TEN YEARS, BABY!

Guys, I hafta say. It's with overwhelming pride that today we celebrate 13th Street's TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY! And because restaurant years are kind of like dog years, this is a seriously big deal. Come see us, come celebrate with us, come share your stories and memories with us. We have gotten here today with the help and love and support of all of you. Could never have done it without you. Gonna get all emotional, so just listen to birthday songs. xoxoxoxo, All of us, to all of you.

Global Warming = Perfect Excuse for Awesome Gelato!!!

While today was slightly cooler, I can't seem to get in the mood...the mood for Christmas, that is. When I think of Christmases past, memories of snow, snow fights, snow men, and other absurd and ludicrous winter activities come to mind.

This year, however (much like last), seems a bit out of pocket. Warmer weather and fall leaves still clinging to the boughs of trees gives way to worries that maybe there is something to this whole "global warming" thing...or perhaps as per the Mayans, the world might just end!

My resolution: love life, enjoy gelato and let the chips fall where they may. And at the end of the day, isn't this mild winter a great justification to enjoy the best gelato in the world?

And if you need some help getting in the holiday mood there are some amazing Christmas-centric flavors lurking about like egg nog, chocolate mint and coming soon King Leo Stracciatella! (Italian chocolate chip with the best peppermint candy we could find.)

And if the Mayans and the homeless man on the corner are correct and we all go out in a blaze of glory on the 21st, it's been a fun ride. Don't forget to drop by and get one last pint of your favorite.

The holidays are coming fast!

We are dashing through the Holiday season.  Today is about mid-way through Hanukah and exactly two weeks until Christmas.  If you are like me then you can’t possibly squeeze enough Holiday activities between Thanksgiving and New Years. 

What am I doing tonight? Baking cookies and watching White Christmas!  Tomorrow?  My annual Philly Christmas tour with my beautiful mother where we do all the silly holiday things in Center City and have a few spirited beverages along the way.  This includes the Christmas Village in Love Park, Macy’s Light Show, Comcast LED Holiday Spectacular.   We’ll also be going to all my favorite shops on 13^th Street.   Steve at Duross and Langel has me hooked on these little beauties that need to be gifted to many people I love.  Of course, no holiday fun day is complete without checking out the seasonal selections at Capogiro.

 

Next week I’ll probably take a drive down to South Philly to see all the festively decorated neighborhoods and have dinner at a restaurant with a fireplace like Beau-monde.  I hope to get together with friends for some wassailing about the town next weekend. 

So, if you need more ideas about what to do to get into the holiday spirit, come talk to me.  I’ll make you a cappuccino and put some Bing Crosby on Pandora.

-Melissa

We're pretty happily not the only awesomeness in town, you know.

You know...we try to be pretty humble. We really do love the food that we serve, and we take real pride in it. For me it really comes down to the milk we use for our gelato. SERIOUS milk, that. If you know from food, our milk checks off so many of the things that really matter: grass-fed cows, no hormones or antibiotics, super fresh and local from our friends just up the road at Wholesome Dairy. And it shows in some really interesting ways--if you've been here for as long as I have, you notice that the color of our Fior di Latte changes throughout the year. It tends to be a bit yellower in the warmer months and a more pure white in the colder months. It's because of the chlorophyll in the grass, don't you know. Warmer months means more sunlight means darker, greener grass, and then that shows up in the color of our gelato. Wicked.

(One second for an inside joke, please.)

But we're hardly the only respectable place to eat around here, and of course Tony Bourdain (who we really do like a whole lot) finally premiered his Philadelphia episode of The Layover this week. It wasn't at all perfect. (Why did he keep calling it "City Center?" And...brother. The Mutter Museum is decidedly NOT in Mantua. Blame it on the interns, it's cool. That's what I'd do, anyway.) 

I'm sort of relieved about the places he DIDN'T mention, though. Don't get me wrong, Marc Vetri is, I'd argue, maybe the number one chef in this town that's not only leading the way on great food for us locally but also really helping Philadelphia get the culinary respect it deserves. But one of the worst things that can happen to your favorite jawn is for it to get so famous that, like Yogi Berra said, no one goes there anymore because it's too crowded.

