BVLGARI Hotels IL Gelato by Forbes Top 25 Chef Niko Romito—Travel Notes

Back by popular demand, is our 1966 Magazine Travel Notes. Where we feature interesting jet-setter locales, attractions and restaurants that will make your trip even more exciting and unforgettable! This week we are highlighting the delicious BVLGARI Hotels IL Gelato by Forbes Top 25 Chef Niko Romito.

First of all, a little history. Gelato did not travel to Italy, it was invented there! According to the International Food and Wine Society,

“Gelato literally means “frozen” in Italian, and the term applies to a wide range of sweet frozen treats. The term includes dairy-based gelato made with milk rather than the cream which is used in the American “ice cream,” as well as fruit-based “sorbetto” which contains no dairy. Gelato can be in “semifreddo” form (a piled-high semi-frozen, mousse-like confection), or as granita (a granular, loosely-textured, non-dairy treat), and even as frozen yoghurt. Often, all of these will be offered side by side in a Roman “gelateria.”

As early as 3000 BC, Asian peoples consumed crushed ice with flavorings. Centuries later we have documentation that Egyptian pharaohs and Roman emperors enjoyed cups of ice sweetened with fruit juice. Sicily and southern Italy have a long tradition of blending crushed fruit and freezing it using ice and snow stored in underground caverns, while the Dolomite regions of Italy used stored snow from the nearby Alps to make confections with combinations of milk, cream, sugar, eggs, and natural flavorings. The Florentine Medici Family served frozen desserts during banquets. They introduced a sorbet-like dessert to France when Caterina de Medici had it prepared for her wedding in 1533 to the future King of France. That same Medici family employed Bernardo Buontalenti in the late 1500s to prepare a specialdessert for the visiting King of…