Your last stop for food trend prognostication

I didn't get the chance to do any top ten/best of lists covering 2013, so it seems required that, like every other food blogger in the universe, I go ahead and post my list of hot/not trends for the coming year.

What's hot: fried chicken. So many people think that the fried chicken moment is over for the nation. These people are wrong, because fried chicken is awesome and will continue to be so. I'm counting the days until baseball returns for a lot of reasons, but high on that list is so that I can eat FedNuts in the sunshine and watch JRoll hobble around the infield.

What's not: waiting in long lines for over-priced, "ground-breaking" food (looking at you, cronut) mostly so that you can instagram it (also over: instagramming your food) and, as a consequence, satisfy some narcissistic chef's ego.

What's hot: cheese, particularly if it gets runny at room temperature, has the word "stinking" in its name somewhere, and makes your TGIMcFunsterBees-eating friends uncomfortable.

What's not: this weird obsession you all have with mushrooms. Seriously, they're fleshy, spore-bearing, fruiting bodies that grow ON their food. Put like that they don't sound so tasty, do they? No, they don't. Because they have all the textural delights of decomposing tree bark.

What's hot: cashews. The most under-rated star of the nut world. It was the most amazing thing--my sister bought a vegan "cheese" cashew paste to along with the excellent camembert and cheddar we had for snacks over the holidays and you know what? It wasn't terrible! It was actually pretty tasty! I'd even eat it again. Once the camembert's all gone, obviously.

What's not: weird grains. Quinoa, farro, tef...people, only about one in a hundred of you will actually die from eating gluten. I promise. And if you're that one in a hundred, you're already dead and it's no thing. So have a bagel already.

What's hot: my pot roast:

(So nice I'm posting it twice)

What's not: corn syrup and whipped cream-laden abominations masquerading as a "macchiato."

What's hot: cycling shoe covers. Seriously, my toes are froze. Never too early to start picking out gifts for my birthday!

What's not: our iced coffee. Don't get me wrong, we make the best rocket fuel this side of...I don't know, wherever it is that rocket fuel actually gets made. But it's maybe a weebit frosty out there for an iced drink? Maybe go for a red-eye instead?

So there you go. From Philadelphia's foremost food blogger, your (debatably) food-related trends to watch out for in the coming year. You're welcome!

A Limerick

There once was a scoop of Gelato

It asked to be called Affogato

Although, this request did seem bossy

I reluctantly added some coffee

How the scoop learned to talk, I do not know!

Happy new year everyone! Come get an Affogato or Ill write more bad poems!

Holiday Gift Ideas from Capo13

Happy frantic shopping week everybody!! Philly streets are a bustling with holiday shoppers from the burbs, tourists, and locals looking for the perfect presents for friends, family, and co workers.  Are you a clueless christmas shopper?  Why not a Capogiro gift card??  If your giftee doesn't drink our piping hot, delicious coffee, we have tea!!  If they don't drink liquid, we have panini's, cookies, cakes, and snacks!!  And if they don't like any of those things, they will undoubtedly love our gelato and sorbetto.  So no matter what they like, a Capogiro giftcard is the answer.  The best news is that they come in any denomination, so you can buy your co worker a cup of coffee, or coffee for the year!  We also have an awesome assortment of holiday candies, like candy canes, caramels, and biscotti for stocking stuffers or Christmas eve snacks.

If you are planning to bring gelato for any christmas events BEWARE THAT WE ARE CLOSED ON CHRISTMAS and have shortened hours on christmas eve so all the baristi can have dinner with their families too!  So be sure to swing by earlier this week to pick up some pints.

As we close out this wonderful 2013 year, you can expect the anticipated arrival of blood orange sorbetto, one of our most craved flavors throughout the year.


Here are some lovely chrismas carols from southpark!!


<3 Tori Styner

Soup! Isn't it just THE BEST?!

(Don't believe him for a second, he only came around to soup ten minutes ago. Also he has a weird penchant for talking about himself in the third person when he's essentially in a room alone, which makes him a fairly unreliable narrator.)

So this is what my usual work dinner looks like when I'm actually committed to my desk for a while:

Granted if I had a cardiologist he'd maybe scold me a bit for a fairly high-sodium meal, but A>we're baristi and we tend to eat on the fly a lot, and this meal lends itself to that and B>I eat a lot more spinach than you might think and feel I deserve some commendation for that. And even though today in particular was palpably warmer than it's been for the last few weeks, I had a bunch of errands to run and we had a managers' meeting and I was on the bike enough to actually catch a chill (don't believe that either, I actually never admit to being cold).

