Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Gelato addendum







Yesterday we began our study of Roman Gelato starting with an examination of the problems facing any serious researcher into the quality of the city's gelato and gelaterias. I listed five very important problems that will trip up all but an almost freakishly dedicated researcher. I was ready to move on to the next phase of my inevitably flawed study when I remembered a sixth problem. And the sixth problem concerns notes.

If a person is going to wander around Rome tasting thousands of gelato flavors at hundreds of gelaterias they are going to need to take good, clear, and copious notes on each gelato or they will forget nearly everything they found. I took notes. Or, I should say, I took precisely one note. It was about how San Crispino had supposedly fallen from grace and yet was as scrupulously perfect as ever. This was after three bites of their chocolate gelato. I stopped taking any notes after that. Because it is deranged enough to eat three bites of a gelato and throw it away, but to turn ones back on the ravishing city of Rome to scrawl a bunch of analytical observations on a gelato seems disrespectful to god.

There are so many reasons to disrespect god, but neither Rome nor gelato are ones.

Which brings us to our sixth point of problem in the study of Roman Gelato: any adequately thorough, properly researched study of the gelatos of Rome would have to be written by an unstable heretic. And we might not want to trust the judgement of an unstable heretic.












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