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Popular gelato shops Nutty Squirrel and Fainting Goat have joined forces to offer a traditional Italian espresso experience and a full line of European pastries, like tiramisu, panna cotta, lava cakes, and croissants. To support their efforts to become Seattle’s premier European pasticceria (the Italian version of a French patisserie), they’ve hired Kim Nguyen, formerly of revered Bakery Nouveau, to ensure cases at all Nutty Squirrel and Fainting Goat locations are stocked with fresh baked goods.
Fainting Goat’s owners, Turkish couple Yalcin and Sevim Ataman, opened their Wallingford ice cream shop in 2009, later adding a Fremont gelateria. Their daughter Alev Seymen and her husband, Tolga, founded Nutty Squirrel in Maple Valley in 2012 before adding Phinney Ridge and Magnolia expansions. Each brand offers some classic gelato and sorbet flavors, like stracciatella, and some more unusual and seasonal scoops, like Nutty’s Squirrel’s ricotta basil or Fainting Goat’s avocado lime.
In the past, both businesses have made their own frozen treats and baked or purchased some baked goods, like the macarons at Nutty Squirrel, although both families have naturally shared contacts and resources. Now, all four individuals are becoming partners in both brands and centralizing creamery and bakery operations at the Magnolia Nutty Squirrel’s state-of-the-art kitchen.
There, with the help of their new pastry chef, Nguyen, Tolga and Sevim are developing a new menu, with some items, like croissants and pain au chocolat, already available at the Magnolia shop. The goal is by late November to release the new menu to all three Nutty Squirrel shops and both Fainting Goat locations, all of which will bake their pastries fresh daily. Like the adventurous ice cream menu, which has a whopping 350 flavors that shift throughout the year, the baked goods will comprise permanent classics and rotating specialties, from zucchini loaf to seasonal cookies.
Along with Italian espresso drinks, like lattes, Alev is optimistic the expanded offerings will help the shops hold more appeal in the cold months.
“I feel like children can eat gelato in the winter, the summer, they don’t care, but adults are pickier, we’re more seasonal,” she says. “I’m excited that there are more offerings for adults, whether pastries or desserts depending on how decadent they feel. Our shops are very pleasant, so I’m looking forward to people coming and sitting and enjoying some coffee, doing some business, meeting with friends, so we become more of a community gathering place for the winter as well.”
