I noticed Carapina because we walk by it every day (it’s just a few doors up the street from Antico Forno Roscioli) and the setup looked first-rate: small shop, modest number of mostly seasonal flavors, gelato kept covered. Looking online to see which of the gelato places in the centro storico people favor these days I found that it’s on a lot of people’s short list and a branch of some apparently famous place in Florence.
I tasted a few flavors and settled on pistachio and hazelnut, both excellent. I liked it so much I got seconds, which could have passed for sorbetto, just pure flavor of Bosc pears with some of the grainy texture preserved. I hope they have almond before I leave, I’m sure they do a good job with that.
Went to Come il Latte since we were over that way at Villa Borghese. I tasted pistachio and hazelnut, went for all hazelnut, got kind of cloying partway through. Maybe I should have gone with sorbetto, the amarena I tasted was fantastic.
Carapina was the worst gelato we had in Italy which was surprising bc it was well recommended in both Florence and Rome from you and many others. The texture was just off in so many way it was the only gelato I threw away (I had approximate 12 servings of gelato in 6 days). The stratichella was icy and was melting almost immediately - which seems paradoxical. The flavor was ok but I was very unhappy. The chocolate on the bottom of the cone didn’t suffer from these same issues but the melty gelato made the cone unappetizing.
The biggest problem was the proximity of some of the better gelato places in Rome to our hotel and dinners. We had a lot of places on the list that we never got to try like Fatamorgana, Fior de Luna, Gracchi and Claudio Torcè. We were at the St Regis which was pretty far from most of these places.