Wow. People love gelato and ice cream.

When we were first invited to the Slow Food Nation Taste Pavilion we were asked to bring 25 liters (about 6 gallons) for the event. With a week to go we were asked to bring more. After the preview night we were asked to bring some extra as well for Saturday. Sunday morning we brought even more gelato. Then, just after leaving Fort Mason and our time commitment fulfilled, I got a call that they needed me to bring one last delivery of gelato or the Ice Cream Pavilion would essentially run out of product.

There certainly could have been some better planning from the organizers. I mean, they knew how many tickets they sold, right? But we were thrilled to help and our kitchen team was happy about the overtime. We went from making 25 liters for the event to making over 600 liters of gelato when it was all over.

Saturday: Today was the first day of Taste Pavilion open to the public. In case you haven’t been yet, this is how it works; you get “Slow Dough” to “spend” at each of the exhibits e.g. Pickles and Chutney, Coffee, Chocolate, and of course Ice Cream, Gelato. Our exhibit is broken up into three “flights” at 2 Dough Dollars each - Classic, Alternative and Modern. Naia is featured in a sprinkling between the three flights so be sure to check us out in the flight you choose if you go.

Today we sampled Scharffen Berger 41% Gelato, Medina Farms Raspberry Sorbetto, Pavel’s Yogurt Stracciatella Gelato, Mr. Espresso Gelato, Foresta Nero Gelato and Pluot Sorbetto using pluots from a local farm. It was great to meet old and new fans and hear what they had to say about our product, including new flavors!

It’s difficult to spend all of your Slow Dough because the lines are so intense; so here are a few tips we gathered from our own experience and others; the bread exhibit has some nice pizza and Indian breads (2 Dough dollars each). The chocolate exhibit has a couple interesting pieces in their 2 Dough dollar flight, and the charcuterie exhibit has a 3 Dough dollar flight that includes three pieces of meat and paté. Pickles and Chutney were only 1 Dough dollar, tasty, and the lines seemed shorter there too.

Friday: Friday was the big VIP event for the Taste Pavilion. Slow Food Nation is split up into many different pavilions at Fort Mason and the Civic Center but one big attraction to Slow Food is, well, the taste, so Taste Pavilion is popular and sold out.
It turned out that some of the other ice cream and gelato producers didn’t show, so we ended up being the only producer to talk about our product - it was fun seeing some old friends from Whole Foods Market as well as finding out about small and local producers just like ourselves but in orchards, farmers’ markets, spirits, and the Slow Food “conviviums”. Nicolle, Trevor and I sampled our pistachio gelato, which was really a great example of gelato as slow food - over sixteen hours the day before we had been milling the roast pistachios grown from a local third generation family farm, churning gelato and freezing the gelato for Slow Food Nation.

Slow Food Nation kicks off this weekend and we will be there showcasing our gelato at the Taste Pavilions. We were honored to be invited and look forward to meeting not only the people coming to sample our gelato but also fellow ice cream and gelato producers.

If you are coming, please drop by the ice cream pavilion and say hi. If you didn’t get tickets before they sold out, don’t know what it is we are talking about or, like me, were shocked at the ticket prices, we will be providing daily updates on the event right here on the website. If you are a Club Naia member you can already guess we will be talking about it in the Dirt section of our newsletter as well.

Summertime is all about BBQ, swimming pools, and eating gelato. With all of the usual summertime fun many people aren’t thinking about making a donation to the local blood bank. We want to change that.

Please join us in Walnut Creek for another Pint For A Pint Blood Drive. You give a pint of blood and we give you a pint of gelato, free.

Saturday, August 30th
11am to 4pm
Walnut Creek Naia

You can sign up online using sponsor code GelatoWC, sign up by phone at 925.943.1905, or better yet, stop by and sign up in person. Please help us make this another successful Pint For A Pint Blood Drive. We have never had one that didn’t fill up.

Good news, bad news is a phrase we use a lot around here. (I think anyone else who runs a small business knows what we are talking about.)

In this case, the good news is that summer is almost here. Summer for us means all of the delicious, local summer fruit we can get our hands on. We are just a week or so away from fresh peaches, apricots, plums, pluots, nectarines, and then blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries. We make all of them into amazing sorbetto using only fresh fruit, sugar and water. We never add fruit flavorings or flavor boosters like many of our competitors.

OK, now for the bad news. Summer also means the end to the too-short cherry season. We are only going to have our amazing fresh cherry flavors for a week or so more. If you love cherries you had better come down here fast.

So many of the ingredients for our gelato come from local sources. We are very proud of that. Local means fresher, higher quality, genuine ingredients.

Some of our competitors proudly proclaim that their ingredients are imported from Italy. Don’t be fooled. That means that the ingredients are cans of goo and bags of powder. Imported ingredients means canned, boxed, put on a pallet, stuck on a container ship, put on a train and driven only to wait on a shelf.

Which do you prefer? Cherries from a family owned California farm or cherry syrup? Freshly pulled espresso from Mr Espresso beans or coffee goo? Pavel’s yogurt or powdered yogurt flavoring? Strawberries from a family farm in Watsonville or jellied strawberry paste?