Had the signposts been any more specific, we might have missed what is possibly the best gelateria in Italy. Well, certainly on Sardinia. It is certainly the best in the small seaside town of Santa Maria Navarrese on the island’s east coast, virtually equidistant from Cagliari in the south and Olbia in the north.
We arrived in this pretty settlement at the foot of the mountains at about 1 pm looking for our Nascar Hotel, an extremely comfortable 12-bedroom hotel and restaurant run by two of four sisters. But the hotel was nowhere to be found.
Instead, we spotted the freshly painted façade of Mastro Gelataio and Jancis went inside to ask directions. Meanwhile, I salivated at the prospect of that particular day’s recommended flavour on offer on the blackboard outside: goat’s milk ricotta with honey from the asphodel plant, a plant that is quite commonly found on this charming island. I am not sure which part of the combination I found more enticing but, as Jancis returned to our car beaming with pleasure thanks to the map that the kind girl behind the counter had given her, I made a note to return later for ice cream.
After lunch, having checked in and spent some time on the beach, this is precisely what I did, returning about 5.30 pm to find the gelateria virtually deserted. That did not stop me ordering a cone filled with the ricotta and honey ice cream and sitting quietly outside in the park as one or two small children were being pushed on the swings. Quite a fitting location, I thought, with seats, trees and their shade right outside and even running water to wash the inevitable sticky hands. But with ice cream of this quality and priced at €1.50 a cone in which enough of one flavour was rammed to necessitate at least three or four extra paper serviettes, why was the place so quiet?
After the first of our three dinners in the hotel, on each occasion a fishy first course followed by a pasta or rice course (gnocchetti with a lamb ragu and a seafood risotto were particularly memorable), I strongly suggested that we skip dessert in the hotel and head back to the gelataria. One scoop of the ricotta with honey had not been enough.
By 10 pm the situation outside the gelateria was very different from that of the late afternoon when everyone was still on the beach. There was a queue of about a dozen, all waiting quite patiently in line. All the chairs were taken. There were people of all ages, including one screaming young girl – ‘troppo stanca ’ (too tired), explained her father as he wheeled her off – but this place definitely seemed to be the beating heart of Santa Maria Navarrese.
We contentedly licked our ice creams but when there was a let up in the queue I went back into the shop and noticed the bald, smiling proprietor, wearing a white T shirt and shorts, behind the counter. I asked him what time he closed. When he replied midnight I arranged to meet him the following afternoon at 6 pm.
It was then that I managed to shake the very gentle, but powerful, hand of Enzo Lenzi (in pink above right), who describes himself as Mastro Gelataio, a Master Ice Cream Vendor, and who comes with a bit of a story. In fact it brought him to Santa Maria Navarrese only just before us. Lizio had moved to Santa Maria a month ago after 40 years in Milan, having sold his company comprising three restaurants and two ice cream shops. The queues are impressive for such a new enterprise, located a little out of the centre on a corner site, highlighted by some lovely drawings of men hard at work churning ice cream. Inside there are two fridges, one full of cold drinks, the other full of frozen ice cream cakes and desserts.
In front of where Lenzi stands, ably assisted by a younger man and woman, is a traditional Pozzetti ice cream counter which holds 12 individual flavours. Behind all this is where the ice creams are made in a Carpigiani ice-cream maker using only natural flavours, without any industrial bases and without any chemicals.
Perhaps it is Lenzi’s smile and innate generosity, perhaps it was the inherent value of what he was selling, perhaps it was just eating such good ice cream surrounded by Italians. Perhaps it was the overall feeling that we were, for a short time at least, extras in a Fellini film. Whatever the specific reasons, no ice cream has ever tasted as good.
Everything we tasted seemed simply an extension of the raw fruit, the eggs and the cream and the odd extras. The strawberry ice cream tasted just like strawberries; the doppo crema tasted of cream and eggs; the ricotta with honey tasted equally of these two magical ingredients. His ice-cream-making policy is set out on the notice below.
And that was perhaps the final factor – that Lenzi was able to stand here every night dispensing such magic to so many customers at such ridiculously low prices as he handed over cones and tubs of his ice cream. Perhaps even more directly than a winemaker or a chef, here was someone who is capable of transforming so many individual ingredients so directly to generate such pleasure.
Enzo Lenzi is, unquestionably, a Mastro Galataio.
Mastro Gelataio di Enzo Lenzi Viale Plammas 1, Santa Maria Navarrese, Sardinia
Nascar Hotel Viale Pedras 1, Santa Maria Navarrese, Sardinia