A taste of Rome in LA
Roman-born Leo Bulgarini calls himself a terrible businessman. His gelato is relatively expensive. He offers only a dozen carefully curated flavors at a time. Use of preservatives is out of the question. But what might be bad for the bottom line is transcendent for the palate. Lucky is he who stumbles upon Bulgarini’s nondescript storefront.
You don’t need a discriminating palate to sense deep in your soul that a bite of this frozen delicacy is like eating a mouthful of wonder. Why? Because Bulgarini cares deeply enough to use real ingredients of the highest quality and takes lots of time to create his sorbets and gelato. Macerated plum peels are cured for five to six days before being transformed into an intensely flavored sorbet that tastes like plum times ten. In the summer, there might be four varieties of peach available, each one made with a different type of the fruit. For the pistachio gelato, only Sicilian nuts are used. Bulgarini mashes them into a thick, mossy-green-colored butter, and that is what you’re consuming with every lick of the dense, rich, sweet chilled confection. His macadamia-nut gelato? He travels to Hawaii once a year and visits a farmer who dries his nuts with a standard room fan. Bulgarini says it’s the only way to ensure that no mold grows on the nuts.
Info
Address 749 E Altadena Drive, Altadena, CA 91001, +1 626.791.6174, www.bulgarinigelato.com, info@bulgarinigelato.com | Getting there Free on-site lot | Hours Wed–Thu 12pm–10pm, Fri 11am–11:30pm, Sat 10am–11:30pm, Sun 12pm–10pm| Tip A visit to Bulgarini is a fitting reward for completing the nearby hike to the ruins of the Echo Mountain Resort (see p. 68).
When he and his wife were touring Europe for two years learning how to make pastries, they visited Sicily. There, Bulgarini found that the gelato at all the shops tasted the same because most of the essential flavors were premade by a company and preserved with citric acid. Influenced by his restaurant-owning uncle, who crafted three delicious gelatos by hand, for Bulgarini there was no other option but to take the hard way out.
The location of this hidden treasure, in a seemingly deserted strip mall in a non-touristy area of the city, makes the discovery of it that much more miraculous.
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