When diners come into this charming, modernized storefront on Crafton Street, they’ll no doubt find families laughing over cups of gelato in one of the comfy seating areas, friends enjoying locally procured and custom-blended coffees at the streetview bar top, and someone plugging away on a laptop over a sandwich-and-soup lunch at a café table.

This off-the-main-drag restaurant with the intriguing name, Komodo Gelato, offers breakfast and lunch sandwiches, soups, coffee and tea specialties, and an enticing, rotating selection of the sweet, velvety gelato that gives the business its name—half of it, anyway.

Owner Kyle Bower describes his business sensibility and philosophy as “first mover.” He likes to be out front with things.

“I always like trying new stuff, even with technology or new ideas…If it doesn’t work, that’s okay, but I’d at least like to try it and see how it’s going to work,” he says.

That acumen is all over Komodo Gelato.

The breakfast and lunch options change every week, and the gelato (which has a lower milk fat content than ice cream, is made with a slower churning process, and is typically served at a slightly warmer temperature than ice cream) features usually include a few tried and true favorites being dipped next to innovative seasonal treats. From Toasted Rice and Mango to Salted Caramel Pretzel, there is something to hit every palate, no matter how adventurous—or not—and surprise even the most ardent fan of a cold, sweet, ice-creamy treat.

With each culinary innovation, Kyle says he’s “trying to balance fat with acidity and herbaceousness, and just trying to meld those together in every dish I create. Even soups—so that it just lights your palate up, which is what I hope people experience when they come in.”

So where does Kyle’s food fearlessness come from? All over, from Tioga County to upstate New York to the Pacific Northwest.

Here, There, and Everywhere

Kyle grew up in the Hudson Valley of New York, and his first food influences came from his home kitchen. “My dad went to the Culinary Institute, so I knew how to cook…My dad kind of taught me,” says Kyle. “He asked me if I wanted to go to culinary school, and I said ‘I think I kind of already know everything. I basically learned from you…’” He adds, “And Alton Brown, Jamie Oliver—it was the height of the Food Network.”

After graduating from SUNY New Paltz with a degree in finance, Kyle headed west and landed in Portland, Oregon. During his nearly five years there, he worked for Salt and Straw, a small batch ice cream business. He had visited the business in 2015 before moving to Oregon full time. “They had like a fennel and blood orange and olive oil flavor. And there was no line! They are notorious for long lines.” It seemed like a sign to Kyle that he was supposed to stop in.

He applied to work at the company when he returned to live there in 2016. “I was trying to use my degree. I initially applied for a purchasing coordinator position. When I was applying, they said they’d already hired someone internally, but they had this pint and prep job, putting the ice cream into pints and chopping up ingredients. I said ‘Yeah, I’ll do that’ since they were hiring from within. I figured I’d move up.”

Kyle stayed with the company as they expanded from fifteen to twenty-five stores and started to increase their presence in the area, gain investors, and move into a large warehouse space. Expansion continued until covid hit the company hard, and they had to lay off employees.

Fortunately for Kyle, he’d already been making plans to move to Wellsboro to be closer to family. Both of his parents grew up here, and he had grandparents still living here. He’d always liked the town, visiting often while growing up.

Before making the move back East, Kyle had talked with Wellsboro entrepreneurs Rick and Lori Beckwith about some business possibilities for a building his family owned on Wellsboro’s Main Street. That plan never came to fruition, but once the Main Street Creamery (one of the Beckwith’s downtown businesses) opened back up in the spring of 2021, he started making ice cream there and eventually taking shifts in the kitchen at the Beckwith’s restaurant, Beck’s Bistro.

By 2024, Kyle saw his opportunity to do his own thing, and he took it. “I was getting older and didn’t want to wait too long,” he says. Komodo Gelato was born.

What’s in a Name?

“Everybody asks where the name came from. It was an idea in my head to have a hot sauce company, and my buddy out in Portland was going to help me with that. We were just kind of bouncing ideas off each other…and Komodo was the name we came up with because my name is Kyle and his name is Max, so it kind of fit our initials and fit the hot sauce theme.”

He had that name in the back of his head when he decided to bring his own flavors to his new home in Wellsboro.

“I sort of combined all my expertise from all the places I had worked as far as just having fresh quality products and doing the gelato to kind of differentiate myself from everybody in town,” he says.

