gelato for breakfast? it's ok, i'm an adult now

As a kid, I always thought that one of the coolest things about "growing up" would be that I could eat anything I wanted...whenever I wanted. Like ice cream. What kid doesn't dream about eating ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner?

Although I'm well into adulthood now, I don't think I've ever actually eaten frozen desserts instead of my daily meals, but on our recent trip to Rome, I did have gelato instead of a meal at least twice! My excuse was that it was so incredibly hot that I needed the frozen treat to cool me down and keep me hydrated! Haha! Wait, why did I need an excuse? I'm an adult! Bring on the gelato!

Before heading to Italy, I think I've had gelato a whopping total of three times in my life. I was too busy eating ice cream...or sherbet/sorbet, if I wanted something "different" from the frozen desserts menu. So, what makes gelato different? Check out this helpful infographic for more info on the differences between gelato and other frozen scoopables.

When I tell you that there are gelaterias everywhere in Rome, I'm not exaggerating. They're EVERYWHERE. So it was easy to indulge in gelato pretty much from the moment we stepped outside of our hotel until we turned in for the night. (Really, did I need another reason to love Rome?)

We always stuck to the medium size (not sure why) and generally, a medium gelato ran us between 2.50 to 4 Euros. I love that the price was relatively the same, but the quantity and quality definitely varied!

When ordering gelato, you can actually choose more than one flavour for your "scoop" (unlike the ice cream stores here in Canada), and some places will also dollop some nice fresh cream on top of your gelato.

The first gelato we had in Rome was from the Blue Ice chain of gelaterias. Not exactly what you would call "high-end" gelato...but we were walking by and they were very "not-intimidating". This is one of those places where they stick "examples" of the ingredient on top of the gelato so that you can visually see what flavour you may be getting. Since this was our first taste of Italian gelato, it tasted fine to our yet-uneducated taste buds. I had Limone (I had already decided before our trip that my first gelato would be lemon-flavoured) while Paul opted for the ever-popular Pistachio flavour.

After this first introduction to run-of-the-mill gelato, our second scoops were from I Caruso Gelateria. We walked quite far from our hotel for this, but as soon as we heard about this place we knew we had to visit it no matter what (I mean, Caruso)! What a difference! This is the real deal - ral artisan gelato. There's a guy in the shop window MAKING GELATO! And the flavours are listed up on a board. If you look down, there are no colourful flavours or ingredient clues - in fact, the gelato is all covered up with lids. Since the ingredient board was in Italian and the server didn't speak any English, we were on our own.

I opted for Caffe while Paul tried the Amaretto (two words we actually recognized). The gelato was sooooo good. We sat outside the gelateria and after we finished, we went back in for a second scoop. Mine was Ananas (Pineapple), while Paul had Fior de Panna (a vanilla cream). Out of the four, the pineapple really wowed us. In fact, I think it was our favourite gelato of the entire trip (although I did try a close second later on at San Crispino). The pineapple flavour was incredibly fresh and the gelato was smooth and creamy. We would have headed back here again during the trip if it wasn't so darn far from our hotel!

After reading some reviews online, we had two more gelato shops we wanted to check out - Giolitti (said to be the oldest gelateria in Rome) and San Crispino. Both of these are generally at the top of any "Best Gelato in Rome" lists we found, both online and in guidebooks.

pizza, pizza and more pizza

Pizza.

Who doesn't love a good slice of pizza? We sure as heck love it! Friday night is generally "pizza night" and although we vary where we get our pizza from each week, we generally stick to simple toppings, like pepperoni. Once in a while, instead of takeout, Paul will make his family-favourite pizza from scratch (lately he's been experimenting with different types of dough to try and get that elusive "perfect" crust).

So we knew we definitely had to eat some pizza when we went to Rome last month. Because some of the places we had wanted to try were closed for August holidays, and since we were spending most of our time sight-seeing in some intense heat, we didn't get to try as much pizza as we would have liked. However, every single slice of pizza we had while we were there was Amazing (yes, Amazing with a capital 'A').

Besides ordering whole pizzas and pizza by the slice, there's also get pizza al taglio (I love this concept). Pizza al taglio or pizza al trancio (Italian for pizza by the slice — literally "by the cut") is pizza baked in large rectangular trays. You tell the server how large a rectangular slice you want them to cut off and you pay for the slices by weight.

Over the course of our week-long trip, we had pizza six times, from four different places. I could write on and on about the pizza we had, but you just want to see the photos, don't you?  :)

Taverna del Corso

I noticed this little pizza restaurant as we were walking to one of the (many) churches we visited. Later that evening, when we were trying to find somewhere to eat (like I said, a few of the restaurants we had wanted to eat at were closed for the holidays), I mentioned this place to Paul and off we went. I think I remembered it only because it had that cheesy Italian decor - you know, the wooden chairs, red-and-white checked table cloths and a grumpy old Italian man standing in the doorway (who turned out to be pretty nice, actually).

