When it comes to ice cream I am a bore of long standing. I like vanilla. I like it more than just about anything else. It has to be really good vanilla, black speck flecked and all that, and it has to be rich and creamy with none of the chemical aftertaste of commercial ice cream.

The only exception I make to my vanilla default is when there’s promising looking pistachio on offer. And there was exactly that at Gelatini, the two-year-old gelateria on Preston Street. (Read Ottawa Magazine‘s 2010 interview with the owners here.)

I’m declaring it The Best Pistachio Gelato in the City.

Why so good?

I asked Mippy Goodfellow, who is manning the fort while owners Monica Pilotti and Christopher Hiscock gelato around Italy, and she suggested it might have something to do with hand shelling the nuts. “Monica thinks the shelling machines impart a mechanical flavour to the ice cream that takes away from the purity of the pistachio flavour,” she explains. “So we shell the nuts ourselves during quiet times.”

None of the green food colouring found in most pistachio gelato either. This is pure and gloriously meaty, rich and luscious: a perfect summer treat.

A regular cone of the stuff is $3.50. I sprung the five bucks for the waffle cone.

Gelatini Gelato, 344 Preston St., 613-235-8050, www.gelatini.ca.

Open: Monday to Friday from noon to 10 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m.