The Florentine Sweet Tooth

Savory foods headline Italian advertisements and restaurant specials. But the sweet side of Italian culture is rich in both flavor and history.

The Florentine sweet tooth excites tourists and residents alike but for different reasons.

Sweet shops and bakeries are spread throughout the city's streets.

So Many Sublime Sweets

Saliva Najimi, an employee for the 140-year-old chocolate company Venchi, said she notices a difference between the sweets tourists purchase and what local residents come to the store to buy. The Florentine store is located close to the Ponte Vecchio at Via dei Calzaiuoli.

Customers weave in and out of Venchi’s candy and gelato line throughout the day.

Having worked at the store for six years, Najimi has not only seen a rise in the number of summer tourists but also a drastic increase in how sweets — chocolate, in particular — is marketed toward tourists.

Najimi has worked at Venchi for six years after moving to Italy from Morocco.

Tourists tend to prefer the iconic Italian gelato, while Florentines come to Venchi to feed their chocolate cravings. Najimi said she can almost always tell a tourist from an Italian resident just from where they walk in the store — toward the chocolate selection or toward the gelato line.

That, and the fanny packs and cameras.

But Venchi’s selection can be overwhelming and leave visitors packing in as many sweets as possible into their purchase.

“Because it is an Italian brand — gelato — and because we have the chocolate, they want to come and try the chocolate on the ice cream,” Najimi said. “You can fill your own cup with some chocolate and keep the ice cream.”

Visitors to Florence will comment on the health distinctions between homemade Italian sweets and the oftentimes more processed sweets of other countries.

Venchi’s chocolate selection ranges from the sweetest of milk chocolates to the richest of dark chocolates.

Italian sweets are undeniably delicious, but they are also comparatively healthier. The processed cookies, brownies, and chocolate bars found in grocery stores face a tough competition when matched against homemade delights.

“I believe that there's more quality here because we have a culture of good food,” she said. “We want to eat really good.”

But she also said just because the chocolates and other appealing food are less processed and come from domestic products, there needs to be a healthy balance.

“It's difficult to stay away from eating sugar,” Najimi said. “You have the quality, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t have sugar. The problem here is the flour. I mean pizza, pasta, pizza, pasta.. all that stuff because they're really heavy.”

Humble Beginnings to Large-Scale Sensation

Venchi began as a local sweet shop and bakery and has quickly become a target for crowds of passersby looking for something to snack on. Venchi markets its chocolates in decorative gift wraps and souvenir books with designs including the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore on the book’s cover.

Souvenirs such as this book are marketed to be filled with small chocolates and given away as gifts.

Venchi’s chocolates are exclusively exported from the northern Piedmont region of Italy. Turin, Piedmont’s capital city, is credited for inspiring the transformation of liquid and powdered chocolate into solid chocolate bars.

Around the same time, 17th-century Italy saw the birth of Gianduja. Gianduja was a peasant of Piedmont dressed in a tricorn hat and a brown and red jacket who performed in Italian’s professional theater, Commedia dell'Arte. The character was often depicted in a raucous, intoxicated state.

The comical character would soon become associated with the changing landscape of chocolate production.

When cocoa had to be rationed in Italy during the Napoleonic Wars in 1861, Pier Paul Caffarel began making his chocolates with local Piedmont ingredients. Napoleon Bonaparte’s Italian ban on imported chocolates did not stop the chocolatier, who is credited for founding the now-popular Italian chocolate company, Caffarel.

Caffarel combined local hazelnuts with the chocolate he could access in order to make “gianduja,” named after the playful character. Today the chocolate is now called gianduiotto and is one of Italy’s most popular chocolates.

Gianduiotto is a part of Turin’s identity and is one of today’s most popular chocolates ingrained in Italian heritage. Nutella, a sweetened hazelnut cocoa spread introduced in 1964, originated from Caffarel’s chocolate concoction.

Goodie bags and boxes marketed toward tourists and holiday shoppers are at the front of the store.

Chocolate’s popularity sees a sharp increase each year during annual Florentine festivities — namely, Carnevale. Chocolates are often eaten with coffee, similar to how savory foods are paired with wine.

Compared with France’s Mardi Gras, Carnevale is celebrated before the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday. People are free to dance, eat, and drink whatever they want before Lent’s dietary restrictions begin.

Local Roots in a Busy City

The Italian sweet tooth reaches across all of Italy, but back in Florence, an aroma of sugary sweets and rich cocoa fills the air outside the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.

At Gelateria Florere, employee Juan Carlo says the peak of summer’s tourist season brings visitors from America, Spain, Chile, France, and more to the small storefront outside the Duomo.

Gelateria Florere is open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. weekdays.

“They are so cute and generally sweet,” Carlo said of tourists who go to the store looking to satisfy their sweet tooth.

Among Gelateria Florere’s most popular sweets are cannolis, which are often called "cannolos” in Italy. They are typically made with ricotta cheese and a fried, crispy shell wrap. Cannolis originated in Palermo, Sicily, and can be adorned with chocolate chips, candied cherries, orange peels, or chopped pistachios.

Cannolis can be premade in the morning or made to order for customers with specific flavor requests.

Cannolis originated from sugar brought to Italy by Arabic-speaking people. The pastry was a staple of Carnavale and adaptations of the treat skyrocketed in the 1900s amid growing immigration in the United States. Italian immigrants brought their recipes and ingredients to America, where different flavors and renditions of the cannoli were made.

Cannolis can be made with ricotta, mascarpone, or a combination of both. This range of ingredient combinations catapulted the cannoli into 20th and 21st-century world-renowned fame. Around Florence, a popular cannoli flavor is half ricotta and half pistachio cream.

Chocolate mousse, cheesecakes, and puff pastries are among some of Gelateria Florere's treats on display each day.

The Napoleonic Wars and historic restrictions on imports certainly played a role in shaping what ingredients Italians could use for baking. Perhaps the long-term struggle of limited accessibility to sugar led the Italians to make even better alternatives to highly processed sugary snacks found in the 21st century.

Sweets and pastries are restocked throughout the day based on popular demand and foot traffic.

The oldest Italian sweets relied largely on soft breads. When the Italian production of sugar, milk, eggs, honey, and almonds kicked off, today’s classic favorites including cheesecake, panna cotta, cannoli, and cream puffs took form.

Italy may be largely praised for its savory pasta, pizza, and sandwiches. But the dessert menu and nearby bakeries are nearly impossible to pass up.