They serve pizzas on a super-thin, crispy crust (very similar to the one Paul makes) made in a wood-fired oven. We went twice while we were there and tried a range of their pizzas, including a Pizza Margherita, Pizza Parmigiana and Pizza Diablo.

the top 8 things i ate in rome

Ok, so you've seen the Top 10 (non-food) things I saw in Rome, but I know some of you are thinking, "But what about the food???"

Even though I blog about food and I think about food A LOT, I was so excited to be heading to Rome that I didn't really plan what I would actually be eating in Rome. Keep in mind, this was a last minute trip and we had not anticipated heading to Italy for at least another few years. But, I figured, it's ROME. I'm sure there will be good things to eat everywhere I look! I definitely wasn't wrong about that.

The only things that dampened my eating spirits (which are generally pretty high) were:
1. because of the August holiday season, some of the places we wanted to eat at were closed
2. it was so HOT that I didn't really have much of an appetite except for constantly craving water and gelato

Anyhow, I took a real "fly by the seat of my pants" attitude towards eating in Rome. Paul was the one who was busy online and in guidebooks, jotting down places that he wanted to check out (over which half were closed, unfortunately), so my plan of attack was to let Paul pick the location and then I would find something new and delicious on the menu once I got there.

Good plan, right? Except that neither of us speak Italian and some of the better places that we got to didn't speak any English or have English translations, so there was some guesswork and crossed-fingers as well.

In the end, I definitely tried some new things that I've fallen in love with (I'm looking at you suppli and granita caffe) and also twists on old favourites (a nutella cannolo - yes please!).

Here are the Top 8 things I ate in Rome (in no particular order):

Granita Caffe con Panna from La Casa del Caffe Tazza d'Oro

Oh. My. God. When you read about this, you're going to want to make some for yourself. Like right now.

This place was on Paul's "Must Visit" list (I love this guy!) - the Tazza d'Oro sits by the Pantheon and is famous for its coffee (in a country that's famous for its coffee). There were some really amazing things on the drink menu, but the Granita Caffe con Panna is the one that it's famous for.

The drink consists of three layers - a thick whipped cream is placed on the bottom, then a scoop of rich, deep espresso granita (imagine a shaved ice) and then topped with more thick cream. This is definitely a coffee you eat with a spoon.

We loved this so much we went three times while we were in Rome (we actually went four times, but they were closed on one of the days we went).

Even better - Paul managed to make an extremely close copy of the drink after we got home (don't worry, I'll be sharing the recipe soon!) so now we can have it anytime we want! Hooray!

Ananas gelato from Gelateria I Caruso

Another one of Paul's "Must Visit" locations, this little gelato shop is not really near any tourist location, so it was relatively quieter, and the menu is smaller (and only in Italian) - I can't remember, but I think there were less than 25 flavours (compared to a place like Della Palma, with 150 flavours!) . Plus, the gelato containers are covered up so you can't even see the colour of the gelato and make an educated guess as to what the flavour might be.

Luckily for me, the word "pineapple" is the same in French and Italian. We had four different gelatos from this place and the Ananas is definitely our favourite (it ended up being our favourite flavour from the whole trip). It was like you were eating crushed, creamy pineapple in a cup.

This was the one gelato shop where you could actually see them making their products - if you peek in the main window of the shop, you can see someone making gelato! Amazing!

p.s. Besides being known as one of the best gelato places in Rome, Paul had another motivation for choosing this place to visit. If you know me well enough in real life, then you'll know right away why we're partial to this place!  ;)

my week in food photos, august 11 - 18, 2012 - rome edition

I'm still a little jet-lagged from our trip to Rome, but wanted to share some of the amazing things we ate while we were there. Because of the heat, I didn't have that much of an appetite, but we did manage to work in lots of pizza and gelato!

In the coming weeks, there will be LOTS of posts about our trip, but in the meantime, hope these photos give you a hint of what's to come!

buongiorno roma!

Paul and I are off to Rome!

This is our first trip to Italy and we're super excited to see all the amazing sites and eat some real Italian food! We don't get to travel as often as we'd like (why is travelling so EXPENSIVE?!) so we try to make every minute away count. Since we decided at the last minute to go to Rome, we don't really have a set itinerary so are kind of going with the flow and trying to plan things "on the fly".

I'd love it if you joined me (sort of) on our trip! Follow me on Twitter and Instagram (ID: kitchenfrolic) to see what we're up to and what we're eating. If you've been to Rome before, we'd love to get your tips and recommendations!