Early this afternoon, I sent a WhatsApp message to my friends Todd and Beth who live outside of New Orleans. That area was a hotspot at some point recently, so I check in whenever I think of it. If things are bad, there’s not much I can do from Orvieto, but knowing they’re okay is a comfort, and we need all the comforts we can get.
Todd wrote back immediately, even though it was quite early in their part of the world; “Doing okay. Staying Grateful. How you?”
I was washing hands, scrubbing something down, or other such that would have qualified as obsessive behavior two months ago and which is now hyper normal, so it took me awhile to answer.
“Glad to hear. I’m missing gelato. Specifically, chocolate rum.”
During the gap, perhaps they fell back to sleep, or perhaps my repost struck a chord and they were gorging ice cream, but I haven’t heard from them again; no offers to ship gelato, no sympathy, empathy, or entropy. But I began to think, and it’s true. I do miss gelato. Though to be honest, any flavor would do, so long as I can order at a counter, carry it to my favorite eating-gelato bench, and savor it while kids (and an occasional adult) play on the wooden horses the Michelangeli family provides the public. Truly good gelato (or ice cream) is as much about context as anything.
When I was a kid in Sunnyvale, California, once a week or so my mother would declare that she hadn’t felt like cooking and why doesn’t my father drive his 1935 Ford pickup down to Foster Freeze and pick up burgers and fries, maybe a couple of milkshakes (none for her, she was trying to lose a few pounds). I would have been happy if she’d tired of cooking almost every night of the week. At Foster Freeze you could buy a deluxe cheeseburger for twenty cents more than a regular and get tomato, lettuce, and pickle relish in addition to the standard ketchup and mustard. Dad and I would order three bags of fries, start eating them while we waited for the burgers, put them between us on the front seat, and have polished them off by the time we drifted into the driveway. Mom wanted to lose weight, right? We were doing her a favor.
But if it were a Sunday when my mother declared herself tired of cooking, it was even better because we’d all go down together, sit at a blue painted picnic table, and everyone got fries and milkshakes. Then, if I played my cards right, I could also get a softy ice cream on a cone, maybe dipped in chocolate. Dad was always okay with that because that meant he could have one too. Mom was trying to lose a few pounds.
But the soft-swirled cone out of a machine paled to the real thing, and the real thing was the handmade ice cream of Clint’s Creamery in Los Altos. Every so often Dad would come home early from his auto garage and announce that we were going to Clint’s. Mom liked that, too, because Clint’s was somehow outside of the diet zone.
The creamery was at the junction of First and Lyell, and above their corner entrance – so it was clear that “creamery” didn’t mean just milk and cheese – was a giant concrete ice cream cone. Okay, it was a cone of grey vanilla that looked like it had been licked on for at least ten minutes by a giant child, but everyone who frequented the place knew the difference between the cone above the door and what they could get inside.
Dad always ordered peppermint chocolate chip, double dip, then for good measure a hand-packed half-gallon to take home. Mom tended towards strawberry. I worked my way through the menu — though I never had the heart to try the bubble gum or black licorice.
The day my father heard that Clint’s had closed was among the saddest of his life. Among the saddest of all our lives. We gave the Baskin-Robbins that opened up in some shopping center or the other a try, but it didn’t inspire any of us to return. Mom brought home mint chocolate chip from Lucky’s supermarket, but that it had obviously been poured into its box left my father cold. I don’t remember ever regularly going for ice cream again, not after Clint’s.
In 1975, I spent several months in Firenze. Early on, my American friend took me to Vivoli near Piazza Santa Croce. I ordered a cup of apricot gelato and was transported. I returned as often as I could, thereafter, and worked my way through their menu. I tried to describe the place to my father, but he was still grieving, and his enthusiasm for my distant discovery was forced.
There are several gelaterie in Orvieto, and my favorite is Officina del Gelato. The recipes are Neapolitan, they use less sugar, the portions are smaller, and I can get a child’s cup at about the size I always asked for at Vivoli for a euro. Tomasso rotates in new flavors periodically, the last I recall being fig. It’s true, I do love the chocolate rum, but I’m equally fond of walnut, hazelnut, wild cherry, pine nut – and whatever else they happen to be serving.
Alas, their mint chocolate chip is tart in a way that Dad would not have appreciated. I’ve offered a taste to him across the Great Divide, but his enthusiasm for it was also forced. Once a memory of perfection is etched in the soul, there’s no displacing it.