Centifonti's

We'd never been to downtown La Mesa before. It was like a slice of Americana walking down that street. There were all kinds of mom 'n pop stores mixed in with restaurants, antique stores, and so on.

The not-British guy at All Things Bright and British recommended Centifonti's for ice cream.

He told us all the ice cream (it was actually gelato) was housemade. We didn't realize it was a sit down restaurant. There seemed to be only one or two people working. I ended up going to the outside patio while Bert and TC ordered their gelatos, which took forever because of the lack of staff.

Both TC and Bert got the small sized gelato ($4 each): Blood Orange Vanilla Cream for her and Pistachio for Bert.

This was the view from our table...

The color of Bert's gelatow as rather unnaturally green. Bert got me a couple of chocolate covered Oreos (.65 each).

The one on the left was dipped in milk chocolate with bits of toffee. The other Oreo was dipped in dark chocolate and had milk chocolate stripes. 

They were both delicious but I could only manage a few bites since I was on sugar overload.

Bert artfully scraped his gelato into a point; it reminded me of those onion buildings in the Kremlin.

The view of Centifonti's across the street.

Oh yeah, the photo above should really be last, but whatever.  Here were the items we bought at the British store...I can't wait to try out those Maldo sea salt flakes for some future recipes involving chocolate, caramel, and brownies. The Bounty Bar was Bert's as well as the Elderflower Presse. We had the Bounty bar later that evening. It tasted just like a dark chocolate coconut Mounds bar. The Sherbet fountain was TC's pick - it was a fizzy cylinder of sherbet flavored powder with a stick of licorice in the middle.

We took off from La Mesa and headed over to University Heights.

I figured, we went to one British store. Let's go to another one!

This was a really wierd candy. The powdery cylinder was solid enough to be licked. I think the idea is to hold onto the licorice stick and lick the powder, then you could eat the licorice when you were done. TC hates licorice so that remained uneated.

Our next stop...a shop whose moniker stands for the Cockney Rhyming Slang, "Cup of Tea"...