Giolitti: Rome’s Old Family of Gelateria
The crowds were back in force, pressing against the windows and squeezing into a tight cue through the front door to glimpse the treasures inside. A call goes out to the local police precinct, “We need a little help thinning the crowds here again.”
Just another day at Giolitti, Rome’s most famous gelateria. Located a stone’s throw from the Parthenon on Via Uffici del Vicario in central Rome, Giolitti is a cultural phenomenon. Tourists and locals travel from all over to sample its delights: over 120 handmade gelato flavors. Yet, for all its fame, the storefront and kitchen are surprisingly small. Not counting the small interior dining room (there are a few tables outside as well), the entire kitchen operates out of a few small specialty rooms.
Giolitti Flavors
Giolitti’s buzz is well-deserved, and the faces of tourists and first-time tasters say it all: rapture, smiles, surprise, and melting of the shoulders in relief to finally have sampled the wonderland of flavors. Many of the flavors on the menu will be familiar to an American palette: cocco, melone, menta, mandarino among them-but more often than not first-timers will puzzle at flavors like fragola, abbicocca, visciole and lamponi. For the discerning palette, there are at least three kinds of chocolate available-all of them slightly different and all delicious.
Like all Mediterranean foods, some flavors are seasonal and only available when the raw materials are available to be sourced nearby. This passion for eating locally and in season is a hallmark of the Mediterranean lifestyle. Giolitti’s creations taste like nothing else-you can’t fake mother nature and her impeccable flavors.
Inside The Famous Roman Gelateria
A visit to the inner sanctum where they create these flavors reveals a cramped room piled high with fresh produce, creamy-looking powders, and jugs of fresh cold cream and spices. The smell is heavenly; every corner of the place is overflowing with zero-kilometer goodness. Today Giolotti magicians are brewing up a fresh batch of mandarin gelato, scooping the oranges into a large stainless tray and saving the skins to use in frozen bowls for another treat. Two women work a wall of humming machines that mix a slurry of melons, raspberries, palms, and sweet pineapple chunks. They are pasteurizing this batch because it contains eggs, but some creations are simply juice and cream sourced from farms outside the city.
Another tiny room is busy creating treats for the daily breakfast and lunch rush. Giolitti is located near the Parliament and sees quite a bit of local business serving office workers in the neighborhood bright and early before the tourist crowds are out of bed. Fresh croissants are a favorite, baked in a small kitchen corner away from the gelato operation. Then, from lunchtime to around 2 pm, the restaurant operates a very popular tavola calda, or hot table, serving sandwiches, quiches, and individual pizza.
History of Giolitti Gelateria
Giolitti is one of those Italian business success stories over a hundred years in the making. Family history has it that the genesis for today’s business began around 1890 when Guiseppe and Bernadina Giolitti began selling milk from their pastures in the nearby Roman countryside on the Salita del Grillo. The creamery was popular with the locals and soon discovered by the Italian royal family who became decades-long customers.
Other Giolitti stores followed throughout the city. One eventually became home to today’s Giolitti, where Guiseppe’s descendants Nazzareno Giolitti and his wife Giuseppina, added the production of gelato to their creamery products.
The rest is, as they say, delicious history.
