Everyone in Buenos Aires seems to be a fierce partisan when it comes to: soccer, cafes and ice cream parlors. The ice cream there is not just delicious — it's gorgeous.

Transcript

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

For this next story, we go to Argentina, where our movie critic Bob Mondello spends a lot of time with his relatives. He was recently checking out not the art of cinema, but an art that Bob calls delicious.

BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Everyone you meet in Buenos Aires is a fierce partisan when it comes to futbol, meaning soccer, cafes and heladerias, ice cream parlors, which in the summer seem nearly as common as cafes.

GABRIEL FAMA: (Speaking Spanish).

MONDELLO: I'm at Heladeria Cadore in the theater district talking to owner Gabriel Fama, whose uncle started Cadore at this same location back in 1957. Fama is understandably proud of his ice cream, made fresh daily, as his uncle instructed right in the store.

FAMA: (Speaking Spanish).

MONDELLO: And he's happy to wax eloquent on the richness of the flavors...

FAMA: (Speaking Spanish).

MONDELLO: ...Pistachio, cardamom...

FAMA: (Speaking Spanish).

MONDELLO: ...Hibiscus...

FAMA: (Speaking Spanish).

MONDELLO: ...And, of course...

FAMA: (Speaking Spanish).

MONDELLO: ...Chocolate. We're talking is one of his employees uses what could almost be a canoe paddle to stir quarts of creamy dark chocolate and thick, caramel-like dulce de leche into a vat where spiraling metal blades mix them...

FAMA: (Speaking Spanish).

MONDELLO: ...with air into an almost taffy-like chocolate mousse base.

FAMA: (Speaking Spanish).

MONDELLO: It is small-batch handmade daily, and it's every bit as good as Fama thinks it is. But I'm fixated on something else about his ice cream - the way it sits in a cone. It's a work of art. The folks behind the counter sculpt the ice cream into what looks like a 6-inch-high inverted cone atop the waffle cone. If this were soft serve or custard, that'd be easy. But this is real ice cream, rich and solid, sometimes with nuts or chocolate chunks or bits of figs. So it's not malleable the same way. He shows me how they do it.

FAMA: (Speaking Spanish).

MONDELLO: It starts the way it does in the U.S. You scoop up a glob of ice cream and plop it atop a cone. But sculpting these towers requires a lot of wrist action. The scoops aren't cupped, so they don't produce globes of ice cream. They are flat like pancake flippers or spatulas.

FAMA: (Speaking Spanish).

MONDELLO: So his employees create the shape of the inverted cone on the spatula.

FAMA: (Speaking Spanish).

MONDELLO: And then they sort of back it onto the waffle cone atop the lower layer.

FAMA: (Speaking Spanish).

MONDELLO: A flick of the wrist at the end - it's like a dance move - separates the spatula and leaves a tower. It's gorgeous. And it's just how they do it in Buenos Aires, everywhere, not just at Cadore. You don't get round scoops here. Fama, for whom all of this is second nature, thinks I'm making too much of appearances. He says as with a beautiful woman or a handsome man...

FAMA: (Speaking Spanish).

MONDELLO: ...You can put on your best clothes, best perfume. But ultimately, it comes down to the person. With ice cream, he says, it's the same.

FAMA: (Speaking Spanish).

MONDELLO: You can make it aesthetically pleasing, but then there's a moment when it's just you alone with the ice cream.

FAMA: (Speaking Spanish).

MONDELLO: In that moment...

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "VANILLA ICE CREAM")

BARBARA COOK: (Singing) Ice cream.

MONDELLO: ...The ice cream has to be special. I can certainly vouch for his. In Buenos Aires, and gaining pounds just by being here, I'm Bob Mondello.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "VANILLA ICE CREAM")

COOK: (Singing) Ice cream. And for the first time, we were together without a spat. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.