Eating ALL the Gelato in Florence

by Oct 10, 2012100 Things, Europe, Italy5 comments

I think it’s safe to say there are hundreds of places that sell gelato in Florence and we wanted to make sure we got the best of the best. Matt did a lot of research before we left and largely used this article to figure out where to go.

In order to give those of you living vicariously through this blog the full experience of Florence gelato, we figured we needed to try as many of the top places as possible.

So we did…and ended up eating gelato seven times in two and a half days.

My flavour of choice is lemon and Matt’s is some sort of berry flavour with chocolate following a close second for both of us. In order to figure out who had the best of these flavours, we stuck to them pretty much every time.

The article proved invaluable as the one time we strayed from it, we ended up with a pretty average gelato. Name and shame? I think so.

Bar Due Ponti provided us with the worst gelato out of the bunch (bad gelato is still pretty good so it’s not like we didn’t enjoy it). What left a bad taste in our mouths (see what I did there) was that we got half as much as other places for double the price. Should’ve know better as it was near the Ponte Vecchio and clearly targeted at tourists but to be fair, it was the only place in the area that had a place for us to sit down after a morning full of walking.

Bar Due Ponti

Second from the bottom was Gelatissima. Also located by the Ponte Vecchio but unlike the other place, not blatantly trying to just get money out of tourists. This place was actually really good (as you can tell from the photo as I couldn’t wait until after Matt took a picture to have a taste) but I was a little disapointed in the lack of flavours.

Gelatissimo

Carabé comes in at number three. Rumored to take the top spot for gelato in Florence our hopes were high for this one. Especially when a couple articles said it had the best lemon gelato in the city. Carabé is on the way to Accademia (which houses the statue of David) so we had to make our way through a lot of tourists to get there. It may have been the time of day (gelato for breakfast!) but there weren’t many flavours on display. Lemon was one of them but unfortunately it didn’t live up to the hype. The flavour was definitely the best but the texture wasn’t nice and soft like it’s meant to be.

Carabe

Festival del Gelato was definitely the busiest of the stores we visited and for good reason. Definitely recommend them on selection alone (over 40 flavours), it took us a while to decide which flavours to get. Add in the flouro lights and loud music…who wouldn’t love a gelato disco! They were also the only store that had orange chocolate which made them a contender for my favourite place.

Festival del Gelato

It’s a tie for first place since Matt and I both had different favourites. Matt’s was Gelateri dei Neri where the Chocolate Amaro flavour “tasted like an amazing dark chocolate bar was melted and turned in to Gelato”.

Gelateria dei Neri

Mine was Vivoli. Largely regarded as the best gelato in Florence, it was the only place we went to twice. Their lemon flavour was my favourite for both taste and texture and the chocolate was amazingly rich and delicious.

Vivoli

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go wipe the drool from my face and look up flights back to gelato heaven…

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