James Scott Verified

Pineapple Mint sorbetto and Lime Mojito sorbetto sound good, but just reading the description for Deep Ellum Blue Pecan made me throw-up in my mouth a little bit.

1 year, 2 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

Cristiana Ginatta Verified

Good morning everybody: Thank you for the feed-back on the new flavors, I'm the one that makes the recipes and I appreciate your feed-back. For sure I will check the iciness of the caramel, however I have to disagree about the description of the flavors. Sea salt caramel is made with a milk caramel (dulce de leche), that has a milky and sweet taste, you would get a more intense caramel flavor is made with sugar-caramel (sugar and water caramelized, with a more intense, lightly bitter taste). I decided to go with the sweetness of the dulce de leche caramel and to balance it with the sea salt. I think that the fruit & vegetable sorbets hit you first with the sweetness & taste of the fruit and then end with the fresh note of the vegetable, earthy for the beet, minty for the cucumber, pungent for the celery. I'm really saddened by the negative comments about our gelato, I know it's your right to say what you think but I think it's my right to say they are not deserved. We are working so hard and we are proud of our gelato. These are the ingredients of Braum's Pistachio Almond (Source: Braum's website) INGREDIENTS: Fresh Grade 'A' whole milk, sugar, cream, almonds, corn syrup, pistachio flavor, stabilizer blend (monoglycerides, cellulose gel, cellulose gum, carrageenan), artificial colors yellow 5, blue 1. Pistachio flavor and almonds prepared in a plant a few months ago. If this is what you like, please go for it, the price is right for the type of product, but please don't compare it to our price, where we use real pistachios and make it fresh by hand in small batches. I don't think we are expensive for a hand-made product with quality ingredients, we try to be affordable, less than $3.50 (depending upon location) for 5.3 oz of gelato (plus all the samples you want) is not bad. We use really hazelnuts, almonds, we hand-clean our fruit and hand-squeeze all the juices including grating the zests, we use Callebaut Extra Brut cocoa powder with high cocoa butter content, real egg yolks (not colored egg whites). I saw in the past that you were inviting us to be more "adventurous" with the flavors. It's difficult to keep a good balance, we are not a five star restaurant and we need to please a lot of people to stay in business. It's fun to have a few unusual flavors, it demonstrates that we are the ones making the recipes, we don't buy pre-packed gelato or gelato ingredients, and makes the experience fun. A customer may venture to try Black Pepper Olive Oil and then still order Chocolate, but he/she got to try something new and fun. I don't even know what Jones Sodas are, the most famous Jones I know from the US is Indiana. It's so difficult to please, if we are not adventurous we are boring, if we are adventurous we want some ink. We are not in the paper every single day, I did so many things that were never reported and I'm fine with that, but please don't say that everything we are working so hard for is just to be on the paper. I apologize for the long comment, I just couldn't resist to open my heart on my feelings and I'm sorry if it's not the way I should do, it's the way I feel. I wish you a beautiful day, Cristiana cristiana@paciugo.com

1 year, 2 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

Gary Cohen Verified

Thanks Cristiana. I, for one, am a big fan of Paciugo and think you guys do a great job. I appreciate that you are a family business and have grown the chain from one store to many.

Have you ever considered making a black sesame gelato? I've had this flavor on the west coast several times and think it's fantastic.

1 year, 2 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

Cristiana Ginatta Verified

Dear Mike and Gary: Thank you very much for your nice words, it means a lot to me. I'm working on the new flavors for the wintertime and for sure I will try the black sesame. So far, I'm happy with the taste of Orange Saffron, made with fresh orange zests candied with Italian saffron and then blended with milk and egg yolks (that it's also very good blended with chocolate) and I'm working on 2 more unusual recipes inspired by Vosges Chocolat: Chocolate coconut sweet curry and White chocolate kalamata olives. Thanks again! Cristiana

1 year, 2 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

David Gouldin Verified

Cristina -

If you're going to try to stand out, do something different, and be adventurous you must have a bit thicker skin. On one hand, people are naturally resistant to change and will usually voice negative statements when presented with something different. On the other hand, not every new idea is a good idea, so you have to realize that probably 80-90% of your more experimental endeavors will be failures. That's not to say anything about your talent, creativity, passion, etc ... ask any inventor how many ideas they try before coming up with a single good one. The other 10-20%, however, is what will make a name for you and keep people coming back for more.

