James A.
Yelp
Night club.
I bet those are two words that come up quite often when scrolling through the reviews of Messina.
Shut (squint?) your eyes and that's exactly what it will feel like. A line, out the door. Young and beautiful things queuing to get to the front. A few people in said line angling to get to the front faster than everyone else (queue jumpers). Hip wait staff, waiting with a smile to take your order. Dance music pumping to the point where you have to speak up. A big enough crowd inside that you can't really see all the options on offer, and everyone is bumping into one another. Then there are those same guys from the clubs who are in a rush to get out to find their friends, that are willing to push (barge) past everyone with their recent purchases.
But for one small fact, you should really consider this to be Club Messina.
The one big difference, of course, is that rather than pushing alcohol, Messina is pushing sugar and cream. It's probably got a not too dissimilar markup, but damn the way these folks put together the sugar, cream and variety of other assortments they have on offer just makes your mouth sing.
This is the real deal when it comes to ice cream -- excuse me, gelato (none of their patrons would be seen dead in an ice cream shop). The originals are all on offer; done to a pretty exacting standard. There's a specials board that revolves through some pretty cool seasonal stuff, too. You won't find your boring corner shop neapolitan ice cream here -- the night I was most recently there, there was Prince of Persia (turkish delight) and what I ended up ordering, Mangosteen and Hibiscus. Where they came up wit the idea of that I'm not sure, but it was both unique and delicious.
Which, alongside its nightclub vibe, sums up Messina really quite neatly. Highly recommended.