And Capogiro...we seem really lucky to end up near other amazingly good restaurants. Vintage is just south of Capo13 on 13th Street, and it's just one of those prototypically great places for a glass of wine or three (also a blind date, but that's neither here nor there). More on the topic of actually being a grown-up: I finally did figure out only a couple years ago that white wines are actually just as interesting as reds. Who knew, right? And Vintage pretty reliably has one of my favorite whites--a Vinho Verde from Portugal. Semi-dry and with such a high mineral content it almost seems carbonated. It's also...nearly cheap! I hate to call it cheap. But it's not a budget-breaker--further proof that you don't have to spend a ton of money for good wine. 

But all in all...look. If you found me guilty of all my emotional crimes and sentenced me to eating only one more restaurant meal in this town...man, I'm going to Good Dog. Totally a comfortable walking distance from both Capo20 and Capo13 (and I sure did walk there more than a couple nights after closing!). Solid beer list, really well-done food, great, great crew....when my favorite people come to town, it's where I take them. Which...holy pants can that be a gamble. When one of your best friends comes to town, and she brings someone you don't know, and you take them to your local...Sarah (not that Sarah) is one my favorite people, and she's a traveler. Knows how to absorb local culture without stomping all over it, can get along with most anyone, doesn't get freaked out in a proper city despite being a mostly a small-town girl. But her friend...man. The first thing he did (I'm hesitating a little because I'm still so embarrassed)...you know what's coming. He didn't even look at the menu. Just drawls at the bartender, "Y'all got any Philly cheese steaks here?!" 

Listen. I like cheese steaks. I do! They for sure have their place, and I could go down the whole pantheon of cheese steaks. But...he was that guy. Straight tourist. Actually got into a pretty heated argument with one of the Good Dog bartenders, exclaiming that there isn't any real difference between bourbon and whiskey and you're obviously a terrible bartender it you think there is, etc, etc. I really was embarrassed. Tipped excessively and conspicuously well and hustled out. Went back (alone, though at the same time during the week), apologized profusely...and again tipped excessively well. 

Anyway. I got rambling there. Blah, blah, blah, Philly's a great restaurant town...you know that. You're probably reading this within a four mile radius of me and you've probably got you're own favorite haunts that you'd rather not tell anyone about. But if you haven't gone to Good Dog or Vintage yet, you really, really should. Just....just don't ask for a cheese steak, man. C'mon. You know better than that.

(Yeah. I'm drinkin' deep of the HomerAde today.)

Ancient Pomegranate

People have been eating and cultivating pomegranate for about as long as history can remember.  They originate from the Middle East and are a staple of many different cultures cuisine from Iraq, Iran, China, India, and Pakistan all the way to Mexico.

The French word for Pomegranate is grenade.  Soldier noticed the similar shape of the small explosives they they were issued and thus the common name we all know stuck.  Grenadine syrup used to make Shirley Temples at a bar is sweetened and thickened Pomegranate juice also deriving it's name from the French term.

In Japan and Korea it can also be found used in Bonsai as the twisted trunks and ornate blossoms are very desirable.

In India it is frequently used in medicine for treatments ranging from indigestion, tonic for the heart and throat, nose bleeds, and even sagging breasts.  

In the west Pomegranate juice has been found to be rich in antioxidants which in addition to it's sweet and slightly bitter/astringent taste have brought about it's popularity in recent years.

All of these uses aside we love to make a delicious Sorbetto out of our pomegranates.  Sweet and tangy and slightly tart it is a perfect compliment to our Cioccolato Scuro or paired with almost any of our fruit flavors.  I have even seen a number of people ordering it as an Affogato with espresso poured over the top a few times.

If you haven't yet stop by and give it a try.  If you have never had pomegranate before we can give you a great introduction to a long eaten and widely enjoyed fruit rich in history, flavor, and antioxidants.

Taste the frozen rainbow!

cranberry apple cashew quince seville oranges Everyone's got their favorite gelato season, for sure. It's hard not to love the summer, when we're rolling in wicked fresh local melons. For some folk, strawberries probably qualify as their very own season--maybe for blood oranges as well. These days though, we're probably just past the point where we're loving the local squashes--meaning that the zucca and acorn squash are probably off to bed until next fall. "But it's still fall!" I hear you saying. I know, I know. But we're super-dependent on the harvest cycles for our local produce, which is why some years we only have strawberry sorbetto for approximately 17 minutes. But! Myself, I've been loving our cranberry-apple sorbetto.

