We think this ad for Fernet Branca, an Italian amaro or “bitter” made of herbs and spices, that is usually served as a digestif after a meal but may also be served with coffee and espresso or mixed into coffee and espresso drinks.

The text atop the bottle reads, “This could have been an ad for sexy lingerie, but we bought the space first.”  Below the bottle, in smaller type, it says, “Life is Bitter.”

Here at the compound, we love amari or bitters, but recognize that they’re an acquired taste.  In an article in the Atlantic Monthly, Wayne Curtis described the process of learning to enjoy these quintessentially Italian drinks:

Your first sip of Fernet Branca, an Italian liqueur, will be akin to waking up in a foreign country and finding a crowd of people arguing in agitated, thorny voices outside your hotel window. It’s an event that’s at once alarming and slightly thrilling, and leaves you wanting to know more.

You can read the rest of his article here, in which he details a visit to the Fernet Branca factory and describes the drink as “the taste of a time that’s long since passed us by.”  Time is not passing by Fernet Branca’s ad executives, however, who seem to be keeping up with the times just fine.

Advertising Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Copenhagen, Denmark
Copywriter: Mikkel Elung-Jensen
Art Director: Claus Collstrup

We wish we’d seen these ad last week, but being still a bit in the Halloween spirit here at the Compound (and being generally charmed by the ads of Esselunga, an Italian supermarket chain, the advertising of which we’ve highlighted before) we thought we’d go ahead and drop these onto your screen despite the fact that Aglioween has already passed us by.

Esselunga’s ad designers showed a tendency to dress food up in funny costumes in 2008, the year that these sweet ‘n savories were released.  Aglioween – an ad in which heads of garlic or aglio have donned witches hats – is just hilarious.  And we love the American Gothic look of the aglio e olio or garlic and oil version below as well.

Faithful readers of eCool will know that here in the Compound we did almost everything made by Worldwide Fred, from their Jesus! Look at the Time! Watch to their Roman Numerals Birthday Candles to their Holy Toast Bread Stamp, they simply crack us up.

In the interest of humor (and knowing that some of you are eager to get a head start on the Christmas shopping) we’ve decided to showcase another of their products today.  Called Spongioli, these ravioli-style pop-up sponges are packaged as if they’re pockets of gourmet pasta filled with cheesy goodness! What better tool to wipe the pesto or ragu from your counter tops?

You can order your Spongioli here.  And if you want to know what sauce to mop up with this particular type of spongy pasta, you’re probably going to get a copy of Oretta Zanini De Vita’s brand-new and magisterial Encyclopedia of Pasta, described by Rachel Donadio in the New York Times as “a social history disguised as a food book.”

Buon appetito!  And stay tuned for more gift-giving suggestions as the holidays grow near.  We’ll help you find the perfect gift for every Rome-antic in your life.

Two years ago, we covered a very exciting event that took place in the southern city of Sala Consilina.  There, a team of mozzarella masters crafted the world’s largest mozzarella, by braiding together three 70 meter coils of mozzarella to create a cheese plait that was 56.5 meters long and 30 centimeters in diameter. In doing so, the cheese makers topped their own 2006 record by adding 13.7 meters to the length of length to the 2007 mozzarella.

Well, eCoolers, guess what?  They’ve done it again at Sala Consilina!  Last Sunday, 40 cheese makers in the town broke their two-year-old record when they created a braid 78.8m long and 10cm thick. It took only 78 minutes to complete the feat in which some 4 tons of milk, 1/2 ton of curd, and 100 kilograms of salt were used!

In celebration of the ongoing Fashion Week in Milan and in an effort to aid the earthquake-stricken region of Abruzzo, Italian fashion designers Donatella Versace, Alberta Ferretti, Anna Molinari for Blumarine, Veronica Etro, Silvia Venturini for Fendi, Consuelo Castiglioni for Marni, Angela Missoni, and Rossella Jardini for Moschino teamed up with Coca Cola to design fabulously fashionable bottles.

Though there are some great studio photos of these available, we’re more entertained by those that show over-sized versions of the bottles careening down the runway.  Those above are by Alberta Ferretti (left), Missoni (center), and Consuelo Castiglioni for Marni (right).

