TikTok-famous Dolce Bella opens cannoli shop in Oceanside
A box of six cannolis at Dolce Bella in Oceanside comes with flavors like rainbow cookie, birthday cake and dulce de leche. Credit: Newsday/Andi Berlin
What's more Long Island than a rainbow cookie cannoli? Not much, judging by all the hype for Dolce Bella and its first brick-and-mortar location in Oceanside.
The shop is powered by friends Brandyn Williams and Tim "Big Red" Downey, who are known for their flavored cannoli and silly antics on TikTok, where they've garnered more than 800,000 likes. The two previously ran a buzzworthy dessert shop at the Roosevelt Field Mall that closed last summer after they determined they needed more space. In their most popular video, Williams throws a foot-long cannoli at Downey's head, spraying cannoli bits into the neighboring mall kiosk.
"We thought that the product would sell itself right away. But after two months we realized that our personalities, we're the brand," Williams said. "So we started doing cool TikToks, we started doing videos, and we just started being ourselves and people started gravitating toward us."
Dolce Bella owners Timothy "Big Red" Downey and Brandyn Williams at their Oceanside cannoli shop. Credit: Newsday/Andi Berlin
The two set up shop last weekend in a strip mall on Long Beach Road that they've decorated with tongue-in-cheek flourishes like paintings of the owners that make them look like French cavalrymen. In the early hours of the morning, they prepared enough cannoli fillings to last a week, but ending up selling out the first day, Williams said. There was no line on a recent afternoon but the shop did have a constant stream of customers, mostly people from the neighborhood.
The brand got its start as a gelato cart serving weddings and other special occasions, and that's reflected in the line of gelato they source from a vendor. Call it whimsical or nonsensical: After scooping your gelato or Italian ice, an employee uses a bubble blaster gun to shoot a vaporous smoke bubble on top ($6 for two scoops). They call it the Dolce Boom, and it tastes a little like an e-cigarette vape pen. But it's definitely fun.
The big draw here are the flavored cannoli ($5), which seem like a shtick but are in fact, really tasty and not too sugary. On a recent day, eight flavors included Nutella, dulce de leche, rainbow cookie and birthday cake, rubbed with different cookies and sprinkles. With its creamy caramel filling, the dulce de leche was the initial favorite. Order of six for $26 and you'll be the most popular person in the group chat.
Dolce Bella, 3220 Long Beach Road, Oceanside, 516-988-8302, instagram.com/dolcebellany/?hl=en. Open 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
Andi Berlin is from Arizona and does not know where she is going. But when she gets there, she’ll find something beautiful and delicious that the world needs to taste.
