In Turin, chocolate's the champion
(New York Times)
Updated: 2006-02-15 11:27

CURRENTLY, the local chocolate king is Guido Gobino, a relative upstart and the son of a chocolate-maker. Mr. Gobino keeps up with the times as both the city's and the country's chocolate-makers mostly have not. (In Piedmont only Domori, under the young and innovative Gianluca Franzoni, known as Mack, has entered the single-origin, sexily packaged international chocolate sweepstakes.) His shop, with a magical factory in the basement, is a city showplace.

Mr. Gobino travels the world to sell his products: just before the Olympics, he was promoting his chocolate in Japan. He pays attention to the international single-origin chocolate craze, though he thinks the future will return to blends of beans as supplies of fine cacao grow short. Unlike the city's other chocolate-makers, he makes his own couverture for filled chocolates and high-quality bars, which requires the addition of cocoa butter and refining, in expensive machines, as chocolate for giandujotti does not. Besides giandujotti, his signature products include "amarissimi," disks of bitter chocolate mixed with ground cocoa nibs, and nubs of chocolate-coated ginger.

In giandujotti, Mr. Gobino made his name with the milkless, mini-sized "Tourinot," which has probably the fruitiest flavors and the darkest-toasted nuts of any of the city's elite competitors. Gobino uses only Piedmont hazelnuts, the world's most expensive (almost all other industrial makers use Turkish hazelnuts); one of the five growers Mr. Gobino buys from is his father-in-law.

Peyrano and Gobino chocolates are available online (at peyrano.com and Gobino from the New York-based www.gustiamo.com), but some giandujotti still require a trip to the city. Going to find one renowned version at Stratta, in Piazza San Carlo, the city's salon (and NBC headquarters for the Olympics), is practically like going into a museum. Stratta is an "elegant wonderland" of sweets, as Fred Plotkin says in his book "Italy for the Gourmet Traveler" (an updated version will be published in May by Kyle Cathie).

Adriana Monzeglio, a member of the family that has owned Stratta since 1959, recently explained that the shop has had success with newfangled chocolates with flavors like truffle, pepper and ginger. But giandujotti still account for half of its sales. Its sugar-free giandujotti, lower in milk as well, are surprisingly focused and good.

Gertosio, a pastry shop on Via Lagrange, Turin's gourmet row, makes what could be the city's best beginning taster's giandujotto. Gianni Gertosio, scion of a pastry-making family in Cuneo, near the heart of the hazelnut-growing area of Piedmont, decided in 1975 to make giandujotti almost on a dare, according to his son Massimo, who makes them now. Gertosio's giandujotti are decidedly sweet, with an indeterminate but agreeable blend of cacao beans and a strong and welcome flavor of medium-dark roasted hazelnuts.

They're mouth-filling, fresh, and unchallenging but very satisfying. For anyone who grew up on Nutella, Gertosio giandujotti are the first stop on a glorious path to chocolate-hazelnut adulthood.