While the Ferretti, Missoni, and Marni bottles are nice, it’s those by Versace (above) and Moschino (below) that are really fab.  The pink convertible on the top of the Versace bottle (above) is really cute and anything that displays the witty Moschino aesthetic  – even girly-girl Coke bottles – makes us happy.

The new designs – like those of Anna Molinari for Blumarine (below, left) and  Veronica Etro (below, right) went on sale in Milan on 25 September.  Profits from sales will be used to help young women from the Abruzzo area find scholarships that will enable them to further their educations.

When it’s hot in Rome (and it’s currently HOT in Rome), gelato becomes a staple of the diet.  The newspapers publish articles letting the public know that gelato IS a nutritious food and it seems that every man, woman, child, and nun on the street is licking at a cone or digging a spoon into a cup.

Depending on your attitude, stopping for a gelato in Rome can be a simple thing or it can become very complicated.  There’s an endless number of gelato stores–some are good and others are much better.  If all you’re looking for is a cooling feeling in your mouth and your throat, than any place will do.

Here at the Compound things are more complicated.  We’re not willing to settle for just any gelato as we find some to be pretty terrible.  We won’t name names here, but our advice is to stay away from any chain with neon signs bright enough to light up a piazza.

For some years, our eCool team  was unable to choose a favorite gelateria.  Some of us joined the Obama girls in arguing for the old-fashioned Giolitti–shown in Susan Sanders‘ wonderful photo above–while others of us were able to ignore the snobbishness of the infinitely praised San Crispino long enough to enjoy their frozen delights.

In the heat of this summer, however, we’ve eaten a lot of gelato and we seem to be coming to a consensus.  The branch of San Crispino nearest the Compound has CLOSED during this sweltering August, so they’ve been crossed off the list.  We always love the old-fashioned charm of Giolitti (as captured in Susan’s photo above) but sometimes it’s just too much to wade through the sea of tourists for a taste of pink grapefruit sorbet.

So what have we been eating?  This summer the entire eCool team has become entirely enamored with Gelateria Corona at Largo Arenula 27 (there’s another branch nearby at via dell’Ara Coeli) which the Gambero Rosso guide calls one of the best 12 gelato stops in Rome.  It’s a tiny place.  The flavors change daily.  Don’t miss the mint, the vanilla, the infinite rotation of innovative chocolates, and in this heat, it’s hard to do better than the lemon and basil granita.  We’re off to get some now.

We’re pretty much in love with this advertising campaign designed for a German pasta maker, Mondo Pasta.  The huge faces seen above were mounted on boats in Hamburg, Germany.  As you’ve probably already deduced, the ropes coming out of their mouths suggest enthusiastic slurping.  The tagline reads: “Mondo Pasta. So good you can’t let go.”

If the truth be known, sometimes we get a little desparate and overwhelmed here at the eCool Compound and need to turn off our brains.  That’s when we turn on the TV and watch an Italian variety show: we admire the handsomeness and cleverness of the host, we gaze in awe at the costumes and hairstyles sported by his flotilla of dancing women, we giggle at the silly things our suave host does and says, and we listen patiently to the commentary from nervous audience members who greet their entire off-screen family before getting around to asking a question.

That’s not why we watch those shows, though.  What we really like are the food commercials.  They’re so animated!  We can get ourselves whipped up into a frenzy when the cheese rises from the table and starts to sing (Pa-pa-pa-parmigiano! Watch that commerical here), the tomatoes start to dance, and the pasta jumps into the pan on its own.  That’s when we know all is right with the world and that makes us happy!

And so we were exceedingly pleased when photographer Susan Sanders made her way up to the eCool Compound with these photos in her trusty camera. It seems sthat she’d been out watching last week’s final stage of the Giro d’Italia, a time trial that took place on the streets of the Eterna, when she found herself surrounded with Italian food products that had grown wheels and were driving about the streets of the city!

A block of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, complete with the kind of cheese knife that should be used for breaking it into chunks, had sprung atop a minivan and was wheeling its way through Rome!  A short period later it was followed by a giant jar of zucchini (we think) sott’olio, that is preserved in oil, a delicious appetizer that had mounted a small pickup truck and was crusing through Piazza Venezia.

