2024 Trailblazer John Rivera, Kariton Sorbetes
Kariton Sorbetes is one of the shiny silver linings of the lockdown cloud. Chef John Rivera had just left fine diner Lûmé and was bored and underemployed. And then inspiration struck. What if his next move was not straight into another restaurant, but rather ice-cream that channeled his Filipino heritage. And thus the ube halaya gelato, Melbourne’s most famous purple yam fudge gelato with blackberry jam and roasted coconut curds, was born.
The side hustle has grown into a mini-empire with four Melbourne shops where you can experience what happens when a Filipino-Victorian chef celebrates his culture with artisanal artistry and a nod to the archipelago’s ice-cream street carts. The mind-expanding repertoire of flavours – durian chiffon with palm sugar jelly, kamote cue (roasted sweet potato with candied chestnuts) and their bandmates – have broadened the horizons of anyone who thought gelato had to carry an Italian passport.
John is now also back in restaurants, having opened Askal in the CBD, but Kariton Sorbetes keeps going from strength to strength in the meanwhile. A national launch is now underway, but it remains a very Victorian success story. “If there was any place we were going to make this work, it was Melbourne,” he says. “Melbourne is a city that loves to embrace new things.”