I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Gelato!

I know this isn't necessarily the right season to write about mind-numbingly cold foods (Spring. I thought you had arrived at long last, but then it SNOWED for two hours today. Where are you??), but let's be honest here, is there really a right and wrong season for ice cream? I mean gelato?? Absolutely not. Oh and for all those Italians who boast that their gelato is much better than ours in the U.S., well ice cream and gelato are not the same thing, so let's set the record straight. Ice cream has more dairy fat in it than gelato, which accounts for the harder, less creamy factor (thus more cream ≠ creamier ice cream), while gelato has more sugar in it than ice cream. And today my dears we are talking about gelato.

I have eaten a good deal of gelato over the past three years and my taste ranges from high quality chocolate shop specialty flavors to "kiddie" flavors like an ultra smooth Nutella gelato. Yum. But in narrowing down my choices for best Italian gelato I come up with Giolitti in Rome and Grom which is, well, everywhere.

For anyone who is up on Italian gelato, Giolitti might seem like a boring, obvious choice, but I have to say that the first time I went there I knew nothing about it the place and it really was one of those, "AhHAH!" moments. I was blown away and in fact have subsequently planned overnight stays in Rome on my way through that area of Italy just for their gelato. Hands down, every time pistacchio with whipped cream on top. The pistacchio is mind-boggingly good: the perfect combination of the sweetness one expects in gelato with the slightly savory flavor of the toasted nuts. And the cream is of course the real, fluffy, light as a feather stuff. Sigh. Love.

Then there is Grom which has become a gelato chain of sorts. Unlike the quality you expect from a chain of anything, Grom really takes great care to only put the best ingredients into their gelato: lemons and pistachios from Sicily, vanilla from Madagascar, hazelnuts from Piedmont. You get the idea. Plus they use several Slow Food presidia ingredients, like coffee from a Central American project as well as the vanilla.

Once I was with a friend who was enjoying his Grom gelato when an overly zealous lick tipped the guy right off its cone onto the rather nasty Turin street. Without hesitation he scooped it right off the pavement, karate chopped off the dirtied part and went on his happy way. That's the kind of unwavering devotion this gelato inspires.

Love all the creamy flavors, love how they have a special flavor of the month and love, love, love how the sorbets can really save a melting soul come mid-July.

They started off in Turin and have since expanded throughout Italy, Europe and oh yes, that is a New York City taxi cab in the photo. I've been told that it is just as good in the Big Apple as it is in Turin's mother Grom, though apparently you do pay a pretty American penny for it.

Giolitti
Via Uffici del Vicario, 40
Rome, Italy
+39 06 699 1243

Grom
www.grom.it