Ponti’s Acquire Favorite North London Ice Cream Name

A Chalk Farm ice cream shop founded in 1931 has been sold to the Italian restaurant chain Pontis. It is the end of an era for the shop which has been run by four generations by the same family after it was set up by Gaetano Mansi in Drummond Street, Euston, moving to Chalk Farm in 1947.

Pontis was set up in 1963 by Giuseppe Ipsani in Fitzrovia and now runs a chain of Italian cafés and restaurants. There was some consolation in the fact that @davementi chimed in the wave of sadness at the closure with the tweet: “Pontis left Lewisham with many in tears. Fret not Chalk Farm, Marine Ices in good hands.”

Mansi had arrived in England from his native village of Ravello in southern Italy at the turn of the century. In 1946, he was joined by his two sons, Anacleto and Aldo, and in 1974, Anacleto and Aldo were joined by their three sons, Dante, Gino and Gaetano. In 2006, in its 75th anniversary year, they in turn were joined by Dante’s sons Aldo and Benny, Gaetano’s great-grandsons, thus becoming the fourth generation running the restaurant and ice cream business.

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