Gelato Team USA, Koeppenkastrop is charged with organizing practices. The group gathered together five times to master their repertoire in professional kitchens and a gelato lab in Oregon, Washington state and California.
“My goal is to someday be champion,” Koeppenkastrop, owner of Il Gelato Hawaii, flatly stated. “It’s a challenge, but if there’s no challenge there’s no fun, right? This year I hope we can be in the top five.”
Figuring out just how to get there has entailed a bit of a learning curve, but Koeppenkastrop, 52, is an apt student.
The actual gelato making was not the issue. Koeppenkastrop earned his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Hawaii before studying his craft at a gelato university in Bologna, Italy. It turns out that applying chemistry to the task of creating gelato makes for an award-winning product.
Rather, the issue was strategy. In 2014, his first time in the competition, he created unique gelatos using mango, lilikoi and other Hawaii ingredients to drive home the team’s theme of “Aloha Spirit.”
That didn’t go over the way he expected.
Unlike the American approach of displaying a sense of uniqueness and innovation, “I’ve come to realize that to win, you need to do more mainstream flavors,” he said. “The judges want to know what they’re getting so they can measure your product against those of the other teams and what they are used to. The gelato industry is a traditional, conservative industry.”
But the contest, Jan. 23-25, entails much more than making good gelato, which is why each team requires pastry chefs and an ice carver. To start, each team must pick a theme and convey it through seven tasks: the production of a coppa (sundae), a gelato cake, assorted miniature chocolate gelatos, an entree serving a savory gelato, a gelato made with a mystery ingredient, a centerpiece with a croccante (Italian candied almonds that resemble a brittle) sculpture and an ice sculpture — and a final presentation that assembles various dishes on the sculptures.
Because of the presence of social media, the team’s menu will be kept secret until competition day. Its theme, “Fire and Ice,” was recently made public.
The members of Gelato Team USA are pastry chefs John Hui, Michele Pompei and Tim Brown; ice carver and chef Chris Foltz; and Koeppenkastrop. The team was founded in 2005 by chef Claude Lambertz and Hui. Hui now serves as team manager and a competition judge. All team managers must judge every team but their own during the event.
The U.S. team will face competitors from Argentina, Australia, Chile, Germany, Italy, Japan, Morocco, Mexico, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland and Uruguay.
The World Gelato Championship is held every two years in Italy at the International Exhibition of Artisan Gelato, Confectionery and Bakery Goods trade show.
