Let's start with the hardware.

 

Our up-to-the-minute yet pleasingly retro gelato case hums with the kind of tony Euro chic that only a whole lot of money can buy. We imported it from Italy, the factual and folkloric home of gelato, in brash, Ferrari red, and we don't have to brag to say that in this very gelato case the words "eye candy" are indelibly defined.

 

It's very, very cool - it has to be - and yet the real candy isn't the case but the substance inside. Gelato, so often wrongly described as "Italian ice cream," is the queen of frozen desserts, and the surprise isn't that artisan-quality gelato has come to America, or even to Wichita, but that it's taken so long to get here. The Italians have been making gelato for centuries (you've heard the joke: "Which came first, the aqueduct or gelato?"), but in the U.S., a few isolated vendors to the contrary, it's remained a rarefied treat for the frozen few.

 

At Caffe Moderne we're doing our part to change all that. Using only the best ingredients, and techniques imported from the Old World right around the same time that we brought over the case, we make our gelato fresh in-house every day, the better to capture the unique flavors, textures, and sensations that have made gelato a hit at home for a thousand years. Our staff is trained in traditional artisan gelato-making, producing such staples of the Italian seventh course as Limoncello, Peach Bellini, and Bacio. But, being artisans themselves, they have their adventurous sides too: and so it is that we offer Chocolate Stout, Chocolate Cocoanut Curry, and Orange Dreamsycle, too.

 

What is it that makes gelato different from ice cream?

 

The quick facts are that gelato has only one-third the fat of American ice cream, that it is milk- rather than cream-based, and that it's possessed of an extravagant creaminess that no product bearing the name ice cream can match. Dig a little deeper and you'll find that the presence of milk rather than cream makes gelato a warmer product than ice cream, and that half as much air is processed into gelato during production as is its American cousin. Less air combined with a higher temperature means fewer ice crystals; and fewer ice crystals means a velvety smoothness with which no dessert with an American pedigree can compare.