And differentiate he has. Since opening in October 2024, guests have found dishes like a pork katsu sandwich, ahi tuna with wasabi mayo, soy glaze, and cucumber on a homemade sesame schiacciata (traditional Tuscan-style flatbread), and a BBQ jackfruit sandwich.

Says Kyle, “I just try to stay authentic to whatever culture I’m trying to take ideas from. I like taking little ideas from certain different cultures and applying them to foods from our culture. I think it adds just a little bit of flair and diversity and appreciation and respect for other ways of doing things.”

That aforementioned “first mover” strategy also applies to his ever-changing menu. Each weekend, guests can expect a couple of breakfast options, a couple of lunch/dinner sandwich options, a soup or two, and sometimes, something else entirely.

So far, this year’s weekend offerings have included innovative cuisine like a chimichurri chicken salad sandwich, beef kofta (spicy ground meat) with cucumber salad, red onion, feta, and lemon yogurt sauce, and a Moroccan spiced peanut soup.

But folks planning a visit shouldn’t necessarily expect to see those things on the menu, because it changes every weekend.

“With food, I’m always looking for the next best thing. So I’m just trying out as many things as possible,” says Kyle, who admits that presents challenges for the restaurant’s many fans. Sometimes people rave about a sandwich from a few weeks prior, but it isn’t likely to make the menu again. “I don’t know if I can do that again. I already did it!” says Kyle.

Kyle’s adventurous food tastes also inform the menu. (He admits to only one thing he really doesn’t like to eat—peas.) “I love to try new stuff myself, and I thought Tioga County needed some more diversity in their food,” he says. “Just the variety of cuisine I eat myself opens up the possibilities for customers as well. We have a good variety. I’ll cook anything. That’s what makes me unique.”

When it comes to the gelato (which, by the way, is the Italian word for ice cream), similarly, the flavors rotate and change, but not every single weekend. Kyle’s goal is still to bring that sense of wonder to his customers just the same. “Because we do have people that come in every week, I do like to try to delight and surprise people with new flavors and new options.”

Innovative seasonal flavors round out the stable of tubs each week, in addition to classic staples like Tahitian Vanilla, Roasted Strawberry, Alabaster Cold Brew Coffee, and Chocolate Stracciatella. Offerings this past year included Matcha Black Sesame, White Cheddar Apple Pie, Peanut Butter Fluff, and Fabled Fudge Brownie.

It’s important to Kyle that the case of gelato options is exciting and worth coming back for. He wants people to experience “different textures, different flavors, pops of color and brightness.”

Keep It Local

Flavors see local influences beyond the ingredients, too, like this writer’s personal favorite, Canyon Fog (named for, you guessed it, the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon), flavored with Earl Grey tea.

Kyle’s eye toward good food and drink also relies on local producers and vendors.

Fruits and vegetables come mainly from Wellsboro’s own Brown’s Produce and Leister’s Market.

“We use Leister’s for fresh fruit—we get all of our apples from them,” says Kyle, and then speaks to the options that Brown’s Produce opens up for Komodo: “A lot of times because he goes to the fruit market, he can get more unique items. So, like, when I needed a case of persimmons, I asked him, or I asked him about ube, different stuff I can’t find in Wellsboro or Tioga County. Or even sometimes, he’ll say ‘I’ve got these extra kiwis that aren’t going to last, can you use them?’ and I say yes and make a kiwi sorbet or something.”

Kyle also features Hillstone Farms for meat for sandwiches when possible, and you can always find their sausage in the weekend’s breakfast specialties. “Sometimes with the local providers, the amount of product I could go through in a day, they can’t always provide in certain cuts, but we try to as much as we can.”

Troy’s Milky Way Farms provides eight gallons of milk each week that is mostly used in the coffee bar. Dairy for the gelato comes from downstate, where Kyle found a clean label with just basic ingredients. “No artificial preservatives or anything,” says Kyle. “Even a lot of milks these days have polysorbate or carrageenan. I try to get as clean stuff as I can.”

Customer and local business owner Taylor Nickerson values these partnerships. “Thursday mornings, I enjoy heading over to Komodo Gelato for one of Kyle’s breakfast sandwiches,” she says. “I love that he not only makes everything from scratch, but he also tries to source as much as he can locally. Right there on the board I see Hillstone Farms sausage. I love a business that can have their own unique stamp but also supports other local businesses.”

