I’m updating this report with the happy news that Café Glacé has quietly opened its doors in a “soft opening” this week, looking to a more formal “grand opening” (and, with any luck, the arrival of its sign) next Friday.

We spotted activity in there today, popped in and found the genial proprietor, Aziz Ghazipour, in attendance with his staff (including his brother and partner Azim and his wife), and a dozen gelato pans all filled brimful with seductively rich Italian ice cream made in a fancy, imported-from-Italy Carpigiani gelato machine. (Pink grapefruit was a grown-up ice cream, more tangy than sweet; mocha was gently coffee-and-cream, a great match with an iced lattè from Heine Bros. next door. They’re $2.35 for a small cup.)

It’s all gelato, all of the time, for now, but Ghazipour has a glass case waiting for pastries … he says he’s working out arrangements with a friend in the restaurant business to provide a quality product soon. (He whispered the friend’s name in my ear, and it’ll be exciting news if it works out, but I can’t talk about it yet, sorry.)

Speaking of Ghazipour’s circle of friends, he’s one of the sizable group of Iranians who came to Louisville a generation ago as students and who stayed, many of them moving into the restaurant business through the old Casa Grisanti, after the Ayatollah took over back home.

While many of his pals have risen to prominence in the restaurant business, he’s been working in local government. If the quality of his ice cream is any indication, his arrival on the city’s eats scene is well overdue.

Cafe Glacé fills the first floor of the new redbrick building that was built over the summer in what had been the open front yard of a house/office between Carmichael’s bookstore and The Wine Rack, two doors from Heine Bros.