You're going to send yourself to an early grave if you continue to take criticism so personally. Make your own decisions about your business and its products, stand behind them even when others criticize, and most importantly believe in the worth of what you're doing. If your sense of worth and value can be shaken by feedback in an online comments thread, you might be better off blending into the sea of other mediocre, unexciting gelato places in the metroplex.

The insight into what goes into your products is indeed appreciated and valuable. The "poor me" soapbox is less so.

1 year, 2 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

Cristiana Ginatta Verified

Dear David: Thank you for sharing your point of view. I have no problem with accepting that not everything I do is great and I don’t expect for everybody to like it. Two of the first flavors we discontinued were Marron Glace’ and Persimmon sorbet, and they were actually two of my favorite ones. Avocado [thank you Jenn!] is another one, we offered it last summer and since then only on special request [you can e-mail me before coming to town and I’ll be glad to arrange it]. What wears me out are the mocking comments, you’re right, I should get a thicker skin and learn to accept that people laugh at my hard effort and don’t care about it, even if I love and I’m proud of what I do. Thank you for teaching me something new today, I never heard about the soap box. I always think of myself more like Crybaby Boobie, the Peanuts character that plays tennis with Charlie Brown and complains about not been able to play because she has the sun in her eyes, the tennis court is on a slope, the tennis balls are bald… and, when the opponent replies that he doesn’t care about her complaints, she ends up crying “And nobody cares about my complaints”. I’m so o-l-d.

1 year, 2 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

Cristiana Ginatta Verified

Hey Teresa: it must be because of my poor English or my undeveloped understanding of human communication [sarcastic], but when I read the comment about the half a gallon of blue bell for the 20th time from pretty much the same persons, the mockery is getting stale and it starts to resemble the 10-year-old kids that pick on another kid with the same thing over and over. Let’s get new mockery out, I’m all for it! Sometimes when I read some of the comments, a picture comes to my mind: a pulpit, with a “big wig” that knows-it-all and knows the-best-thing-ever in the whole nation-world-universe. I agree with you: let’s have fun, let’s taking it (and ourselves) less seriously and enjoy it, after all it’s “only” food and we are all sharing personal experiences and preferences, not the absolute Truth. Amen

1 year, 2 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

Cristiana Ginatta Verified

Good afternoon Kirk: You didn’t mention it here either, it was eastside, but I saw the comment in many other treads where similar names have been involved. Ingredients of our pistachio gelato: whole pasteurized homogenized milk, sugar, ground roasted pistachios, dextrose, milk protein, monoglyceride, carob meal. I’m glad I got your picture right, I will make sure to say hello if I see you around. And if you see an old girl going around complaining with a thick accent, I hope you’ll stop me to have a 3-day-conversation ; ) Now I really have to go back to work, I’m already behind with the recipe for Black Sesame! Ciao a tutti! Cristiana P.S. if you have some ideas for recipes or things you would like for me to improve, please send me an e-mail at cristiana@paciugo.com or call me 214-654-9501 x 122. Really appreciate!

1 year, 2 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

James Scott Verified

Ok, well now I'm sorry about my vomit comment, now that I know the creator of the recipes is participating in this thread. I'm just not a fan of blue cheese, so I'm obviously biased on that flavor. I'm looking forward to trying some others though.

Anyway, just a comment on the Power of Pegasus...that the probable possibility that someone directly related with the story at hand will be actively involved in the discussion...something you'd never expect (or get) at any other news outlet. I'll have to take that into consideration next time when I think about my momma being proud of what I just wrote.

1 year, 2 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

Gary Cohen Verified

My wife and I tried the Mediterranean Sea Salt flavor today and we liked it a lot. It was kind of butterscotchy. I'd definitely get it again.

1 year, 2 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )