character:

Here’s what Campari & Soda is: It is wearing a bright red silk shirt, unbuttoned at least a third of the way down the chest, with white pants. Not (obviously) something one selects with anything close to hesitancy. Not a maybe or perhaps or do you think this works for me type of thing. Assolutamente no. The thing has to be done with confidence; in fact, more than confidence; it has to be done with bravado. With a sort of warm-weather deep-tan dark-hair Mediterranean swagger that says, Si, this is who I am: I am a man who refuses to wear socks with dress pants; I am a man who has to ask himself which of his white pants he wishes to wear, today; I am a man who might pour Campari & Sodas for an Italian heiress on his veranda while cooking her a six course meal and discussing which Tuscan villa we wish to visit next. And you, what will you have?


tastes like:

Laughter, in Italian.


pairs nicely with:

Ten minutes before lunch, ten minutes after work, and the ten minutes between finishing lunch and deciding not to return to work and that the balance of the afternoon would be better spent in a café watching Italian football; any production of L'elisir d'amore in which the audience laughs more than it cries, any production of La fille du régiment in which the audience laughs more than it cries, and any Italian football match in which the audience laughs more than it cries; seaside café tables, the type of man (so typically Milanese) capable of wearing gorgeous designer dress shoes with no socks, and the type of woman (ditto) capable of wearing a gorgeous designer dress with no shoes; carrying on a café conversation about football with an Italian man entirely in improvisational sign language, carrying on café conversation with an Italian woman, on an entirely different subject, entirely in improvisational sign language, and ending both conversations by being told that one is mistaken about football and other things by way of a rather universal bit of signing.