Cecilia Casarini still remembers the long line that formed outside Ilary Biondo’s gelato store in Sicily when the couple first met in the summer of 2021. “The line was from the door to two blocks away every single day,” Casarini, Biondo’s wife, recalled. “She was just doing everything, making the gelato, serving people.”

Now, Biondo, 36, the Italian ice cream master, is ready to reproduce that scene in the Mission starting this Saturday at 951 Valencia St., formerly Xanath, the 13-year-old gelato shop that closed during Covid-19. The new store is called “Hila,” Biondo’s nickname. It brings the number of ice cream stores in the Mission to nine.