The vegan turnaround of one of Italy's best gelateria (which, bucking the trend, has not raised its prices for two years)

For more than fifteen years, Juraj Detvaj has been at the side of maestro Claudio Torcè, a gelato maker who has literally set the the tone of innovative gelato in Rome: the best gelato makers in the city have come out of his workshop, from Marco Radicioni of gelateria Otaleg! to Maria Agnese Spagnuolo of Fatamorgana - from whom she has learnt everything about the art of gelato. For three years now, Detvaj has been holding the reins of the gelateria and is now writing another chapter of Torcè.

The new Torcè

No longer on Viale dell'Aeronautica 105, the historical location, but a little further on Viale dell'Arte, “in a place that won us over as soon the minute we saw it,” Juraj tells us. "It is spread over two floors, both 150 square metres. We finally have all the space we need, room for customers to finally sit down, the right space for our new laboratory, which is now completely open to the street and which offers the possibility for the public to participate in the production process as well,” the gelato maker enthusiastically anticipates this novelty, the perfect crowning glory of Torcè's twenty years.

"Another novelty will be the return to the tubs, in a glycol bath, for greater energy saving, a decision that goes hand in hand with a more precise subdivision of the flavours: there is an exclusively vegan area, with 20 flavours on rotation between fruit, chocolate and nuts, a corner with low-fat yoghurt and cheese flavours, and in summer a display case dedicated to fresh fruit creams".

Work organisation in the Torcè workshop

For a total of 100 flavours, most of them lactose-free and all of them sucrose-free (but with fructose), is the result of a precise organisation of work: “There is a team that only deals with fruit gelatos, one dedicated to chocolates and creams, and another only to nuts, which we roast and grind in-house. Here we make all the bases ourselves, so I am free to buy the pistachio I like best, and it is also very cost-effective.

It is to Torcè's credit that the place has not increased the price of gelato: "We have not raised prices for two years and fortunately the books add up thanks to the increase in volumes produced and sold," the gelato maker explains. "In 2021 we went from 2.70 to 3 euros for a small cone (two flavours plus whipped cream), at the time we were labelled as “expensive”, today this is no longer the case because we are in line with the rest of the market." A market that despite inflation seems to suffer no crisis: according to an estimate by Coldiretti, in September there was a 10% increase in gelato consumption compared to the same period last year. Partly responsible for this (alas) is also the abnormally hot weather.

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