Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Renaissance Man in Central Square, December 11, 2006
This is a great read. For years Gus has been making the most amazing ice cream on the planet and keeping generations of ecletic folks afloat in the Boston area.
One story that he didn't recount here: He's always been generous and supportive of people trying out for the National Rowing teams, employing them and supporting their habits. One year he packed up two dozen half-pints of his best ice creams in dry ice and fedexed them to one of his employees who needed a pat on the back after losing some important seat races. You've never seen ice cream better received.
He's knowledgeable about just about everything under the sun. He's the unofficial mayor of Central Square.
Buy this and hope that a full length version will be forthcoming.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Icy Crossroads For Skating Around Multi-cultural Cream., December 13, 2006
This Short covers 35 engrossing pages. The below quotes don't even hint at the littering of satisfying history and taste. Toward the end (which you don't want it to), Gus blurted to an employee: >> "You know I had hoped never to say this, but I have been doing this longer than you've been alive, so why don't we pretend - just for a minute - that I might be right." << Don't underestimate the potent intelligence of The Ice Cream Man.
Mood shifts in this Short were fascinating, accompanying Gus's growth as he related his life to his cool calling. I felt the attitudes of the times reflected through Gus's philosophical treats, through the evolution of his rules for Toscanini's. Rancatore's political interjections were interesting, along with the process for naming and locating Toscanini's. The keys appeared to have been, "Crossroads, mulitcultural, and mixed demographics." Gus's story also exposed self-awareness and character development:
>> Everything about the work suited me. Making ice-cream is not a job that requires a uniform or silence or decorum or a socially acceptable personality.... You can choose the order in which you do your work and have flexible hours, but you do need physical strength and patience for repetition.... I liked working by myself or with writers waiting for their manuscripts to be accepted (Amazon Shorts!), musicians waiting for .... <<
Here's a sample of the yummy detail included in this Short, about ice cream making, described in exquisitely clear syntax: >> ...ice cream is less forgiving than chocolate. You can't improvise the way you can at the stove; you have to measure carefully and maintain technique through repetition....I learned to listen to the sound of the motor that deepened as the ice cream thickened.... to understand how the ingredients, the equipment, even the weather all affect the ice cream."
Among Gus's noted trials for his opening: >> The night before we opened I had a nightmare. In it, a customer comes into the new store and approaches the counter where I'm working. He asks: who's in charge? When I say I am, he... <<
After opening and getting through the first year: >> Even in New England, business slows down in November and, during that first dark winter, I would close early and roam up and down the aisles of supermarkets looking for things I might freeze.... I mixed some orange juice and vanilla extract into my sweet cream recipe. Half an hour later, I was eating my childhood memory.... <<
Immediately caught by Gus's accounts of the types of people and their purposes for buying his ice cream, I felt the distance widen between my eyebrows:
>> Once, a customer came up to me and whispered: "Do you know that every famous young physicist in the world is at the center table eating ice cream right now?".... (Regarding another visitation) we tried to casually go about our business while trying to figure out whether the man who arrived with an entourage in saffron robes was the real Dalai Lama or just one of our many local lamas. (It was the real Dalai Lama, and he ordered a chocolate cone). <<
According to Gus, during a 25 year history, Toscanini's flavors have often been named "Best of Boston." Robert B. Parker's Spenser series has also spanned that time and town, providing possibly the best fictional flavor of a renaissance P. I. Since Spenser has narrated nuances of Boston culture since 1976, I wondered if that series has ever mentioned Toscanini's. Here's a sort of connection from THE ICE CREAM MAN to Parker's Spenser, given Spenser's habit of cooking for himself: >> In 1973, Boston was not a town you lived in for the food. There were three exceptions so popular that people waited patiently on long lines: the original Pizzeria Regina in the North End, the first Legal Sea Foods in Inman Square, and Steve's. <<
Beginning the rich history of his coming to fruition as THE ICE CREAM MAN via Steve's, Gus reminisced, >> ... (In Somerville there was) a storefront called Steve's that made its own ice cream. It was the kind of place that made you think: this is why we came to Boston. It wasn't an old-fashioned ice cream parlor with mirrors and a soda fountain. It wasn't a chain like Friendly's or a Howard Johnson's with its twenty-eight flavors where you went with your family. It was an ice cream store for adults. <<
"Indeed," as Spock would say.
I visualize Spock in Toscanini's, staring at The Dali Lama. When Robert B. Parker walks in the door, all flavors will rise and ascend. In such auspicious company, fueled by ice cream, why, I could even imagine Spenser materializing right there and then!
In Amazon Shorts, varieties of flavor are endless, and all is possible:
Coal & Coca-cola
Linda Shelnutt
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
As good as a scoop from Toscanini's, November 13, 2006
This short little PDF is cheaper than the 1981 price of an ice cream cone, and a great window on what drives Gus, the ice cream man, to make exotic and interesting flavors as he churns away at night in the center of the universe. Finding out what he's whipped up of late has always been worth the walk to his Central Square store. It's impossible to understand how anyone could resist reading this who's ever been to Toscanini's (and, of course, that would encompass every student at MIT over the past quarter century). The price is right, the story is a fast and funny read, and the voice of the ice cream man is finely captured by his collaborator. If, after consuming this little booklet, you crave more ice-cream mania, I'd recommend watching the Portuguese film, "A Comedia de Deus", from 1995, directed by Joao Cesar Monteiro.
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