The Five Pound Note: Gelupo’s White Truffle Gelato

Every year, London’s food gets more Christmassed. There’s cranberry in cheeseburgers, sprouts in pizzas, stilton in doughnuts, and egg in your nog. I’m all for cutting loose (within the limitations of a five pound note), but how to choose? Which overblown snack best represents the “spirit of Christmas”?

You might’ve imagined you’d find your sparkle in a mallowy cup of cocoa — it is cold after all! You’re wrong. The smart money is actually on something that’s even colder than you are: Gelupo’s Christmas gelato.

Picture the scene: you’re up west, checking your list twice, your hat’s blown off and you have one of those tiny Liberty bags about your person (only monsters have bigger ones.) You’ve overheard an adult threatening to punch another adult because they didn’t say “excuse me.”

You bundle into Gelupo — that familiar, warm, sliver of Soho space — and you collapse on to a stool. Go ahead and abuse your sampling privileges: there are seven festive flavours to try. And so this is Christmas.

Six are inspired by the original EU countries and one is from the UK. Of these, the cakey flavours (Christmas cake, stollen, pannetone) do what they say on the tin. But as is always the case with gelato, beige is best, and the Dutch advocaat is a smooth, custardy, boozy dream.

But there’s an eighth flavour in town — ’tis the season for white truffles from Alba, and Gelupo is getting weekly deliveries. The white truffle gelato is smooth and snow white, with a backdrop of caramelised sugar. A small is £3, but for your fiver, you can afford to go large. Load her up.

That’s white truffle from Alba for less than a fiver, my friends! A Christmas miracle.

Happy holidays,

LG