Retro Italian Ice Cream Parlour Look
It’s cheap, cheerful, easy to put together and the coolest look in ice cream parlours around. It is the retro Italian Ice Cream Parlour look which was actually a theme for restaurant interiors known as “Modern Italian” in the late fifties and early sixties. This look is considered to be all the rage when it comes to ice cream parlors. The booths. shiny red metal bar stools and tiled checkered floors in the photo above are all mid-century Italian design motifs that the Americans appropriated from the Italians for their diner and parlour restaurant looks.
A parlor done in this style is usually done in pastel Mediterrean colors such as the orange and green that give this ice cream parlor in Toronto’s Little Italy district a light-hearted but polished look. The checked and diagonal lines in the design of the booths are like something like you would find in a gelato parlor in the Italian neighbourhoods of old New York.
This is a fun, crisp look but it is also easy to keep looking hygenic because there is so much going on. Note too the chalkboard with a cow motif advertising special flavors and also the ceramic cow shaped bowl that is used to hold placards advertising birthday parties.
Photo by Donna Lypchuk. Copyright 2011. All Rights Reserved.