Rome – I recently finished covering my third Tour de France, and I could have wallpapered the inside of my trashed rental car with the e-mails from people who envied my assignment. Sorry, folks. That wasn’t the best gig of my career.
I had a better one when I lived here in Rome two years ago.
A 1,500-word magazine article on gelato.
It’s a lot tougher than you think. There are a lot of difficult, stressful decisions to make. Let’s see, do I eat coconut or chocolate chip?
With whipped cream or without?
And it’s hard work. You try sampling eight gelaterias over two days and then cooking pasta carbonara.
When I returned to Rome recently, I saw the gelato scene hadn’t changed.
Like the walls of the Colosseum and the Catholic Church, Rome’s gelato scene will last forever. I walked up the street from my hotel near the Vatican, and it was as if I hadn’t left. At Old Bridge, this hole-in-the- wall gelateria that’s literally a hole in the wall, you could canavass a complete cross-section of Roman society.
As I lovingly lapped up an overflowing cone of amarena (black cherry) and coconut with panna (whipped cream), I saw long-haired teens stand side by side with men wearing crew cuts and army fatigues. A bespectacled priest stood near a little girl with a smile the size of St. Peter’s Basilica across the street. Lovers kissed leaning against car hoods.
They all had one thing in common.
Every one held a cone or cup of heaping, luscious, cold, creamy gelato.
It is Italy’s nightcap. It is its lunch break. It is its dietary supplement.
Heck, it’s one of Italy’s four basic food groups.
It’s softer than industrialized ice cream and harder than soft-serve spit out by machine. Gelato has the perfect velvety texture. In a country built on art and driven by romance, gelato is the fuel that ignites the masses.
It also unites them. When I stroll the cobblestone passageways snaking off piazzas, I always notice Romans can’t seem to hold their lover’s hand without holding a gelato in their other one.
And everyone loves gelato. The numbers prove it. There are 24,000 gelaterias in Italy employing more than 100,000 people. According to “Gelati Gelati,” Italy’s gelato bible, the country annually sells more than 1.4 billion cones, 160 million cups and 46 million flasks for a total of 245,264 tons of gelato.
Next time you’re in Rome and pass by the Forum, don’t be surprised to see the statue of Julius Caesar holding a double pistachio.
It’s more likely than a glass of wine. Romans deny gelato has passed vino in popularity, but you could make an argument for it. The 1,250 gelaterias in Rome outnumber wine enotecas, 20-1.
So why don’t more Italians look like Luciano Pavarotti?
One hundred grams of gelato, depending on whether it’s fruit or cream, has 100 to 200 calories. About 100 grams of Cherry Garcia, Ben & Jerry’s most popular flavor, has around 300 calories.
Ice cream manufacturers in the U.S. pack in vegetable fats for longer shelf life. The vegetable fats also make it so hard you can serve American ice cream with a knife and fork.
Italian gelato is made simply with eggs, milk and sugar, and for fruit flavors they substitute water for milk. That’s it. And the fruit flavors are real fruit: real strawberries to make strawberry, real lemons to make lemon, real coconuts to make coconut.
Yes, only in Italy, where they turned the bella figura (beautiful figure) into an art form, could they turn ice cream into a health food.
Some go to extreme lengths to ensure the quality – as in the length of a hemisphere. Pasquale Allongi, owner of San Crispino, which the New York Times once rated as the best gelateria in Rome, flies in grapes from Chile. He uses only Blue Mountain coffee from Kenya for his coffee flavor, and for zabaione (Marsala custard), he uses only Marsala aged 25 years.
And don’t ask for watermelon in winter. Better a gelateria serve gelato with a knife and fork than a fruit flavor out of season. In the summer, it’s strawberry, blueberry, peach, melon, raspberry. In winter it’s pear, apple, orange, lemon.
But those are just the basics. Giolitti, Italy’s first gelateria when it opened in 1901, has 70 flavors that go beyond the rainbow: tangerine, blackberry, black cherry, apricot, fig, kiwi, cantaloupe, grapefruit, plum, dates, prickly pear. Prickly pear? Then there are the exotic: Grand Marnier, champagne, rum sponge cake, tiramisu, Malaga raisin, marrons glacés made with chestnuts. And who can finish an evening without a big scoop of ricotta cheese gelato?
There is something for everyone. And everyone who tastes gelato will be as moved as I or Wendy Kingshott, an English tourist I met eating a large tub of nocciola (hazelnut), mirtilli (blueberry) and caramel crème.
“Is gelato ice cream or a Roman god?” she said.
It is a god. Hail Caesar? Hail gelato.
Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at jhenderson@denverpost.com or 303-820-1299.
You can try it in Colorado
Gelato, the creamy, dense Italian ice cream, contains half the fat of American ice cream, so you can eat twice as much!
After a meal at Sushi Den or Lola on South Pearl Street, stroll over to the new Gelato Spot for a dip of hazelnut, dulce de leche or passionfruit under the wrought-iron gazebo.
The Gelato Spot, 1439 S. Pearl St., 720-934-5539.
Gelazzi in LoDo takes gelato to a new level, with cocktails like the Gelazzi Margarita (lime or lemon gelato, tequila, Cointreau and amaretto) or Death by Chocolate (chocolate-chip gelato, Kahlua, creme de cacao and vodka).
Gelazzi Gelato Italiano Café, 1411 Larimer St., 303-534-5056, gelazzi.com.
After a day of shopping in Cherry Creek North, collapse at Gelato d’Italia with a cappuccino chip gelato or white peach champagne sorbetto. The 24 flavors change daily.
Gelato d’Italia, 250 Detroit St., 303-316-9154, gelatoditaliacafe.com.
In Old Town Louisville, New Yorkers Chris and Paul Doty bring their cold confections to Paulie’s Italian Ice & Gelato.
Paulie’s Italian Ice & Gelato, 906 Main St., Louisville, 303-666-9007.
Jennifer Esposito of Espo’s Cucina Dolce makes small-batch gelato flavors that change seasonally, not to mention such savory offerings as made-to-order salads, soups and sandwiches served in a friendly neighborhood space.
Espo’s Cucina Dolce, 2810 Larimer St., 303-410-2848.
