One of my favourite observations of everyday life in Rome is seeing people carrying little packages from their local pasticceria. Small cakes and pastries, carefully placed into an elegant box or wrapped in paper and tied with ribbon, you’ll spot these being transported all around the city if you look closely. Whether it’s a special occasion or just a coffee and chat with friends, merenda (an afternoon snack) is a big deal here so you’ll find pastry shops in every neighbourhood.
Take one glance at Fonderia in Prati, however, and you’ll see a pasticceria unlike others. From the precisely chosen typeface of the name above the door, to the simple black and white colour scheme, it’s clear to see that aesthetics are very important here.
“We are different from the rest. In the pastry shops and the bakeries, bakers started to be designers, we are just the opposite. We were designers who started to be bakers.”
Co-founder Camilla worked in advertising for six years before having the idea of a pasticceria which doesn’t conform to the traditional approach and always keeps one eye on the image of the business.
However, don’t get the impression that the food is of secondary importance. The name Fonderia (meaning foundry) was chosen to demonstrate a melting pot between chocolate, design and pastry.
“We try to get the best desserts from all different locations, so we make brownies in the style of America, or a great cheesecake. We’re trying to make some good French pastry too. So we create a mix that you can’t find normally in Rome, and then we give it this design touch – the store, the display, the packaging, everything,” says Camilla.
Camilla explains that her passion emerged from following food blogs
online and experimenting with baking at home. After meeting her business partner Marco, in cooking classes, they joined together in their shared greed and love of desserts. A pastry chef was brought on board and Fonderia was born. With this background, the provenance and quality of ingredients is very important here. Only organic eggs are used and as Camilla told me (on more than one occasion) “We don’t ask for strawberries in Winter.” The selection, as with every Italian kitchen, follows the changing of the seasons and availability of ingredients.
Proof of their high standards is in every bite of their pastries, which are made entirely from scratch in their laboratory kitchen in the EUR district of Rome. One of the bestsellers, lemon meringue pie, sums up what I like about Fonderia. Each flavour is clear, identifiable, and tastes, quite simply, of what it should. Buttery pastry, sweet whipped meringue and a sharp shot of lemon. Exactly what a lemon meringue pie should contain and exactly what’s needed for a superior taste.
Embracing my own greed I also sampled the Bignè, a light choux pastry bun filled with salted caramel cream. Coated and baked with a super thin layer of biscuit for a crispy outer blanket of crunch, it’s so good I couldn’t eat it fast enough.
A final recommendation for the real sweet tooth’s among us is the chocolate cupcake. With an excessive but delicious ratio of almost fifty percent icing to sponge, it delivers a huge cocoa hit.
This small shop in Prati is only a part of the Fonderia business. The rest of the working week is filled with creating bespoke decorated cakes for parties and with luxury event catering, both savoury and sweet. Once a month, at the laboratory in EUR, the owners and chefs’ taste, test and develop new products. One of their current works in progress, is an ice cream cookie sandwich which will almost certainly mean a return visit for me in the summer months.
If you would like to take home a carefully designed and created package of dolci from Fonderia, expect to pay a little more, with prices starting at around £2.50 per item. You can find beautifully designed stores on Via Fabio Massimo 79 and Via Fontanellato 50.
