What a weird, awesome little fruit!

If you spend long enough working in restaurants or cafes, there's bound to be an ingredient that you handle all the time that you didn't know much about. For me, avocados fall square into that description. For one thing, I'm a little embarrassed at how recently it was that I discovered that it's "avocado," not "advocado."  Weird linguistic quirk more than anything, I guess.

And there are so many gadgets associated with avocados! I mean, look at this thing:

I truly don't understand what you'd do with two thirds of it. The little vanes on the right, sure. I can see how you're maybe too lazy to just use a regular knife--even a butter knife would do. But then why do you need a weird, dull little blade on the other end? And what's with the donut hole?

Seriously, you can disassemble an avocado using...pretty much anything. I mean, myself I bust through them quickest with my chef's knife, but I pretty much always see people cringe when I thunk the blade into the pit. "You're sending an enormous knife careening toward the palm of your hand!!" It's ok. I got this. I'm a professional. Working in a Mexican restaurant, you learn pretty quickly how to plow through a case of avocados to make guacamole. (In the interest of reader safety, you can always put a kitchen towel between the avocado you're attempting to de-pit and the hand holding the fruit.)

And remember that an avocado (well, the tree is technically what we're referring to when you say "avocado," but we all know where we're at) really is a fruit! It's got a seed on the inside and it forms from the flower. Really guacamole is probably the result of a tomato and an avocado bonding at an otherwise super-lame party about constantly being mis-identified as vegetables.

So yeah, for a place that leans pretty far to the Italian side of the spectrum, we sure do love avocados. Never mind a pumpernickel bagel with tomato and avocado (breakfast of champions, that) or a grilled cheese panini on focaccia with provolone and avocado...you HAVE had our avocado sorbetto, right? It's maybe one of the more infrequent flavors we feature, but it's another along the lines of tahini gelato or cactus pear sorbetto--something you're not going to find at places that limit themselves to just 31 flavors.

So! Avocados: awesome and creamy and delicious and good for you. We're happy to be your go-to avocado advocates.

Tattoo Flash

You really love us? Do you really really love us? Show me the ink!

A Capogiro knuckle tat perhaps? 

Don't make me give you a knuckle ice-cream sandwich!

Math is tough

So, like most of us here at Capogiro, I had a liberal arts education. Although I wouldn't trade my English Comp or History of Cheese classes for the world, going to liberal arts college has left me lacking in math skills. I've been considering going to graduate school at some point, so I've decided to take the GRE. Studying for the GRE is like a nightmare. Just when I get super confident at my vast knowledge of polysyllabic words, there comes the math section to smack me in the face and remind me of the staggering phthisis of my cerebellum. That being said, I want you all to share my pain. Here are a couple of Capogiro-related math problems for you to scratch your heads at. I will buy a tall frosty beer to the first person who leaves the correct answers in the comment section below. 

1. Jill wants to get a medio cup with three scoops. She has narrowed down her flavor options to five of her favorite sorbettos, one of which is raspberry. What are the odds that if she tells the barista to scoop three out of her five choices that she will receive a cup with at least one scoop of raspberry sorbetto?

2. 14 women and 10 men come into Capogiro for an after work office treat. Two of them decide that they don't want gelato, and opt for espresso instead. What is the likelihood that these two people are women?

3. A piccolo cup has two scoops of gelato with two different flavors. Out of all of the 27 flavors at 20th Street, five contain nuts. What are the odds of a customer getting a piccolo that doesn't contain any nuts?

Thanks for the photo, Sarah!

Every day is National Gelato Day when you're the best in the world.

Listen, I really do try to keep things fun and positive 'round these parts, but today I'm pulling out my rant-box.

It's time to get over National [bloody whatever] Holiday.

Do you REALLY need a suggestion to eat a particular food on any given day? It's like walking into a restaurant, ignoring the menu, and telling your server, "Just bring me whatever the most popular dish is." If we all relied on popularity as a determinant of quality, then we'd all be listening to Justin Bieber. THE HORROR.

A few particularly egregious examples? Don't mind if I do!

• January is National Bread Machine Baking month. Honestly, people. Making bread without getting a little crust of dough along your cuticles is weird. Play with your food! It's good for the soul. 

• The second week of February is Jell-O Week, and if I knew how to insert one of those little copyright symbols, I apparently should. Is this really anything more than a cynical, transparent attempt at a bump in marketing exposure from the fine folks who have brought us "Oreo Cookies 'n Creme" pudding (always be suspicious of "creme") and "Blackberry Fusion" gelatin (what are the blackberries fused to, inquiring minds want to know?)

• February 23rd: Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day. I've got nothing for this one. Totally flummoxed.

• June is National Candy Month, National Fruit and Vegetable Month, and contains National Doughnut Day. Only several acts of Congress could bring you this kind of mixed messaging. My goal for the next ten months is to complete development of a gummy bear studded bok choy doughnut just to be cantankerous. 

