Gelato elevates ice cream to a new level

Max Jacobson

Wednesday, April 5, 2000 | 9:33 a.m.

Three people stand in front of a futuristic display of Italian ice creams at Cocolini in the Venetian, giggling with anticipation.

There are almost 40 different flavors in this glass-enclosed case, all of them vivid in a rainbow of bright colors. Don't look for many of these exotic flavors -- hazelnut, zabaglione and lychee sorbet, to name three,-- at your local Baskin-Robbins.

You might not guess it, but this ice cream, which is more correctly known by its Italian name, gelato, is a local product. This wonderful gelato is the result of incredible effort, imagination and perseverance from one man, Giovanni Parente.

Parente is a native of Naples, Italy, and he makes his gelato at a specially equipped plant on the corner of Valley View and Viking. His company is called Italcream, Inc., and he has spent years perfecting these products, tasting, tinkering and using his own special brand of alchemy to come up with exact balances of fruit, sugar and other ingredients.

His gelato has smooth, rich texture and delicious, true flavors. We now enjoy the fruits of his labors, quite literally. Pear, apricot, pineapple and cherry are but a few of his mouth watering sorbetto (sorbets), while flavors more commonly associated with Italy, amaretto and cassata and the white espresso, lead the gelato parade.

Like most success stories, this didn't happen overnight. The vigorous, gravely-voiced Parente, whose sandy-colored hair and youthful charm would flatter a much younger man, has been here nearly 40 years. His background is in the restaurant industry. He opened the Candlelight Room at the Flamingo and was a longtime assistant Maitre d' at Dome of the Sea, at the Dunes.

But ever since his early years in America, when he realized that gelato was commercially unavailable in this country, he dreamed of producing it here. So while on a long visit to his native country in 1980 he decided to take a course in gelato making. And when he returned he began to realize his dream. He worked two jobs for years to make it happen, with the help of his German-born wife, Lilo, who works with him to this day, and son, Adriano.

At Italcream, Parente explains how he did it. "Let me explain the difference between ice cream and gelato," he says with a broad, gracious smile. "In order to be classified ice cream in America, a product needs a minimum of 10 percent butterfat. American ice creams also have, in most cases, around a 100 percent overrun (injected air) pumped into them."

Most small production ice creams are made in something called a batch freezer, which holds a limited quantity and where the amount of air intake cannot be controlled. But when Parente makes gelato his bases are frozen in a special machine called a continuous freezer, which runs continually, and takes out the excess air that puffs up a typical American ice cream. That's what gives gelato its dense, irresistible texture.

How he makes the bases is an even better story. In between tastes of his delicious gelati, he pulls out a weather-beaten Italian language book with a title translated as "Science and Technology of Artisan Gelato Making." Then he displays an old can of pre-mix from the Italian company Pernigotti, an extremely expensive import not always available.

"Once I mastered the freezing technology, I realized that I could become a creative artist like gelato producers in Italy," he says. "I also realized that I wasn't satisfied with pre-mixes like the one in this can. And that's when I started experimenting on my own."

He soon realized that this would be no mean feat. "Every fruit has a different acidity, a different sugar content and a different solids content." In order to balance the pre-mixes that Parente has carefully developed, each one has to have a different ratio of sugar to fruit, a process that takes great skill and experience. "I never stop experimenting," he says, modestly.

Parente ultimately made the decision to use natural vegetable oils instead of dairy products in his gelati (with the exception of vanilla, which is made with cream.) "In Italy, they often use eggs and cream. My gelati are cholesterol free and dairy free and my fruit ices are made with pure fruit pulp and fruit juices."

He also makes his own truffle coatings using all natural stabilizers such as pectin and gelatin, which you will find on his array of bonbons and truffles (tartufi.) Chefs here love to special-order bizarre flavors and he welcomes the challenge. He recently made a raspberry merlot gelato for an event, and a cucumber sorbet served as an intermediate course at a special dinner. "I never say no," Parente says.

Back at Cocolini, Parente's partner, Stefano Ripamonte, who owns a gorgeous shop upstairs (Ripa de Monte, which sells Murano glass from Venice and other objets d'art,) has come by to taste. "As you can see, this case, which is made specially in Italy, is tilted on the inside, so that you can see all the gelati as you approach," Ripamonte says. (One amazed patron actually thought that this was a salad bar, from a distance.)

Soon everyone is in gelato heaven, tasting away. The pear ice has one of the purest fruit flavors imaginable, astonishingly true to the fruit. The pale yellow zabaglione tastes a bit like a rich egg nog. Bacio is a blend of chocolate and hazelnut, uncommonly rich and smooth. The apricot ice tastes as if the fruit was just plucked from a tree. The pure flavored cherry ice comes as the biggest shock, because most of us are so used to the taste of artificial wild cherry.

You won't be limited to a cone at Cocolini. During the summer months Cocolini sells a $10 artist's palette of gelati, seven mini-cones with seven different flavors, each one peering out from a hole in a specially constructed palette. There is also the option of having the Stupendo, another $10 extravaganza with multi-scoops of gelato, whipped cream and cherries, inside a chocolate gondola.

Cocolini is in the Food Court inside the Venetian. A scoop is $2.95; two scoops, $3.95; three scoops, $4.95.

If you wish to buy this gelato in bulk, have any questions about the product or want to take home smaller quantities of any of the products, visit the Italcream plant at 3871 S. Valley View Blvd.