sweet sweet sweetness

It's gotten hot again here-- temperatures in the 90's-- and so yesterday evening after it had cooled off a bit, I decided to take a long walk, with a theme. That theme, you ask? Baroque Rome? The splendors of antiquity? Oh no: as I said, it's hot, and hot weather demands some icy sweets.

With that in mind, I started in Trastevere. On the Lungotevere degli Anguillara, on one end of the Ponte Cestio leading to Tiber Island, is a little stand called Sora Mirella la Grattachecca. They do one thing, very well: shaved ice. I have the sense that this treat used to be more common in Rome than it is now; there's another stand up the street, but grattachecca doesn't fill the streets the way gelato does. It's a shame, because as far as I'm concerned, as a hot-weather treat, it can kick gelato's butt around the corner every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

Superficially, grattachecca is like a snow cone, but I've always hated snow cones: massive granules of ice that threaten to break your teeth and lousy artificial-tasting syrup don't really have much to offer. This is a lot better, for several reasons. First, the ice is finely shaved by hand into a soft texture, then scraped into a cup. The syrup is also good quality-- for me, amarena (sour cherry)-- and you know, actually, like, tastes what it's supposed to be. And best of all, they top the concoction with a little bit of fruit: in this case, a few sugared black cherries.

This gave me the strength I needed to cross the bridge into the centro storico, where I wandered (lonely as a cloud) and ended up not in a field of daffodils, but the Campo di Fiori. There I walked by the famous forno, which, I'm told, turns out the best pizza bianca in the city. They were closed, of course (damn you, August!) but the sign promised that they will be back later in the month.

And finally, ground zero for frozen goodness: Giolitti, near the Pantheon and in the eyes of many, the best gelato Rome has to offer. How can you live up to that? It's hard, but they make a good go at it. They had a large selection of flavors (Champagne gelato, anyone?) but it's hot, so I like to go for fruit: this time, I tried mora (mulberry) and lampone (raspberry, which had just come out from the back: good to see that they make the gelato continuously) topped with a nice big dollop of soft, fluffy panna. I don't, frankly, know what to make of the mora: its color was outstanding, purple verging on black, but had a flavor that you might describe as "subtle" or, less charitably, "not much". But I'll be honest: I don't think I've had mulberry before (I just like Pyramus and Thisbe), so that might be a characteristic of the fruit. Lampone, on the other hand, was outstanding. You know how raspberries (and some other berries, too, like blackberry) have, underneath the bright berry flavor, a sort of green, vegetal taste? I don't know if it comes from the seeds or what, but the presence of that flavor has always been a touchstone for me in judging whether a gelato is really good. Giolitti's lampone had it, oh yes. Good stuff, and I'll be back.

I couldn't eat any more sweet stuff that night, but this afternoon's walk oh-so-conveniently brought me back to the neighborhood of the Pantheon (hey, it was closed last night.) This time around, I went over to the dark side-- literally, in this case-- at Tazza D'Oro. This is another super-famous place; one of the top caffes in the City, and particularly well-known for their granita di caffe.

I don't remember exactly when granita machines started appearing in cafes in the US: maybe the mid- or late 90s? I was never all that impressed; they always struck me as sort of a fancy, or at least Italianified version of a milkshake, sort of like the frappucino explosion that hit a few years later. Mostly sweet, not much character. But Tazza d'Oro's granita is the real deal: sweet, true, but with a dark richness that comes from using absolutely first-rate coffee. It's very strong, like good (frozen)espresso, but without any bitterness. And it doesn't hurt that the granita comes sandwiched between two layers of first-rate whipped cream, like a coffee parfait.

I sat on the porch of the Pantheon and savored the granita, then went inside the building. There's not much I can say about the Pantheon that hasn't been said, or that won't make me sound pretentious or geeky. So I'll just mention how wonderful it is to see an ancient building that's still intact, that's still in use, and that shows so clearly what the Romans could do when they put their mind to it. Here's a photo of the ceiling: for some reason, a seagull kept flying in circles around the oculus while I was there. I don't know if it couldn't figure out how to get out, or if it just liked the view. You can just make it out at about the five o' clock position.



Finally, I felt that it'd be wrong to check out Tazza d'Oro without hitting its competitor, Caffe Sant' Eustachio. This is the Rolling Stones to Tazza d'Oro's Beatles (or maybe it's a Roma/Lazio sort of thing, if you prefer a soccer analogy): you're supposed to like one or the other. I can't make a fair comparison yet, but the espresso at Sant' Eustachio is wonderful; I don't know what sort of black magic they use, but somehow they wind up with pillows of smooth crema that covers the coffee. Lovely.

It's a completely unprepossessing place from the outside: here I am in front of it:



Just a hole-in-the-wall, almost literally. But one that really knows how to work a bean.