Daniel Mielniczuk and Pepe Curci, 23-year-old purveyors of “artisanal Argentine ice cream,” should be forgiven the untimely opening of the Penguin. This far north, August is not a strategic month to open an ice cream parlor. You might get ahead during the dog days, but before long even the dogged paleteros will be running in from the cold. But in Buenos Aires, where the month heralds the start of spring, they make gelato–helado, that is–the way the Italians intended, and it’s nothing like the airy blobs of butterfat northerners call ice cream.
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Soccer chums since adolescence, at 13 the two landed jobs at a Buenos Aires heladeria called Venezia, owned by a man whose family emigrated from that canaled city and who has been churning the stuff for over 20 years. Argentina’s sizable Italian population is responsible for its fidelity to old-world recipes that call for very little fat and produce the intense, eyeball-rolling flavors and dense textures that make Haagen-Dazs seem vulgar.
While not purists–the milk is powdered, the vanilla artificial–Curci and Mielniczuk make helado that is nonetheless enlightening. Chocolate, cherry, and caramel rarely taste so unpolluted, and the eggy, Marsala-spiked zambayon is a confounding pleasure. In the spirit of diversification, they also make pizza, but the 18 flavors of helado take priority.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Dorothy Perry.
