It's A strange thing that Alan Davidson, in his stupendous and famed Penguin Companion to Food, makes no real distinction under the ice cream entry between Italian ice cream and the ice confections from the US, France, Britain and India. In fact, the word gelato does not even appear. The differences between all these cold creations are mighty.First up, and perhaps most importantly, gelato is generally not made with cream. It is ice-milk, to be exact. The absence of cream allows flavours to come through more intensely. Cream, though it has a voluptuous seductive mouth feel, tends to mask flavour.And gelato isn't airy; it should be dense, intense and almost chewy. It's so different in texture to creamy puffy harder and colder American-style ice creams that scoops don't even work. The gelato gets stuck and smeary. All over Italy, a metal spatula is used to gently shape the stuff into a cup or cone.Of course, there's gelato and there's gelato. Nowadays, much mass-produced so-called gelato follows the industrialised ice cream method of most other countries.You've heard of Nike Air? You should know that what you're generally eating is ice cream air. As much as 50% air! (the industry calls it "overrun"). The presence of air dilutes flavour because you're eating less ice cream per bite.Italians have been making iced sweet things since the 1600s so it's hardly amazing that descendants of these first gelato makers are pretty bloody good at it. Those in Rome and Bologna seem particularly gifted. Of course, there is also lots of crap out there: tourism plus food technology is a combination that has very rarely done anything good for food.If you aren't going to be visiting the great gelaterias in Rome or Bologna, then you can still wrap your mouth around the glory of great gelato with a visit to Mauro Benedetti and Sandro Tomassetti's mobile gelateria, La Cremosa, appearing at Joburg's Neighbourgoods Market on Saturdays and Market on Main on Sundays.''Two guys from Rome," their mini billboard tells you. If they didn't have the sign up, one spoon of the ice cream would have told the same story.They arrived last year, with machines from the family's gelato business in Rome in tow, and their gelato is of the sort Johannesburg hasn't seen since the great Monte Cristallo closed more than two decades back. Actually, this is probably better: they use organic milk, with high levels of conjugated linoleic acid (how kind and clever are cows to make fats that are great for our health and give gelato-perfect texture?). Flavours are ever-changing and slap-across-the-face intense.Incredible gelato from charming Roman boys. What more could you ask for? To get more info, go to www.gelatocremosa.com..