The Ice Cream Secret’s Out

Kristina Zontini, owner of Super Secret Ice Cream in Bethlehem, is a semifinalist for a James Beard Award for “Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker.”

A few years ago, Kristina Zontini started making ice cream out of her home kitchen in Bethlehem. It started as a creative outlet, a way to share something sweet with family and friends. 

“I thought ice cream was this really great canvas that tells the story of the ingredients that you put in it,” she says. “And I think that’s like a lost craft.”

As she dove in, it didn’t take long for her to find lots of inspiration in other small-batch ice cream artists working around the country. It also didn’t take long for news of Zontini’s “Super Secret Ice Cream Club” to spread around town. 

She started giving others the inside scoop: from an old freezer in the shed behind her house, from a stand at the local farmer’s market, and, eventually, from a take-out window and storefront on Bethlehem’s Main Street.

“I think every small town needs an ice cream shop,” Zontini says. “It kind of just presented itself.”

Then, barely a year after Super Secret Ice Cream formally opened its doors, Zontini got the kind of news most culinary professionals wait a lifetime for: She’s a semifinalist for a 2024 James Beard Award, aka The Oscars of the food industry.

“We were just in full shock, I think, the whole day,” she says.

Zontini’s a semifinalist for “Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker,” alongside heavyweights from New York City, Los Angeles, Miami and more. A few smaller communities are also represented, but Bethlehem is the tiniest town on the list — by a few thousand.

Nominees will learn whether they are finalists April 3, and winners will be announced June 10.

Even though the awards are still a few months away, Zontini says this already feels like a win for their community, the small farmers that keep them afloat and the staff that work hard to keep serving up delicious ice cream. 

“We feel really lucky, and I hope it sheds light on ice cream as a craft,” she says. “Also, our area is really cool, and I don’t think New Hampshire is represented enough — and there’s some really cool female-owned businesses in our town, and surrounding towns.”

Congratulations are in order for two other Granite Staters who might be familiar to regular readers of this column. Chris Stinson and Amy Greene, of Portsmouth, are once again Oscar nominees. The pair worked together — Stinson as an executive producer, Greene as a stunt coordinator — on “The Holdovers,” which is up for five Academy Award nominations including Best Picture. Their independent production company, Live Free or Die Films, also worked on 2020 Academy Award nominee “Knives Out” and 2021 winner “Sound of Metal.”

Close up photo of children making robot at home.

It might not be quite as big a stage as the Oscars or the James Beard Awards, but a group of students from Groveton are also getting in on the spotlight. Groveton High School was chosen as one of 60 winners nationwide in NASA’s TechRise Student Challenge. Participants were invited to “design an experiment to test on a high-altitude balloon or rocket-powered lander.” Groveton and other winners are now working on building their experiments, with the goal of launching this summer.