Current favorite: Volta
Runners-up: El Vesuvio (on Corrientes right next to the Obelisk) and Persicco
Left to visit: 3 – that is, of the ones I've had recommended to me. All existent is too many to count. Also one has moved so I'll have to hunt it down [insert battle cry].
Flavors include: - starting with the weirdest flavors I’ve seen (though some of even those pop up in every heladeria):
Kinotos/quinotos al wisky – kumquats! With whiskey. Who thought of that? The one time I tried this, it was not good, but it’s surprisingly common. As is champagne al limon. Ristreto granizado: ristreto is one step stronger than espresso, and granizado, which is often an option for popular flavors, is what I would call shredded with chocolate. Needless to say, caffeine-y!
Sambayon (yes, the wine and egg). Marscapone, mousse de limon, crema de chantilly, gancia (a type of ‘vino espumate’ – bubbly wine? It’s popular in Uruguay too). Other random ‘let’s add alcohol!’ flavors. Frambuesa (raspberry), maracuya (passionfruit), mango, pomelo rosado (pink grapefruit), frutilla (strawberry), durazo y naranja (peach and orange), blueberry mousse…
If you avoid strawberry ice cream (which I do in the U.S., because it always tastes like cotton candy and not actual strawberries), they really do it right here. The fruit flavors are delicious, because they use real fruit and not flavored syrup, and don’t use too much milk – sometimes none at all – which really lets the fruit stand out.
Then there’s the twelve or so variations on chocolate every place has (I am not exaggerating – I’d better take a picture of their menus one day), and a whole selection of ‘cremas,’ which I usually don’t bother with because I don’t find them as interesting. They’re like vanilla (with less vanilla flavoring) with nuts, or chocolate, or fruit, or dulce de leche swirls…
Speaking of, can’t forget that every place also usually has at least three variations on dulce de leche.
The apparent reason the ice cream is so good here is the Italian immigrants. The older places (El Vesuvio began in 1902!) sometimes have little blurbs about their history posted somewhere, and it usually begins with a variation on, "in such-a-year, the family such-and-such travelled from North Italy with their gelato skills..." which I think is always a good beginning.
My method of trying ice cream (yes, I have a method) is to get two flavors each time: one experimental, and one that I know I’ll probably like. That way I will be happy even if my ‘ooh, what’s that? Let’s get it!’ urges don’t prove fruitful. The smallest cone with two flavors is definitely enough – they tend to pile it high.
And that way I get to try all the different kinds of chocolate (it’s my safety) without missing the other things.
I also like to ask what things are and to try them beforehand, as it results in either lots of delicious varied spoonfuls or very confused workers trying to explain than it’s a “red fruit that grows in the forest, and it’s not a strawberry” – or, once, a man warning me very seriously that it “has alcohol, you know!” I guess I looked like At Risk Youth that day.
Presently, I mean to post addresses (if I kept track) and ratings and things, so that anyone in Buenos Aires can visit them, but for now I’m a little busy with my sugar coma. Mmm.
/end fluff
No comments:
Post a Comment