Other collaborations include a partnership with Innerstoic Cider, whose rosé Kyle used in developing a gelato flavor, Innerstoic Raspberry Rosé. He also concocted two flavors using ciders that they served at the cidery’s Equinox event this past fall.

A particularly valuable pairing for Kyle is with Wellsboro’s Happy Raven, a new natural products store. Owner Liz Kreger helped connect him to Milky Way Farms and has helped him partner with other local sources, so he calls her when he needs ideas for a new supplier. “Her focus on environmental sustainability is also pretty cool, because that’s a focus for my shop, too,” says Kyle.

Keeping It Real

Another focus for Kyle is ensuring that what he serves is, indeed, “real food.”

“We are making everything from scratch. I take time—I’m not buying mayonnaise, I’m making that from scratch. I think a lot of the food we eat these days has been infiltrated with a lot of extra stuff. And I think that’s why people trust me. They go, ‘Oh yeah, he actually does care about what he’s putting out. He’ll eat this himself, and he cares what we’re eating as well.’”

That care translates into the aim to provide options for those with dietary restrictions and preferences. Each new menu of gelato flavors includes several that are dairy-free. Local customer Molly Cary lauds the availability of tasty options in the meatless realm.

“The vegetarian options at Komodo are not only delicious, but made with super fresh ingredients and are very ‘cravable,’” she says. Like, for instance, a white bean burger with lettuce, tomato, avocado, pickles, and secret sauce on their signature rosemary schiacciata as a meat-free menu selection.

Moving into a new year, Kyle has plans and ideas for Komodo Gelato’s stable of loyal customers—and those who will be.

“No matter how good something is, I always think I can do better,” he says. “I think the process of trying and the process of continually improving is valuable. Maybe it didn’t get better, but I found a new technique to improve the thing I’ve already done.”

This year he plans to try more special nights like the ramen pop-ups that were a hit during the fall. People knew he had a talent for making ramen from his time cooking at Beck’s, and they had been asking when they would see it here. The subsequent pop-ups were a success. “Doing the ramen nights really taught me if I do something right, something people are asking for, you can see the positive reaction.”

What else does the future look like? Kyle wants to improve the experience of those coming to taste gelato.

“I think when we first opened, people really liked the tasting process—almost treating it more like a wine tasting than a typical ice cream shop, so I think getting more into that, suggesting, ‘Oh, if you’re going to have this gelato, try pairing it with this.’ People won’t do that themselves, so I’d like to help them make better decisions.”

He also plans to work with more local suppliers and do more collaborations like the one he did with Innerstoic. Since posting a thank-you to his local partners during the holidays, he’s been approached by a few more folks he’d like to work with. He’s also hoping that will lead to enough growth that they can try out some more custom flavors.

“One of the benefits we have as a micro gelato maker is we can do stuff to order for weddings or catering events, just one-off, one-day events, and do a tub for them,” he says.

For foodie friends, a fun diversion in any conversation is a discussion of some of the tastiest things eaten lately. This ranges over time from a well-seasoned birthday steak to an absolutely unforgettable slice of brick oven pizza on a trip to the city. Usually what makes these gastronomic gab sessions most interesting and lively is the shared food experience that has been something different. Out of the norm. Not an average sandwich. Not a so-so soup. It’s fresh in ingredients, ideas, and implementation, it’s exciting to the palate, and it leaves you, the consumer, not only thinking about it for a long, long time, but wanting more. More from that place.

When people have conversations about Wellsboro, it’s usually to rave about the old-time charm of the Hallmark town’s idyllic gaslit streets, the old mysteries of decades-old businesses, and the experience of stepping back in time for a few days. Just one block off Main Street, though, Kyle Bower is delighting and surprising diners by pairing fresh ingredients and ideas with the modern and distinctive flavors.

And, by the way, he hopes to serve you one of the tastiest things you’ve eaten lately.

Visit Komodo’s Facebook or Instagram pages to see what’s on the menu this week, call (570) 948-2599, or, better yet, just pop in at 17½ Crafton Street to try whatever it may be, so you can be a first mover in taste, too.