(And HOLY COW it's only now that I'm realizing that I got NO cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving! NONE! Being the only restaurant professional in a family means that when Thanksgiving dinner goes sideways and needs rescuing, the burden falls on you. Annnnd...sometimes you don't even really get to sit for dinner. The older I get, the more empathy I have for my mother).

Sorry! Got off on a tangent there. Perhaps even a bit of a rant. But you've really got to try the cranberry-apple sorbetto if you haven't. If you only know cranberries from the (obligatory--nay, essential) can-shaped wiggling mass on our Thanksgiving tables or as a "juice cocktail" or whatever, you really should branch out. I promise the one, most notable, most widely known cranberry company who shall here remain nameless is NOT the final arbiter of what we're all allowed to do with cranberries.

And we're positively LOUSY with quince (quinces? dunno...) right now! For the uninitiated, quince(s) is (are) a vague relation of apples and pears, so it's got that familiar snap to it but also a really appreciable funk or earthiness. Funk is good in food! I like the low end. We should talk about the proper way to sauce a pig's ear sometime.

And it's cold out, so we all know that the blood oranges can't be far off. Best color of any sorbetto, you ask me. Well, maybe pomegranate, which we've also got these days. Can't wait to satisfy your odder orange obsession, though? There's always the Seville oranges for you. As a sorbetto they're super tart, a little bitter, right tasty and, before we get our paws on it, a notably ugly (not ugli) fruit. Seriously, I'm not posting a picture of a Seville orange. They're not photogenic at all.

What I'm saying is that we've for sure got some tasty sorbetti for you, if you happened to be fretting that it's cold out and we wouldn't be able to find any awesome fruit. C'mon, man! This is what we do! We're experts at finding awesome.
 

It's beginning to look alot like...

Cooler temperatures have ushered in short days, brisk wind,  ugly Christmas sweaters and most importantly amazing palate enticing gelato flavors! Oh as well as amazing candy c/o Shane's confectionery.

And for an added bonus around 20th street a combination of mother nature, gravity, and unknown forces (Aliens?) have led to the spontaneous combustion of a few panes of out  gelato case glass. Which needless to say has turned a few heads.....a majority of whom have complemented on the abstract and seemingly ice like appearance noting that it blended in with the Christmas decorations. So while scramble to find replacement glass, we can at least play it cool through the winter, however worry not! Being that it is double pane the delicious contents of the case are completely safe for enjoyment!

A few things worth noting!

While the main event is always the rotating, awe inspiring gelato this month in particular we have  spectacular supporting cast. Large in part due to our teaming up with Shane's Confections from old city. So while perusing for gifts, stocking stuffer, or guilty pleasures drop by for all the classics: candy canes, chocolate covered espresso beans, almond bark and even clear candy toys produced in 100 year old locally made molds in a plethora of unique shapes and sizes! Clear candy toys...for us non-locals are a Pennsylvania-German tradition dating back to the 1800's, and resurrected by these intensely artisan confectioners!

More over there are some great and truly special gelato flavors surfacing...not the least of which being Seville Orange and Egg Nog.

All of that to  say I hope you're all having a great start to the holiday season! Thanks for your support and we look forward to seeing your smiling faces soon!

A rant about why asking me my favorite flavor is a BAD idea.

OK you asked for it! Well, when I was just a fangirl and not an employee it was Thai Coconut Milk. I
LOVE all things coconut. Paired with Amaretto, it’s as good as an Almond Joy bar times 1,000. But since
we have it every day and I’m here five days a week, Thai Coconut is just too available. I sideline it like
that sweet nerdy boy in class who instantly disappears next to that dream boat hipster boy artist.

But today is November 25 and it’s getting COLD outside. Warm me up with Saigon Cinnamon. On the
other hand, take me to a warm paradise and give me some Caribbean Sunrise Papaya!

I’m never as truly happy as when we have Sweet Potato Praline.

And my man was singing showtunes in the shower this morning while I was sleeping (I HATE ‘Cats’) and
and relationship strife can only be cured with chocolate. Give me Cioccolato Scuro NOW!

Anything with herbs is DIVINE and very well may lead to enlightenment. I consider myself a spiritual
person so maybe Pineapple Mint is my favorite?

-Melissa

Gobble Gobble!

