Antonio Federici Gelato

Chilled To Perfection

I have an almost Pavlovian reaction to the musical chimes of an ice cream van. Going back to when I can have been no more than three or four and Greensleeves drifted across the park, summer, certain sounds and ice cream are inextricably linked. I like ice cream. I like to think I know about ice cream. I have tasted the gelati of Fennocio's in Nice. In San Francisco I tasted a strawberry sorbet in Gelataria Naia which haunts me to this day. The pinnacle of my ice cream experiences reamains to this day a scoop of zabaione at the Il Gelato di San Crispino in Rome, just near the Trevi fountain, which even as I think of it now, ten years on, makes me drool onto my keyboard. I love good ice cream. So it was I took three cartons of Antonio Federici's gelati from the freezer, removed the lids and let them sit for fifteen minutes. Once suitably softened  I treated myself to a spoonful of giandula (chocolate and hazelnut), followed by panna cotta and ending with pistachio. All were very good. The chocolate, clearly made with double cream, was smooth and rich. The panna cotta was lighter, with a back note of caramel. But my favourite was the pistachio: the simplest of ice creams but so hard to perfect, Federici's is very good: rich, with a very natural nutty finish. Federici's know gelato - they have been in the business for over a hundred years. And that experience shines through with these three winning flavours.