• December 20th: National Sangria Day. The perfect illustration of the wrong-headedness of all of this. It's December. The majority of the country has officially become cold. But let's go ahead and highlight a chilled, fresh fruit infused wine that most people would consider refreshing on a hot summer day. If National Sangria Day is in December, I can only assume that National Mulled Wine Day is in July. 

As best I can tell, there's no National Gelato Day. This is a GOOD thing, I think. Our gelato is perfect all the time. We'll knock your sweaty socks off with raspberry sorbetto in the summer. We'll make you think of the leaves turning in the trees with our zucca gelato in the fall. And the winter? That's when we're all looking out for the blood orange sorbetto, because it is, almost certainly, the best of the best. So come let us give you gelato today. And tomorrow. And a couple of times next week. We love what we make every day, and we genuinely want to share that with you. Come say hi!

Rambutan, scariest of all fruits

Is it an alien? A sea urchin? A porcupine? No, it's RAMBUTAN, a delicious hairy little devil that we love to make into sorbetto. Yay! Rambutans are similar to lychee fruit, which we all know and love. Largely grown in southeast Asia, these weird little dudes are non-climacteric fruits, which means that they only ripen whist hanging from their tree. First cultivated in Malaysia, their name comes from the Malay word for "hair". We thought it came from "scary monster of nightmares" but we googled it and were dead wrong. The flesh of these fruits has a sweet, slightly acidic flavor, and is being prepared as we speak into yummy sorbetto. Come down and try some- if you dare.

Also, today is the first day of concord grape season. SO GOOD!!!!

My Longing for a Dark and Serious Love

During a normal week, you can spot me behind the case at Capogiro13, giving you infinite samples of our delectable gelato.  But this past week I spent not behind the case, but in front of it.  As a last shebang of summer fun, I traveled to NYC with my mom to shop, dine, and explore.  Our trip was nice in the way that we didn’t have much planned, so we were free to wander the streets of NYC and be held mercy to it’s wonders.  What did I find?  Gelato.

Now, I hadn’t previously realized how addicted to Capogiro Gelato I had become.  For those of you who don’t know, employees are allowed and encouraged to try all the flavors every shift.  That’s so we can tell you what’s especially good, what pairs well, and so we can recommend favorites or options.  We at Capogiro like to know our gelato intimately so we can play matchmaker with customers ;)

During my week off from work, a gelato hungry beast rose up inside me. Surprisingly I missed work because I missed the gelato.  But the gelato wasn’t hard to sniff out in New York.  My mother and I were meandering through the curiously aromatic Chinatown, with it’s dried fish and exotic fruit, when we spotted Little Italy up ahead.  We made the transition from dried fish and waving cats to Roman art and camerieri (Italian waiters).  Tucked between each outdoor restaurant, were gelato carts and my fellow gelato servers.  I immediately began sizing Capo’s gelato up to these seemingly authentic Italian creations.  None were as beautifully presented.

I recognized all the basic flavors in most of the carts; Cioccolato, Stracciatella, and Pistacchio, but no cart could stand up to Capo’s variety of flavors.  I stood in front of each case dreaming of Ducle di Leche and Cioccolato Scuro from capo but my yearnings were in vain because no cart had anything that looked as good.  I finally selected some Stracciatella and was very happy, but not completely satisfied because my heart yearned for Scuro.  I will return to work tomorrow at 3, and am really looking forward to reuniting with my much-pined-for-lover, Cioccolato Scuro.

It IS easy being green. (If your cups are made out of cookies)

In the ceaseless effort to "one-up" the bread bowl, Italian coffee company Lavazza commissioned designer Enrique Luis Sardi to create an espresso cup that is also a cookie.  By now, I think most of us are aware of corn or other grain-based plates and cups slowly make a dent in our landfills, and reducing your carbon footprint is the new yoga/pilates/Zumba/breast-feeding in public.  It's one thing to use biodegradable cups and plates and feel good on an unquantifiable New Agey level, but it's quite a more awesomer thing to use gastrodegradable (getting that trademarked) cups that make you feel good in a totally tangible way.

Ernest Hemmingway, Gelato Blogger

Concept shamelessly stolen from McSweeney's.

 

Alice had a sweet tooth so she and Hank and I left the apartment to get gelato. It was raining and my shirt got wet. At the gelato shop we tasted a few things from a guy with thick black glasses and messy hair. Hank said he was a lousy hipster but Alice thought he was kinda good looking so I didn't say much either way. The nectarine tasted very good so I ordered a cup. The guy said I could have two flavors so I decided to get pistachio as well. The other barista was blonde and had tattoos and by the look of her sweater she had at least one cat. I ate the gelato and ordered a single espresso. The espresso was also good but it was hot and burned the tip of my tongue so I spat it out and had to clean it up with a small white napkin. Hank said it was a damned shame. We left and I tried to light a smoke but I couldn't find my matchbook. We went across the street to get a whiskey but the line was too long so we said screw it and went to the zoo instead.

