Week of Italian Cuisine in the World
Aperitivo with mixologist Marco Zappia
Thursday, November 17 at 6:30pm CT
Casati’s Modern Italian
444 W Fullerton Pkwy, Chicago IL
On the occasion of the 7th edition of the Week of Italian Cuisine in the World, the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago and the Consulate General of Italy in Chicago, in collaboration with Casati’s Modern Italian, invited Minneapolis-based mixologist Marco Zappia to present a special cocktail hour where Italian food and Midwest botanicals will meet, at the crossroads of tradition and innovation.
Responding to the 2022 theme “Conviviality, sustainability and innovation: the ingredients of Italian cuisine for people’s health and the safeguard of the planet,” Marco Zappia will create three special cocktails using amari distilled with herbs and botanicals of the Midwest, which will complement Italian bites from Casati’s kitchen.
The Week of Italian Cuisine in the World is a yearly initiative promoted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
Marco Zappia is a hospitality professional and a nefarious drink slinger. After a vigorous childhood in Minneapolis, he headed west to Stanford and, eventually, to the patchouli-scented bosom of Berkeley. He quickly realized his brand of existential nihilism didn’t jive with California cool, and traveled east to the wine & cheese parties of Bard. He returned to Minneapolis to become a dishwasher and promptly fell in love with the big wide world of restaurants. He’s consulted on a masochistic number of openings across the country, trained hundreds of bartenders, and designed award-winning programs & cocktails that have been celebrated by Forbes, the James Beard Foundation, Esquire, Tales of the Cocktail, and Eater National.
This event is part of the series Voci della Natura: Ecologies and Nature in Italian Arts, the theme selected by the Italian Cultural Institute in Chicago for 2022. The program explores the role of Italian art and sciences in redefining the perception of nature and ecology, through new and original perspectives