Thin, light, perfectly golden and crisp shell. Filled in the moment with lightly sweetened ricotta. One end dipped into chopped, toasted pistachios, the other in grated dark chocolate topped with a dab of caramelized orange. Excellent!

These arrived in under three minutes, and were refrigerator cold, both the filling and the shell, so they weren’t filled in the moment. And it showed. While the surface was crunchy, though a touch too dark for my tastes, the inner surface was not, and the shell more or less collapsed. Perhaps this is why they give you cutlery to eat them with. The ricotta filling is so packed with sugar it’s gritty. Add to that sweet chocolate chips and grated orange peel, and then only dip one end in chopped pistachios for a mediocre experience. These will not be repeated.

Panadería Italiana La Pompeya, Av. Independencia 1912, San Cristobal

The search continues. This is a small neighborhood bakery that for many years I’ve been buying breads and sfogliatelle from. Never tried their cannoli until today. They offer ten varieties, and fill and decorate them to order. I picked two favorites. First, the shell, beautifully cooked, though I found them a little thick. Then again, since these are to-go, that probably helps it survive being wrapped up and carried home for later consumption. The ricotta filling is delicious, just slightly sweet, and dipped on both ends into chopped pistachios. The chocolate one is good but not my cup of tea, the filling basically a soft, sweet chocolate ganache, and just too rich to eat more than a bite or two. The few bits of orange peel were a nice contrast.

The cannoli search moves on. Here, a near perfect shell, so thin that it cracks like an eggshell and melts on the tongue. The filling is a tangy ricotta that’s been pureed to a silky texture… perhaps with a touch of yogurt? Or have they used sheep’s milk ricotta, the traditional Sicilian filling? Just barely sweetened, studded with bits of dark chocolate, the ends dipped in crushed pistachios. Just a faint dusting of powdered sugar. Superb!

The search for the city’s best cannolo continues. Here is a worthy contender. The shell is thin, golden… perhaps slightly darker than I’d typically look for, but not at all burnt. The filling is good quality ricotta, studded with fine bits of lemon peel. It’s sweeter than I like, but for those with a sweet tooth, probably perfect. I do wish they dipped both ends in the chopped pistachios, because, well, pistachios. Instead of powdered sugar, it’s topped generously with superfine sugar… i.e., no cornstarch.

On we go to the next cannolo out there. I can’t say that this is a winner for me, in fact, it kind of defines mediocrity. The shell so thick that they bring a knife and fork to break into it. Which, I should have done, as biting into it, the entire thing broke into pieces and fell apart all over the table. The ricotta filling, barely sweetened, grainy, and just piped into the ends of the shell, leaving the middle empty. They were out of pistachios, and the offered candied orange peel was more like chopped fruit leather. Way too much powdered sugar. All around, a pass.

We have a true contender for the top cannoli spot. A thin, crisp, perfectly golden shell, lightly sweet ricotta flecked with fresh orange and lime zest, and ends dipped, one into pistachios, the other with caramelized orange peel. A light dusting of powdered sugar completes this stellar cannolo.

I was trying hard not to let the fact that they were out of chopped pistachios bias the experience. Already expecting that with chocolate this would be sweeter than my usual candidate, I hoped that it would be balanced by the tanginess of the ricotta. Unfortunately, this stand in the Mercado uses a “ricotta cream”, that seems to be an aggressively sweet puree of ricotta, sugar, and, perhaps, pastry cream? The texture is off for me, and the sugar level, added to by a mound of powdered sugar atop a reasonably good shell, just did me in, and I couldn’t eat more than a couple of bites. It’s questionable whether pistachios in the mix instead of chocolate would be much of an improvement.

After a superb bucatini alla amatriciana, I was ready for a top flight cannolo. And indeed, the shell, whisper thin and perfectly crisp, is up there. But, somewhat like the previous cannolo at Martinelli, the filling is a creamy puree that only vaguely hints at ricotta, and far more like it’s laden with icing sugar. It even has that sort of translucent coloration to it. It wasn’t as egregious as the previous one, and only a light dusting of more icing sugar didn’t push boundaries, but it’s just not my style of cannolo.

Okay, it just happened that I was around the corner from the original Martinelli, and I don’t know why, but I felt like after my bad review of the chocolate version at their stand in the Mercado, above, that I ought to at least try the traditional ricotta and pistachio at their original location. And, it turned out to be a good move, because it’s a completely different experience – both food and service. The filling is a ricotta and pistachio puree blend, which is actually really nice to have that pistachio flavor throughout. It’s sweeter than my preference but not remotely at the level of the chocolate one, and the dusting of powdered sugar was normal, not a snowdrift. Generous dipping into pistachios on one end and chocolate on the other.