Yes, it’s that Julia Roberts film again: yesterday the Telegraph reported that, not only are travel companies arranging “Eat, Pray, Love” tours in which participants can literally follow in Julia Roberts’ steps in Italy but many women tourists are already doing so independently.
One of the most visited places since the much publicised film shoot on location in Italy is the San Crispino Gelateria in Rome.
Long judged by Italians to be the best gelateria in Italy, the San Crispino is situated in a small street near the Trevi Fountain. In the book author Elizabeth Gilbert says she went there three times a day during her stay in Rome.
Owned by the Alongi brothers, the gelateria serves some unusual flavours. Pasquale Alongi told the Telegraph that he found Roberts “as cultured as she was beautiful”. Now many foreign women are turning up at his premises carrying a copy of the book, as if it were a guide book.
The San Crispino gelateria was founded as the result of a bet: was it possible, the hopeful entrepreneurs wondered, to run a profitable business producing perfect ice cream from only the best, natural ingredients for immediate or later consumption, working by hand where essential and charging a necessarily higher than normal, but still affordable price?
The brothers also wanted to “win over an ‘army’ of sophisticated connoisseurs” who could appreciate the subtleties in their flavours. Their flagship product, the San Crispino, is a honey flavoured ice cream that Roberts eats in the film. It is safe to say that their bet has been won.
