It's 3 p.m., and according to Ivan Gherardini, Americans everywhere should be gabbing over gelato.
Perhaps a nice vanilla or hazelnut with a demitasse of espresso poured right on top would be good. Or maybe pair a scoop of dark chocolate fudge with a hot cup of coffee.
Relax. Savor the gelato. Visit with friends, and then go about the rest of the day.
"American people have a different speed to life," Gherardini said on a recent afternoon while sitting at a table at Reginella's Italian Ristorante & Pizzeria in Virginia Beach. "In Italy, we eat gelato at this time."
Gelato, pronounced jell-lah-toe, is the Italian word for "ice cream." It contains much less fat and air than American ice cream, has a denser texture and more intense flavor and color. It's like ice cream's leaner, more outgoing cousin.
Gherardini, 58, a native of Tuscany, has been making gelato in Virginia Beach since 2000 using all-natural, local ingredients and family recipes handed down from father to son for three generations.
Today, Gherardini's Gelato churns up small batches of 15 flavors back in the kitchen at Reginella's, including mango, green tea, tiramisu and spumoni with cannoli. He dispatches it to several local restaurants including Reginella's, P.J. Baggan and the Leaping Lizard Cafe in Virginia Beach, Daily Grind Unwind in Portsmouth and Elevation in Norfolk. Steinhilber's, one of Virginia Beach's oldest restaurant, which is owned by his wife, Jeanne, also dishes Gherardini's Gelato.
Customers love it, said Trey Hannah, owner of Elevation, a gift shop on Granby Street that sells a couple hundred scoops of gelato a week in the summer. When Hannah hears about other places that sell "imported" gelato, he laughs. "You aren't going to get a more authentic gelato than from a third-generation gelato maker right here."
There's no mistaking that Gherardini is the real thing. His English is glazed with an Italian accent and heaping forkfuls of Italian vocabulary. He shares the same last name as the woman believed to be pictured in da Vinci's Mona Lisa, and speculates that she might be family.
His gelato, he said, is no less "authentico."
"We have the culture from Italy."
Gherardini uses fresh milk and cream from Yoder's, a dairy in Virginia Beach, and fresh fruit from local farmer's markets, including Five Points Community Farm Market in Norfolk. Even in the winter, his gelato is flavored with local fruits that he stocks up in the freezer.
The dairy and fruit are blended with milk powder and brown sugar and a minimum of white sugar, "because I don't trust the white sugar." He uses the herb stevia in his sugar-free versions. He still turns to Europe for some ingredients such as pistachio butter and dark cocoa, but just like the old days in the Old World, no hormones, no chemical preservatives, emulsifiers or stabilizers find their way into his craft.
One major shift in the process is the mixing machine. Gherardini uses, a $30,000 stainless steel model that churns out 20 quarts in 15 minutes. Robert Rogers III signed on as a sort of gelato apprentice four months ago and mans the machine most of the time, but Gherardini is never far away.
"Every time, taste. Robert, remember," Gherardini said on the recent afternoon while a batch of pistachio churned in the mixer.
"Sometimes I go to check because I am paranoid," he said. "It must be still full of flavor."
Gherardini sells trays of gelato - about 200 scoops each - with a four-tray minimum. He can make a multitude of flavors and textures, and last Friday had his apprentice making an extra-creamy, sugar-free batch for a caterer in Richmond. He has developed a package especially for diabetics that they can make at home.
Gherardini also operates a business that imports coffee and Italian desserts, but 80 percent of his business is gelato. And he offers franchises, but insists that the artisanal quality remain. For example, franchisees must agree to use local dairies.
Gherardini spends more of his time marketing these days. He believes that America is entering an era of gelato. In the 1980s, when he was working as a consultant for West Coast outfits wanting to get into the gelato business, it seemed like gelato was going to take off. But a burgeoning frozen yogurt market melted those dreams.
As evidence of a new heightened popularity, he points to European organizers' decision to hold a major gelato trade show in the States in September. Locally, he has talked to SYSCO Food Services of Hampton Roads Inc., a major food distributor, to get his product to more tables.
And a new gelato restaurant, Melt Gelato & Crepe Cafe, recently opened in Town Center in Virginia Beach.
"Some people, they think that gelato is like Starbuck's," coffee, Gherardini said, adding that that level of popularity could happen to gelato, too.
Meanwhile, he's proud of the charity work that he and Reginella's owner Vincenzo Fusaro do to support diabetes and Alzheimer's research, and he's proud of his product.
"This area is not really booming like San Francisco. I do my part; I want to make the best.
"I hope you like."
Lorraine Eaton, (757) 446-2697, lorraine.eaton@pilotonline.com
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