And what's better for warming up than soup? Probably nothing. Alright well, whiskey and a bonfire, but I'm a professional and I also can't in good conscience light a bonfire in the Radian plaza. So, soup. That's our chicken and meatball, which is standing me in good stead. And we do always have a vegetarian soup option if you're into that sort of thing, though I don't really know why you would be (kidding, kidding, the vegetarian soups are legitimately great). So seriously, come have soup! You're going to be finishing up your shopping over the next few days and generally out and about and harried, so. I've mentioned before that we have beer, right? Pretty sure I have.

It is true though that, alas, we're going to be sorta semi-dormant at CapoPenn for the next few weeks. Not that we're shuttering altogether! We're just gonna be open a few less hours every day starting tomorrow is all (and closed altogether Christmas Day, of course). But we WILL be here! 9am-9pm weekdays and 9am-10pm Fridays and Saturdays. So seriously, come on in and keep us company. I'm surpassingly confident you'll find a seat.

Alrightalrightalright. ONE CHRISTMAS SONG. ONE ONLY.


Humbug anyway. (Have a good holiday, y'all. Really.)

It's Crunch Time for Gift buying!

If you're like me, then you need the pressure of "last minute" as motivation to finally choose and seek out gifts for your loved ones and gift-worthy acquaintances.  And if, like me, you also have enough "stuff" and enjoy gifts that are consumable (i.e. things that never sit around long), food is always a good way to go. To that effect, Capogiro has some great (read: delicious) last-minute gifts.  An 8 oz. bag of Gilda's Biscotti is a must in every Philly local food gift basket I make. The Dad's Midnight Stash variety is great because it includes all their flavors.  Each bite is a delicious surprise!

We carefully curate our candy selection to have the most unique and delicious treats.  A lot of these items make great stockings stuffers!  These include Colts Bolts, real Italian Hazelnut chocolates from La Suissa, Philly Love Bars, Hammond Candy Canes in cool flavors like Apple Pie, and much, much more!  

Or there's always the easy peasy but always pleasy gift card!  

It's a little too late to ship pints through our website, but we hand-pack pints in all stores that can be packed with ice for travel.  Our gelato is always a hit at holiday parties!  

Everything new is old again

So, it's true that come this time of year we have to look a little further afield to find the kind of ingredients for our gelato that are going to appropriately distance us from those indolent layabouts offering only the same thirty-some flavors all year long. Certainly, given that the holiday season is in full swing, it's wholly necessary that we have King Leo mint stracciatella in circulation. Candied chestnuts are floating around like chewy little...nuts or something, I kinda lost the train of that metaphor between stations.

And medjool dates are back, which is great because it allows for two things: me eating dates and also me sharing this video:



Because if you're anything like me, this was the first time you'd heard anything about dates other than as a way to tell where on the calendar you were. Also I'm guessing a lot of you had forgotten that Gimli used to hang out with Indy...and was approximately three feet taller, but let's move on before this whole bit also stretches too thin, like a gauzy filament made of...candied chestnuts, maybe? Nono, soft peppermints. That's the stuff!

Not that our staples have gone anywhere--the orange cardamom sorbetto is holding strong. And it's funny, sort of in the same way I never knew what dates were beyond the scene above, the only thing I knew about cardamom is that Woody used a really particular kind of cardamom (we've moved onto Cheers, if you got lost there) for entering his bloody mary into a Boston best of competition...and didn't it end up getting confused with someone's ashes? Or sneezed into with powdery explosive effect? Or something equally hi-larious? I dunno, I stopped watching Cheers like a decade ago. And as hard as I tried to find a clip of the bloody mary scene I couldn't, so we're going to have to just roll with this one instead, which I think also serves nicely as the traditional music-video-play-out...



I'm here all week! Don't forget to tip your barista! Try the veal or, failing that, the soup!

Cookies: A marvel of Human Scrumptionuity

I was reading about how to make the perfect cookie at NPR's site yesterday: Cookie-baking Chemistry
A good read but who needs it when Brooke is making perfect cookies at Capogiro now! When she's not barista at 20th St, she'll be baking for Capogiro and you've got to try her stuff.  Cookies and brownies are in stores now and more stuff will be rolling out in the next couple weeks.

Stay tuned for more!   

Greetings from 6, 7 & 8

Gabi, Melissa & Jessica of CapoYunk!

