These days gelato is quite expensive in most towns in Italy - sometimes as much as 7 euros for a big cone or cup. It's therefore important that you buy real gelato, meaning gelato made in-house from fresh fruit and other pure natural ingredients, and not some kind of confection produced in a factory. Here are some tips on what to avoid.
Ignore the word "artigianale" on the signs and labels. This word has no legal standing in Italy so anyone can use it, even for factory produced products vaguely resembling gelato.
Industrial gelato
- Unnatural colours: If the colours are bright, almost fluorescent, you're looking at a confection. Genuine banana gelato is more or less beige, almost grey. It is NOT bright yellow. Lemon sorbet is white. The chocolate gelato should be a deep chocolate colour, not a brownish colour of artificial caramel. Frutti del bosco will have a deep blackberry colour.
- Mountainscape display: If the gelato is piled up high, it's being held together using emulsifiers and hydrogenated fats, often palm oil. Genuine gelato cannot stand up in heaps, especially whipped up or in heaps of round "scoops". It will lie flat in the container ("pozzetto"). Unless there's a queue of customers, the gelato containers will usually be covered with a metal lid to maintain the correct temperature. The gelato will not be decorated with fruit, biscuits etc.
- Too many flavours: Depending on the size and popularity of the gelataria, there will be only between 6 and 10 flavours on any given day. A real gelataio makes a small batch of gelato in the morning, sells what is there and starts again the next day.
- Out of season fruit: This one is obvious. If the fruit used to make the gelato is fresh, it has to be in season. Bright red strawberry ("fragola") gelato displayed in December is made from strawberry essence and artificial syrup, like those strawberry daiquiris sold in New Orleans.
- Unnatural names: "Bubblegum" is not a flavour of real gelato. Too many or, in fact, any labels like this scream factory-made confection and suggest that everything on display is composed mostly of artificial ingredients.
- Ingredients list: Every Italian gelateria is legally obliged to display lists of the ingredients. A short list with milk, cream, sugar, fruit and egg yolks is good. A list including "olio vegetale" and numbered colour codes - "E" this and "E" that, "aromi," and emulsifiers again screams factory-made confection.
Real gelato
Try to find a place with a short queue of buyers who look as if they live nearby. That's a sure indicator of the real thing!
Best gelato in Tuscany.
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Author: Anna Maria Baldini
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