Bulgarini Gelato

Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
---Wallace Stevens



My feelings about ice cream parlors are similar to Madonna’s feelings toward muscular baseball players: I never met one I didn’t like. I enjoy Baskin-Robbins and Rite-Aid equally. I’ve been to Carvel and Coldstone’s and Foster Freeze’s and Fosselman’s and don’t seem to have a preference. Although I should say that a chocolate-dipped cone at El Pollo Loco following a 2-piece combo is an all-star meal if there ever was one. In short, what I mean to say is: ice cream! Doesn’t that word have a magic in and of itself? It’s a word that, like “God,” and “gun,” needs no adjective and can stand alone. Hungry patrons have made meals out of this frozen piece of art for goodness sakes. I once had a dinner of a two-scooped hot fudge sundae with whipped cream and extra chopped almonds at Main Street Diner and no one batted an eye. Masthti Malone’s on La Brea and Sunset does a wonderful pistachio and I just dig their weird, Irish/Iranian vibe. Check them out. One of my favorite places on earth is Twohey’s in Alhambra, a sparkling clean diner specializing in gorgeous bittersweet sundaes, great root beer floats and frosted root beers, which are kind of like root beer shakes. For me, the frosted root beer is the star of the show. It is, along with Cut’s New York steak, Kobawoo’s mushroom soup, and Phillipe’s lamb sandwich with blue cheese, the flavor bomb of the year, the kind of dish you will neither forget nor stop talking about. I’d like to add one more to that list: Bulgarini’s almond gelato. This is a wonderfully intense slice of Italy, a frozen dish but a firecracker in your mouth. I met up with my brother and some friends at Island’s in Pasadena recently. I ordered the turkey burger with blue cheese, a “Bleunami” to try recreate Phillipe’s sandwich. It didn’t make the cut, unfortunately. Afterwards, we headed north on Lake Avenue, pass the Roscoe’s and Louisiana Fried Chicken. When you finally get there, Lake and Altadena Dr., you feel as if you’re at the edge of the universe. A few steps to the north and you’re in the mountains. The space itself isn’t much, cramped, but clean, white walls, two tables. The scoopers were apologetic that they couldn’t provide the pistachio, which had sold out. But they kept selling their gelato parlor, with its perfect espresso shots, wine tasting on Saturdays, and screenings of “Il Postino” and Fellini’s “Amarcord” in the summer. Me? All I cared about is the chocolate chip and vanilla bean gelato. And wow, the almond. So apparently gelato has no equal. Baskin-Robbins is too airy, Pinkberry a tart fraud, Coldstone a thing of the past. Perhaps so, but it all tastes like cold firecrackers in my mouth. All of it.