Gelato is a staple of the Florencian economy (for the whole Italian economy for that fact). In some circles it is probably considered its own food source on the food pyramid. With just about every shop on every corner selling gelato, how can discerning taste buds pick out the best tasting of the lot. In a never-ending effort to educate all who are following our trek across Europe, we decided to conduct our own (admittedly unscientific) research on this very hot (...actually cold to be precise) topic. We surveyed Florencian after Florencian that we met, as to what they felt was the best tasting gelato in their city. Three names consistently came up; Percheno, Grom, and Venchi. We then set out to find these three establishments and "sacrifice" our own taste buds in the interest of research. Fortunately, all three where located in the area between the Duomo and the Ponte Vecchio, so we did not have to travel far. The results of our research can be found below.
For us, this gelato establishment ranked number one. The flavors were bold, but not overwhelming, and were not overly sweet. The prices were in line with just about every other shop we encountered.
Coming in at number two was Grom. While the flavors were excellent, they were not quite as bold as at Percheno
Coming in at a distant third was Venchi. The flavors also were quite good, but we found them to be a bit overly sweet.
And completely out of the running (at least as far as we were concerned) were the ever-present shops with the gelato heaped in huge mounds. We did not find much taste to these gelatos.
Again, we want to reiterate that this was a wholly unscientific and purely biased project, but of course we had a great deal of fun with it.
Manga!!!