With summer just around the corner, I can’t think of a greater way to cool down than with the delicious taste of gelato. Less fattening than traditional ice creams, gelato is usually made with milk, but, like ice cream, contains less than 35% air for that ideal density and creamy texture. I’ve found it tough to pinpoint the one gelateria worthy enough to spend my valuable calories and dollars. Not wanting to settle for any icy imitation, I was looking for a flavourful, aromatic product that tasted both fresh and pure - nothing artificial. Toronto offers its share of great eats, but debate ensues amongst foodies when the community is challenged with naming the best of any category. To satisfy my own curiosity, I did what any food obsessed person would do - I set up a taste test.

I recruited a bunch of like-minded (rather, stomached) individuals for the task. Voluntarily subjecting ourselves to dangerously high levels of sugar, our group agreed to have each participant bring at least one pint of gelato, and one sorbetto (dairy-free) to the chosen meet-up location. To standardize the taste test, we compared the classic pistachio flavour - Reale (I have qualms with this fluorescent almond marzipan tasting beast) or Sicilian (the real stuff). The sorbetto choice favoured banana, if available, due to the observation of various yellow hues that have disguised themselves as the fruit in many freezer chests.

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Valentine’s Day is:

a) a day to celebrate love and passion
b) just another exploitive commercial event
c) a reminder of singledom
d) extra pressure on relationships
e) my birthday

I don’t know if anyone really looks forward to Valentine’s Day. Even though people always coo, “Oh you’re a Valentine’s baby that’s nice,” I can’t really believe that they mean it. Typically, what it does mean is that my coupled friends have plans, and I get pushed to the week before or after. If I do try celebrate punctually, restaurants and any other establishments that can cash in on the red and pink are usually too overpriced or fully booked. Over the years, instead of feeding any acrimony, a solution arose: the “birthday week”, during which I treated myself to a little something each day.

Forget waiting for candy and cards from Cupid. That’s why every year I gift myself with some I “Choo-choo choose” me, indulgences. The following are my treats for 2008. Sometimes bitterness, like in dark chocolate, can turn out to be something nice.

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Il Gelatiere
647 Mount Pleasant Road
416-488-2663
Small cup with one or two flavours: $3.90

I pride myself on being a one-man kind of woman. Yes, there was that one summer in Florence when I had to have it every day, sometimes twice; when I’d slyly frequent three or four places so that I wouldn’t be recognized, so that the locals wouldn’t fare le corna at me. I admit it. Then, I was a promiscuous tramp who was after all the gelato I could stomach.

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Dutch Dreams
78 Vaughan Road
416-656-6959
Single scoop with regular cone: $2.95
Single scoop with dipped cone: $4.90

When friends talk about a great new movie, book or restaurant, expectations get set pretty high, pretty quick. Excitement builds to such a degree that when we finally see that movie, read that book or eat at that restaurant, we are, most times, very sorely disappointed.

That’s not how it went with me and Dutch Dreams. Everyone told me it was great. My aunt, an almost-shut-in, has gone there many times and she loves it. So off I went.

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Greg’s Ice Cream
750 Bloor Street West
416-962-4734
Single scoop: $2.95

The Big Chill
367 Manning Avenue
416-960-2455
Single scoop, $2.95

Greg’s Ice Cream, we need to talk. You’re a great kid and we’ve had some terrific times together. Any other Torontonian would be so lucky to have you. But, I think I need to see other ice cream parlours.

And it’s not you. You have so much going for you. You have all these great, unusual flavours. Most of your experiments, like cinnamon, ginger, pumpkin, honey vanilla, or stout, are winners. The sincerity of your real ingredients is always palpable. Some, like grapenuts or durian, are Frankensteinian monstrosities, sending casual ice cream eaters fleeing to the safe embrace of more traditional flavours. Your flagship concoction, the roasted marshmallow, with its smoky, baked egg white tones is never sickly sweet (like a real marshmallow). It keeps tourists lined up and I don’t doubt that you’re going to find that special customer soon.

Continue reading It’s Not You, Greg, It’s Me »

Dolce Gelato
697 College Street
416-915-0756
1-3 scoops: 3-5$ (Larger tubs also available)

“Eh! Mi piace mangiare gelato!!” That’s me screaming for ice cream, I think, in Italian. The extent of my Italian language instruction ended around 1995 when I moved across country and away from an Italian Canadian girlfriend, it’s a long story. But after a recent visit to Dolce Gelato in the western reaches of Little Italy, a few words came rushing back, brought on by the very Italian-tasting product they sell in the shop. Unlike many places in Toronto that serve gelato too cold and hard to be properly called gelato, the offering at Dolce is soft and creamy. When I ask why, the answer is that it’s handmade in the shop so it isn’t shipped anywhere in a deep-freezer truck. As a result, at Dolce, you will never see your server come on to ‘er mangia-cake-style in order to scoop out a ball or two. Just like the stuff you’d get in Bari or San Gimignano or any other random Italian town, the gelato at Dolce slides up the side of the scoop like a silk stocking up the leg of an Milanese supermodel. Did I say that out loud?

Continue reading Oh Gelato Mio »