Italy: It’s 4 PM. Have You Had Your Gelato Yet?
Eating gelato seems to be a national pastime in Italy. 
Three girls enjoy gelato in San Gimignano. Stroll through the streets and cobbled alleys of any city in Italy, and you will find gelateria displaying vibrant colors and tasty flavors of gelato in freezer cases in the front windows. The displays look like entries in a showcase competition. You can almost hear the shopkeepers’ unspoken challenges to each other:
“Can you build a mountain of gelato higher than my mountain of gelato. Ha. I doubt it.”
“My mountain of gelato is so much prettier than your mountain of gelato!” But there are rules for eating gelato, as Michael Tucker says in Living in a Foreign Language: A Memoir of Food, Wine, and Love in Italy: “Italians follow a very strict code when it comes to eating, and one hard and fast rule is gelato at four o’clock.” Carol, my sister-in-law, and I managed to get gelato in Rome just about every day. We didn’t quite follow the four o’clock rule, but no matter. Gelato is good any time of the day. 
My favorites: frutta di bosco (mixed berry-“fruits of the forest”), fragola (strawberry), and limone (lemon). Carol liked coco (coconut) and cioccolato (chocolate). Of course, we tried many other flavors: caffe (coffee), melone (melon), mango, creme caramel, straciatella (vanilla with chocolate flakes), and pistachio. You can have your gelato in a cono (cone), a coppa (cup), gusto (double-dip), or any other outrageous way. 
Photo by Laura Griffin as seen on her blog post, “Roman Holiday.” You can even have gelato on a brioche (sweet bun). Read about that gourmet treat here. 
But purists will never get gelato in a cone or on a bun. Heavens, no. That would contaminate this icy confection’s pure flavor and texture! A cup with a teeny plastic spoon is the only acceptable way to eat gelato.
Gelato is made a little differently than our American ice cream. It is made with whole milk, eggs, sugar, and flavoring, but it has a lower butterfat content than our ice cream. It has a creamy, smooth texture, and it is not frozen hard, so you can eat it faster without getting an ice cream headache!
If you go to Italy, just remember the rule: Gelato at 4 p.m. (and any other time you want it). I promise, you will love it.
Janice Hall Heck 
My friend and I had gelato nearly every day we were in Italy, sometimes twice a day if we were hot enough. American ice cream doesn’t even compare, does it? My favorite was a combo of chocolate and pistachio. Heavenly! I miss Italy! 🙂
If I had to pick one flavor of gelato, it would be strawberry. Just delicious.
Oh, this is one thing I look forward to in France every summer. Those ice cream cases line the sidewalks beginning about 10 a.m. By 3 p.m. every person has a cone in his or her hand, or is sitting at a cafe with beautiful ice cream creations. They do offer gelato, but I love the ice cream. It’s usually offered in scoops the size of a golf ball, so it’s nothing to have three different flavors in one dish. And it’s frequently made regionally rather than being national brands.
Hmmmm. I’ll have to visit France so I can compare French ice cream with Italian gelato. They both sound wonderful.
Gelato at every possible opportunity is my rule of thumb 🙂 In Italy and Germany, I picked out the weirdest-sounding (or weirdest-looking) flavors and tried them–pistachio, fig, stracciatella. I have yet to meet a flavor I don’t like 🙂 Love that picture from Roman Holiday!
I tried a bunch of different flavors, too, but my favorites were fragola and frutta di bosco. Yum. But you’re right, gelato any day, any time, any flavor!
LOVE ice cream so I can only imagine how much gelato I could eat. Do they make it in key lime?
I did notice a lime flavor gelato one day, but I think limone is more common. Still delicious. Now I will try more in the US and see how authentic it is.
Jan, you make me wish I was back in Rome! Thanks again for sharing your photos and thoughts about your travel!
Glenda, my pleasure to share the photos about my trip. -Have a nice day.
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Nice Pictures and nice gelato. I did an Italy trip a few years back and that became our obsession in Venice, Florence and Rome – gelato
Gelato is the best…hot day, cold day, morning, noon, or night. It doesn’t matter. It’s delicious any time.
Look at those little girls!! They look like three scoops of gelato them-sweet-selves!! LOVE it.
They are cuties, aren’t they.
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