Getting the Real Scoop on Ice Cream in Italy

It is warm this August afternoon. I think I’ll slip down to the kitchen and have a glass of iced coffee and a scoop of store-bought sherbet.

I will do that because it is there, and I have vowed not to stray far from my desk. If I were free to wander anywhere for an ice cream break, I’d go to Italy--home of the winsome gelato.

Perhaps I would head for a table at the gelato palace of Vivoli, near the magnificent Santa Croce Church in Florence. Santa Croce is a Franciscan showplace, a splendid art museum and the site of Michelangelo’s tomb.

Santa Croce also is the home of a best-buy leather goods shop, with wares made by students of the church’s leathercraft school.

On August afternoons I imagine that the students and friars also are tempted to slip over to Vivoli at 7 Via Isola delle Stinche. I would nod to them in passing as I chose a cup of the sinfully rich gelato called Tira Misu, a flavor that blends espresso, dark chocolate and real cream. The name translates as “pick-me-up,” which is what I need this afternoon.

Glittering With Tiles

Farther south in Tuscany I would walk up from the fan-shaped Piazza del Campo, in the medieval heart of Siena, to a gelateria called Nannini.

The emporium at 99 Banchi de Sopra glitters with pink and white tiles. Flavors are arranged as if on an artist’s palette: pastel sherbets (called granita ) are at one end of the spectrum, the deepest chocolate combinations hold down the other.

It was at this Nannini (other branches serve less ice cream and more other stuff, like jawbreaker panforte cakes) that I first tasted tartufo, a flavor as decadent as a double chocolate truffle.

The evening passeggiata, or promenade, winds down the curving street, past Nannini and its neighbor, the ornate headquarters of the Monte dei Paschi di Siena. Said to be the world’s oldest operating bank, it opened two years before Columbus visited America.

On its stone piazza is a statue of Sallustio Bandini, a Siena economist and priest. He is wearing a full-length cassock. The fifth button from the top is unbuttoned, as are three at the waist. He is scowling across at Nannini. Could these things be related?

In the towered hill town of San Gimignano I would line up at the gelato window of the Pasticceria Mercella e Armando, near the central Piazza della Cisterna. Walnut and filbert are among their homemade treats. The owners are proud members of the Italian gelato society, which assures that the ice cream is made on the premises and is of superior quality.

Famed for Mosaics

In Ravenna I would go back to the Gelateria San Vitale on the Via Cavour near the Basilica of San Vitale, famed for its dazzling 6th-Century mosaics. Trays of wild strawberry ice cream are topped with small crimson berries. Slices of kiwi fruit and curls of lemon are other flavors. The house specialty is Cremino San Vitale, which smacks of frozen cappuccino.

In Rome, near the Piazza Colonna, there is the marble-floored Giolitti, where Romans would do battle--in season--for a dish of the fresh chestnut puree called marroni. Bittersweet chocolate is always a winner.

But all roads don’t lead to Rome, or even Italy. If my craving for ice cream took me to Paris, I’d happily cross the footbridge behind Notre Dame Cathedral and merge with the faithful at Berthillon’s parlor on the Ile St. Louis.

From a chalkboard of fresh flavors I would order ripe Camembert ice cream, or Glace au The de Chine (made with smoky Chinese tea, perhaps Lapsang Souchong), or some splendid concoction I have never tried before.

Berthillon’s is where I was first forced to eat my words about the blandness of vanilla ice cream. The family boasts of using vanilla beans from Madagascar, which they favor over the beans from Tahiti. The result is like an exotic nut swirl.

Not long ago I again scoffed at vanilla ice cream--this time on an all-Hawaiian menu in the Garden restaurant at the Mauna Kea Hotel on the Big Island. Why would anyone choose plain vanilla--even if made with local beans--in a land lush with guavas, mangoes, coconuts and pineapples? On an island where Kona coffee grows, and there are macadamia nut trees?

I clung to my macadamia instincts for dessert, but my husband ordered the vanilla and insisted that I have a taste.

I can only describe its silky texture, subtle crunch and heady sweetness by confessing that it was as wondrous as chocolate.

And that’s the real scoop, if not the real skinny.