Aye Carambola!

Today we have one of my favorite summer flavors in the shop and I thought I'd find out a bit more about the strange and delicious Starfruit or Carambola.  

We currently have 5-point starfruit though they also come with more points usually 6 or 7.  No matter how many points they come with they are tasty and look awesome.  As a kid I always used to bug my mom to buy them at the grocery store but she never relented.  (Why, Mommy, why?!?)

They are thought to originate from Sri Lanka or Indonesia and are currently cultivated through the Pacific Island and Southeast Asia.  The whole fruit is edible and prepared in many different ways to suit local cuisine.  In Southeast Asia it is frequently stewed with cloves, sugar, and sometimes apples, in China it is frequently cooked with fish, in Australia it may be used as a vegetable, can be pickled, or is made into jam and in Jamaica it is dried as a treat.

Here at Capogiro as with almost any other fruit we can get our hands on we make it into smooth, particularly refreshing sorbetto paired with lime.  It's on my, rather long and ever growing, list of favorites.  For those of drinking age it mixes particularly well with your favorite silver rum.

Health wise Starfruit is loaded with antioxidants, potassium, and Vitamin C.  It is low in sugar, sodium, and has a low acidity.

And to top that all off it can even be used to remove difficult rust stains from clothing!

Happy Birthday, Julia!

We know there's butter in heaven.

The internet is weird.

I mean, for serious. I've got nothing against a good funny kitten picture, and I like a good, snarky blog post as much as anyone. But then...look, just watch this: Chilling. I've never been particularly afflicted with coulrophobia, Stephen King's It is a great book. But man. That guy. Mighta just put me off my cereal.

 If you were ever curious what the intersection between Monty Python and all those cute internet kittens was... "Positively barking," we'll call it. Though I could be mixing my metaphors, or something. Look, we're all for the twisted here at Capogiro (More than you know, maybe...), but sometimes it's good to know that we can keep that twistedness to just our Dulce de Leche or Tiramisu.

 S'hot out. Come on by, the cantaloupe and absinthe is killin' it today.

It's an amazing day for sorbetto...

Raspberry, Nectarine, Yellow Plum, White Peach, Kiwi, Pepino Melon, Lime, Watermelon, Chocolate Sorbetto. Get down here. Seriously, I'm not kidding, this is the best day ever.

3 Life Problems You Can Fix With Gelato

by Tori Styner

PROBLEM:

Your boyfriend dumps you for your best friend since elementary school and admits that he used your whole two-year relationship to get closer to her.  Then your best friend admits she’s been secretly dating him for the past year of your relationship.

SOLUTION?

Dulce de Leche Gelato.  Hey, it’s about half the fat of your standard ice cream, so you better drown your sorrows either in our gelato or in our fat free sorbetto instead of ice cream because let’s face it: he’s not gonna want you and your twenty extra pounds back.  Also, our Dulce de Leche gelato is a VERY good listener.  Your salty tears will mix with it’s caramelly sweetness and make it so good, you’ll forget all about that jerk.  Maybe you’re best friend’s ex bf you’ve always had a thing for will also be drowning his sorrow in gelato ;)

PROBLEM:

Your significant other “hasn’t been in the mood” lately because of stress or other reasons.

SOLUTION?

Cioccolato Scuro Gelato.  Haven’t you ever heard that dark chocolate is an aphrodisiac?  Have you ever met a chocolate darker than our Serious Dark Chocolate aka Cioccolato Scuro??? No you haven’t.  Buy your sweetie a grande and see if that coco will boost her mojo ;)

PROBLEM:

You really pissed somebody off.

 

SOLUTION:

You: “My Bad, here’s some of the world’s finest gelato, or perhaps a gift card for some of the worlds finest gelato because I was afraid the heat from your anger at me would melt it.”

Person You Got Mad: “It’s all good, this gelato is deliciouso!”

-Tori

Candy, for real.

So.. I'm in love with this teen girl online mag. Rookie Mag
And I love Parks and Recreation..
And my favorite of our "British candy" invasion is the Curly Wurly...
And given, candy is delicious...

~FEEL MY SWOON~

Can't blog. Too sad.

I mean, I knew it was coming. We all did. The just weren't getting it together. It was clearly over a couple of weeks ago, and then this past weekend in Atlanta...we'd reached the end. And it was really, really good for a while! Like, the best! Remember the good times, forget about the bad... I just really, really thought Shane Victorino was going to retire in Philadelphia.

 

What an amazing week for sorbetto! Today we have the aforementioned Cactus Pear, as well as Black Mission Fig. These two flavors work so well together, especially when combined with Fior di Latte gelato. In addition to these tasty gems, we also have Yellow Plum and Rhubarb sorbetto! Too bad strawberry season is over, eh? In any case, you must come on down to 20th Street tonight. Come now. Yum!