With only two full days in Milan, I needed a strategy to maximize my gelati intake. The resulting strategy: focus on chocolate and eat as many flavors as possible in one sitting. On my first day, having gotten up before 8 am and powered through Da Vinci's Last Supper and Sant'Ambrogio (including paying homage to his relics, i.e. robed skeleton), I rewarded myself for a productive morning with a visit to Cioccolati Italiani at 10:30 a.m. Pictured above is a cold chocolate (cioccolato freddo) and a degustazione known as la storia del cioccolato. I couldn't eat/drink them all fast enough so I ended up with some soupy bits, but I attacked the best ones first, remaining cold enough to give me brain freeze. The highlight was the 70% Venezuelan chocolate with the 70% or 65% Nicaraguan putting in a decent showing. My least favorite was 45% Papau New Guinea (or some Pacific island), but that was only because it was milk chocolate. I didn't understand the chocolate that was flavored with Sicilian oranges since the orange taste was not discernible, but just as well since I don't like citrus with my chocolate. I'm a bit removed in time now to remember the specific taste, but I do remember after eating all of it that I fell into a happy chocolate stupor daze that persisted longer than the typical happy feeling I experience while and immediately after eating chocolate. It was probably the cumulative effect of all that dark chocolate.
The next evening, I regretted that I had not eaten gelato ALL DAY and decided to have gelato for dinner. I went to Choco Cult and had a scoop of cioccolato peperoncino and a scoop of dark chocolate fondue. The two scoops combined were probably the size of half of my face. I found a park bench and proceeded to do damage control by madly licking the gelati before it melted. It was an interesting combination of savory and sweet and definitely a meal in and of itself. Kind of like if I were to eat at a kosher dairy restaurant...maybe?
Score: 7 types of chocolate gelati in less than 48 hours. Vacation success!