Two of our wonderful regulars, Dave Christopher & Kate Mellina, have fashioned their East Passyunk ave. home into a greeting card. Dave's artistic background has lent to crafting these 26 (or more counting dogs!) well-lit portraits of their neighbors in the windows of their building across from the singing fountain.


Read more about it here

Happy Holidays, Dave & Kate! ♥ 

[Popeye joke goes here]

Right so. Maybe this is one of those things that everyone else can keep straight and it's only me getting confused. Totally wouldn't be the first time. But I pretty constantly heard the terms "sweet potato" and "yam" used interchangeably when I was just a wee little barista, and I took it for granted for a good while that they were indeed the same thing.

And it's a more relevant discussion this time of year since it seems like this is when sweet potatoes are kind of everywhere, given its status as a go-to side dish for holiday gatherings. I read cooking blogs and food blogs a lot, naturally. And there was a lot of discussion this year about how essential the archetypal sweet potato casserole and, given how strongly people feel about what constitutes a "proper" holiday feast, there were some strong opinions on both sides. Proponents feel that this:

must at all costs be a part of essentially every meal between approximately Halloween and New Years Day. Gotta admit though...to me that looks like a horror show of sugar. Granted I don't have much of a sweet tooth, but there have definitely been some vehement familial disagreements--sometimes not particularly genial--during meal planning discussions. 

Would it aid things at all to swap the sweet potatoes out for yams? Probably not; they're not actually very interchangeable, culinarily. Yams are far starchier and drier (and, you ask me, lacking in flavor) Yams also have far less beta carotene than sweet potatoes, if that's important to you. Though maybe yams make for better french fries? Suddenly I'm super-curious. 

Of course, the best application of sweet potatoes (the real ones) is probably our sweet potato pecan praline gelato. Tastes as good as it looks, it does:

So y'know. We're always here. C'mon in!

The 12 Days of Capogiro

The 12 Days of Capogiro
by Tori Styner

On the first day of Christmas
my barista served to mee
a sample of cranberry

On the second day of Christmas
my barista served to me
2 shots of espresso
and a sample of cranberry

On the third day of Christmas
my barista served to me
3 Macchiato
2 shots of espresso
and a sample of cranberry

On the fourth day of Christmas
my barista served to me
4 Candy Canes
3 Macchiato
2 shots of espresso
and a sample of cranberry

On the fifth day of Christmas
my barista served to me
5  Grande Gelatooooo
4  Candy Canes
3 Macchiato
2 shots of espresso
and a sample of cranberry

On the sixth day of Christmas
my barista served to me
6 tries of Scuro
5  Grande Gelatooooo
4  Candy Canes
3 Macchiato
2 shots of espresso
and a sample of cranberry

On the seventh day of Christmas
my barista served to me
7 Gelato con Brioche
6 tries of Scuro
5  Grande Gelatooooo
4  Candy Canes
3 Macchiato
2 shots of espresso
and a sample of cranberry

On the eighth day of Christmas
my barista served to me
8 Skinny Latte's
7 Gelato con Brioche
6 tries of Scuro
5 Grande Gelato
4 Candy Canes
3 Macchiato
2 shots of espresso
and a sample of cranberry

On the ninth day of Christmas
my barista served to me
9 Apple Ciders
8 Skinny Latte's
7 Gelato con Brioche
6 tries of Scuro
5 Grande Gelato
4 Candy Canes
3 Macchiato
2 shots of espresso
and a sample of cranberry

On the tenth day of Christmas
my barista served to me
10 licks of Lychee
9 Apple Ciders
8 Skinny Latte's
7 Gelato con Brioche
6 tries of Scuro
5 Grande Gelato
4 Candy Canes
3 Macchiato
2 shots of espresso
and a sample of cranberry

On the eleventh day of Christmas
my barista served to me
11 Pumpkin piccolo's
10 licks of Lychee
9 Apple Ciders
8 Skinny Latte's
7 Gelato con Brioche
6 tries of Scuro
5 Grande Gelato
4 Candy Canes
3 Macchiato
2 shots of espresso
and a sample of cranberry

On the twelfth day of Christmas
my barista served to me
12 dips of Dulce
11 Pumpkin piccolo's
10 licks of Lychee
9 Apple Ciders
8 Skinny Latte's
7 Gelato con Brioche
6 tries of Scuro
5 Grande Gelato
4 Candy Canes
3 Macchiato
2 shots of espresso
and a sample of cranberry

::)