Talk of the Point

It’s been all N.I.C.E., N.I.C.E., N.I.C.E. this week, and I took a break to think about nice cannoli.

When I show up in Sicily, my relatives stop at Pasticceria Palazzolo in Cinisi to pick up a tray of cannoli, always wrapped in pretty paper. After lunch, I have one, and then my cousin Maria Sara ever so nicely offers me another one. “Are you sure you don’t want another, Ted? I’m worried you might lose too much weight,” she says.

Back here, California friends hear of my passion for cannoli and tell me that such-and-such a place has “great” cannoli. It’s never true.

North Beach bakeries, for example, might have had decent cannoli 50 years ago, but none are worth even a sniff anymore. I check now and then at Victoria Pastry and a few other spots, and they’re similar in their mediocrity. In my most recent experiment, the shells were dark and almost spicy enough, but the cheese tasted of condensed milk. They’re worse than a bad cheese danish.

Even that once-touted Siclian restaurant on College Ave. in Berkeley was disappointing. The shell was nearly blond, and the owner-chef said he hadn’t ever tasted the real thing. Lo Coco’s in Berkeley, said to be owned by a native Sicilian, produces edible cannoli, but they’ve Americanized it with liquor in the filling.

Ah, you’re thinking, I haven’t tried Little Italy in New York or Providence or Boston. Well, I have. They’re better, but still not good.

I’m all for adaptation. Food is about place. The trouble now with California cannoli is that flavors come at the palette in a blast. They’re mostly sweet with only enough pungency to hint at the real stuff, and always a sour aftertaste. Sicilian cannoli is sweet but bitter too, and a little bit of the sheep comes up your nose. Sicilians expect no less; Californians don’t know what to expect, so lazy pastry makers feed them sugar.

While we here in California work out our cannoli nuovi, I prefer cannoli done the old way.

The only place you can buy authentic Sicilian cannoli around here is Romolo’s Cannoli and Spumoni Factory in San Mateo. It’s on a drab street a block south of the Barnes and Noble and the Hillsdale mall. (81 37th Ave; (650) 574-0625) They’re now closed for “vacation”–a long one, from March 27 to August 24, while the owners build a seaside retirement home near Ragusa. They’re not missing much business; I’m almost always the only customer.

When the Romolo’s production line runs full blast, Angela Cappello makes her own shells and her own filling from sheep’s milk ricotta she imports from New York. She fills each shell to order. We smile and chat about the weather, about work, about nephews. Her husband, Romolo, sits nearby entertaining friends and conducting business for the Sicilian-American association called Unione Siciliana. I’m a proud member.

When I turn to the source of her ricotta, the spice in her shells, how long she lets the ricotta-sugar mixture sit before stirring in the chopped chocolate and candied squash-rind, even the variety of the squash, she just keeps smiling in the time-honored Sicilian style. She’s not saying anything to anyone.

She, Romolo, and the cannoli are back August 24. It’s worth a drive.

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