What is PussyCat Gelato?
Most Old Town dessert stops sell spectacle: towering cones, candy-colored mounds, things engineered for a phone. PussyCat Gelato sells the opposite argument, in a room that is pure 1970s camp.
The shop at 7134 E 5th Ave is the second location of a small Arizona company founded by Frederic Watson and Rhonda McFarland. Watson was born and raised in France and spent 32 years working in upscale hotels and food and beverage around the world before the pair opened their first gelato shop on Main Street in Bisbee. The name came from the building: the real estate agent told them the area had been a brothel district in the early 1900s, and they ran with it. Six months after Bisbee opened, they brought the concept to Fifth Avenue.
The product philosophy is strict. PussyCat calls it “true gelato”: artisan, handmade in small batches, no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives. The sorbets are vegan and gluten-free, and most of the gelatos are gluten-free too, apart from flavors with cookies or brownies folded in. The shop even publishes a short guide to spotting fakes: real pistachio is not electric green, real cantaloupe is pale orange, and anything neon is a warning sign, in Arizona or in Italy.
Then there is the room. The décor is a deliberate 1970s throwback, with posters of Brigitte Bardot, James Bond, Marilyn Monroe, Jane Fonda and Raquel Welch, a screen playing Josie and the Pussycats cartoons, and lounge and café seating. The gelato is serious. The setting is not, and the combination works.
Ordering and timing
Order with your mouth, not your eyes. Because the colors are muted, the case looks calmer than a mall gelato counter. That is the point. Ask for tastes and choose by flavor; the staff are used to it. If someone in your group is vegan or avoiding gluten, the sorbets are the safe pick, and most gelatos work for gluten-free diets unless they contain baked mix-ins.
Stay a while. A lot of Old Town dessert is designed to be carried off down the sidewalk. PussyCat has actual lounge seating and a cartoon running on the screen, which makes it a decent place to sit out the heat of an afternoon with a cup rather than watch it melt.
Time it with the street. The shop sits on the busy east end of Fifth Avenue, near Cartel Roasting Co. and Original ChopShop, a short walk from Scottsdale Road. It is a natural last stop after dinner at Citizen Public House across the street, or after the Thursday ArtWalk galleries on Marshall Way. In summer, when Fifth Avenue becomes a morning-and-evening street, an after-dark cup of sorbet is close to essential.
Know the alternatives. Old Town has a few other gelato and ice cream options, from the 1950s soda fountain at the Sugar Bowl on Scottsdale Road to other gelato counters on Main Street and the Scottsdale Mall. PussyCat’s niche is the all-natural argument and the retro lounge.
From a Bisbee brothel street to Fifth Avenue
PussyCat Gelato is an unusual Old Town story because it runs the wrong way. Most of Scottsdale’s food imports come from Los Angeles, New York or Chicago. This one came up from Bisbee, the old copper-mining town near the Mexican border, whose steep Main Street of Victorian storefronts has turned into one of Arizona’s favorite artsy day trips.
That small-town origin explains a lot. Watson and McFarland built the first shop around a building with a colorful history, a name that makes people laugh, and a product with no shortcuts, then grew deliberately: Scottsdale six months after Bisbee, Sedona in spring 2018, and later a Tombstone address. Every one of those towns is a walking, visitor-heavy place, and so is Fifth Avenue, the 1950s shopping lane built by artisans for winter tourists who wanted something handmade.
The fit is better than it looks. Fifth Avenue’s original pitch, in the days of the craftsmen’s studios on Craftsman Court, was authenticity: real silver, real leather, real makers. A gelato shop that lectures politely about neon pistachio is in that tradition, even with Josie and the Pussycats on the wall. Its neighbors on the block, a third-wave roaster and one of Arizona’s original craft cocktail bars, are making the same argument about coffee and drinks.
The honest assessment: the name is a gag that some families will find a step too far, and the shop is small. But the gelato is made the way its owners say gelato should be made, the sorbets give vegans a real dessert in a neighborhood of buttercream, and the 1970s lounge is a better place to finish an Old Town evening than another bar. Bisbee’s export earns its spot on Fifth Avenue.