For more photos by Susan, visit her Rome With a View blog.

Sorry for the radio silence, eCoolers.  We’ve been finishing up a couple of big projects here in the Compound and had to focus all our energies on getting them done.  But now we’re back to tell you about a great event that happened on Piazza del Campidoglio this morning: Marcus Aurelius declared his status as a locavore, joining Coldiretti, the Italian farmer’s union, in a campaign meant to promote “real” Italian food (rather than that imported from other countries), as well as to reassure Italians that Italian pork is safe and is not a cause of swine flu.

At 10:30am, hundreds of farmers waving yellow Coldiretti flags and wearing yellow caps were gathered in Piazza del Campidoglio amidst a sea of balloons.  Signs on the piazza, such as those shown below, made their mission clear.  One (below, left) read, “Four out of five cartons of UHT (ultra-high-temperature) pasturized milk are foreign but their labels don’t say that,” while another (below, right) suggested that Italians should only be eating Italian pork.

The publicity was hard to resist, accompanied as it was by the wonderful aroma of roasting pork, as the farmers were hard at work slicing prosciutto, salami, porchetta; roasting sausage and thinly sliced pork; and even making ricotta cheese right there on the piazza designed by Michelangelo in the 16th century.  Tourists and Romans alike milled about happily snacking on the delicious Italian delicacies and declaring their allegiance to Italian-made products as they wiped the crumbs from their face.

Though we didn’t stick around to witness his descent from the Palazzo dei Senatori, we’re told that Gianni Alemanno, Rome’s mayor ,came out of his office for a noon-time snack and nibbled on some prosciutto and salami before making a brief speech in which he assured his listeners that swine flu could not be contracted by eating pork, that the Italian food supply is among the safest in the world, and that those products unique to Italy must be defended as part of the country’s cultural heritage.

As events like today’s manifestazione or demonstration suggest, the Coldiretti union is a great defender of food as an important part of Italian culture.  In April, they announced that Italy has the unusual honor of being the most-faked country of origin for agricultural produce in the world, estimating that over 50 billion euros are made each year in the proudction of counterfeit Italian food products.  To make the point, they set up a museum of “fake foods” for deligates to the Agriculture G8 meeting in Cison di Valmarino, Italy.  Those countries in which fake Italian foods are most common are the U.S., Austrialia, and New Zealand, though such counterfeiting is becoming increasingly common in China as well. Featured in the G8 museum were blocks of parmigiano romano made in Illinois with cow’s milk rather than the requisite sheep’s milk, parma ham produced in Spain, fake Tuscan and Milanese salamis, and much more.

Here at the eCool Compound, we’re big admirers of the Alice-Waters-sanctioned Rome Sustainable Food Project at the American Academy in Rome.  If you don’t know about this project, then you should click on over and read the recent New York Times article detailing the endeavor.

The project is headed up by Mona Talbott, a former Chez Panisse chef, who was chosen by  Waters to transform the AAR’s formerly industrialized meals into delicious feasts of local and organic foods.  To say that she and her team have succeeded would be a huge understatement.  The food served at the American Academy is now some of the best in Rome, in particular for the way in which it honors the wonderful wealth of local produce available in central Italy.

In the quest for fresh and delicious ingredients, the Rome Sustainable Food Team has relied on one man in particular, Giovanni Bernabei, a farmer who delivers fresh goods to the AAR and whose produce is  available to those without an Academy meal ticket by means of a bi-monthly organic market held in Vicolo della Moretta, just off the Via Giulia.

Proud of his connection to Alice Waters–whose efforts to transform the way we eat have reached as far as the White House where Michelle and Barack Obama planted an organic garden some weeks ago–Bernabei spent most of his time at last week’s market proudly advertising the press he got in the New York Times article about the Rome Sustainable Food Project.  We stood in line (cheerfully) for a long time waiting to buy potatoes and green garlic and watching as Bernabei passed out photocopies of the New York Times article and carefully adjusted a sign (appropriately taped to a hoe) that read, “The farmer that inspired Obama is here.  Giovanni Bernabei.”