It's the busiest travel week of the year in the US and everyone is rushing back to wherever home or their hearts are at to visit loved ones and share a wonderful meal of tranquillizer laced (naturally of course) bird, cranberry sauce, pie, squash, wine, and every family favorite you could ever dream of.

We here at Capogiro are also quite excited to go see our loved ones as Thanksgiving is one of the few and very special days when we will not be behind the counter slinging you tasty treats but at home with our loved ones.  Eating of course....and probably drinking a little bit too.

I had a pre-Thanksgiving diner party at my house this past Sunday and it was amazing.  I think we have enough mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, turkey stock (the bird itself has flown the coop due to a horde of hungry friends :-) and desserts to last us through the Mayan doomsday.

All I think myself or anyone else here has on their mind this week is food.  I think that might be one of the best things about this holiday.  It's all about having good company and sharing delicious food!  And Autumn is such a perfect season for food.

I could go on and on and I have a bad tendency to ramble.

We have some great new flavors rolling in now.  We have Pomegranate, Egg Nog, and today I even spotted some Persimmons in the kitchen today.  So even after Thanksgiving we will keep the wave of seasonal flavors rolling all through the holidays and the rest of the winter.

Happy and Safe Holidays to everyone.  Please travel carefully and safely.  And don't forget to stop by tomorrow for your Thanksgiving dessert pints.  Gelato is so much better than ice cream on warm Apple Pie (and half the fat so you can eat more pie!)

So it's Beaujolais Day. Should we care?

It's the third Thursday in November--you knew that, right? Every year on this day, the new harvest from the Beaujolais region is uncorked all over the place, giving people their first chance to taste the new vintage.

Thing is, though...it seems like it's mostly a marketing ploy, but one that's been successful. I'm hardly a wine expert--seriously. I mean, if you stick a pinot noir and a pinot grigio in front of me, I can (probably) figure out which one is which pretty quickly, but it'll take me a hot minute.

I'm kidding, of course. Learning about wine goes hand in hand with learning about what makes food real and what makes food...something else. Honestly it probably has as much to do with growing into an adult as anything. Everyone starts off drinking all the vodka from the parents' liquor cabinet in high school because it mixes easily with sweet, fruity stuff and doesn't really taste like much at all. It isn't until later that we figure out that gin is awesome. Gin is where it's at, but when you're a kid you think it smells weird and gross. And why would you mix it with olive juice, anyway?! GROSS, MOM! (BRB, need a scandalously dirty martini.)

It's the same thing with wine. We start off thinking that we're the badasses on the block because we're down to drink jug wine out of a jelly jar. (Well, I mean. That's how we did a while ago. These days I think it's more about putting a bag of box wine in your Camelbak and going to a generic, over-marketed EDM festival in a football stadium where the DJs all have really, really bad hair. MAN I'm glad I've grown up.) Then, unless you actually had reasonably cool parents with a certain degree of taste, some time after your 21st birthday you actually taste wine that came from a bottle with a cork. And you think, "Hey. This doesn't taste so bad that I want to drink it on ice! Wine can taste like this? Who knew?!"

I think that's about when most of us discover Beaujolais--that's when my friends and I did, anyway. We were all waiting tables together and having far more fun than was called for after we closed our restaurant every day. And for one reason or another I ended up hosting the <restaurant name redacted> family Thanksgiving. It was a notoriously good time. SO MUCH Louis Jadot Beaujolais was drunk that day--for one thing, beaujolais does really go well with turkey. For another, it was the first real wine we knew and liked. It was a great time, and my clearest lasting memory (not a lot of them are that clear, really) is of my girlfriend reaching across the table, yanking off one of the turkey breasts with her bare hand, and gnawing contentedly away. This didn't strike any of us as at all odd. On one hand, we all knew Jess, and this was totally within her character. On the other hand...did I mention there was a lot of beaujolais?

Well. Now I've gone and made myself pretty nostalgic. Wine and telling stories will do that to you! I think I actually would go out tonight to one of my favorite wino-friendly establishments and have a couple of glasses, but my achilles tendon is ferociously angry with me. (Sarah says that running is the devil's work. Maybe she's right, man. Maybe she's right.) But I'm pretty sure that any beaujolais will be just as good tomorrow, or even sometime in December. And we're coming up to Thanksgiving, which is THE time to drink wine with your family, slip a little wine to your nieces and nephews, make new stories.

Who knew? Even writing about wine can make you a little wistful.