Gelato: A feast for the eyes

"Is important that the gelato tastes good, but is also important how to communicate to the people that our gelato is good, our gelato is natural," said Bianchetto.

Gelato is Italian for "frozen" but contrary to popular belief, it's NOT ice cream.

By comparison, gelato is practically a health food, with a mere seven percent fat content - barely a third of that found in ice cream.

Flavour comes from almost any natural ingredient you can imagine.

The exception is a specialty version using alcohol. Sublime - but I wouldn't try driving a car after eating one of these.

Flavored frozen treats were recorded as far back as Mesopotamian times. Gelato as we know it was an indulgence for aristocrats in the 16th century, created by an alchemist named Ruggiero using milk, sugar and eggs.

There are more than 600 recognized flavors. The owners of this gelateria copyrighted six, and named them after their children.

Gelato makers tout their product as "the flagship of 'Made in Italy.'" But the real revolution in the history of gelato was made in America.

In 1903 an Italian immigrant named Vittorio Marchioni filed an application in Washington, D.C., to patent a device to produce an innovation that made gelato accessible to everyone: The ice cream cone.

And then there are wickedly wonderful temptations like the gelato-inspired prose by Tolstoy and Honore de Balzac.

In "Madame Bovary," Gustav Flaubert described a woman eating gelato: "Her eyes half-closed, the spoon between her teeth ..."

And if you think that's too sensual an image for a frozen food, you've never had real gelato.