Beat The Heat With This Retro Roman Beverage

Romans are no strangers to the heat: The city is set ablaze from late June to early September, when temperatures can easily approach 100 degrees Fahrenheit, especially brutal amid the Italian capital's intricate patchwork of centuries-old cobblestone streets. But while the Romans taught us many feats of engineering — from how to build aqueducts and roads to, more curiously, how to fit fast food chains around ancient ruins — they also mastered one way to beat the heat, all of which can be traced back to one particularly refreshing, retro-coded beverage: latte e menta, or milk and mint.

The recipe is exactly as simple as it sounds, but it's the perfect summer drink. All you need is chilled milk — full-fat, as the original version would have it, although skim, non-dairy, and other plant-based options can also work — poured over ice cubes with a dash of mint syrup. Fabbri would be the traditional choice, as it has been producing its brightly colored syrups since the 1920s, and its mint version — almost fluorescent in its garish green hue — gives the drink exactly the right dose of saccharine kitsch that the recipe calls for.

Latte e menta is a staple of 1970s and 1980s Roman memory: sweet, bright, and reminiscent of the slightly campy color palette of those decades. Its lack of sophistication is exactly why it's so endearing. It's the sort of nostalgic drink any Roman will remember their grandparents preparing at home or ordering during childhood at a local café ("bar") after a long, hot summer afternoon, when many restaurants in Italy are temporarily closed.

A latte e menta is to the Roman summer a bit like what an iced latte is to the United States. Indeed, the latter — outside of touristy spots or international chains like Starbucks — is not always an easy find in the Eternal City, where it's still a somewhat foreign concept. Take it from me: As someone who loves an iced coffee as much as anyone else, I've more often than not ended up being served a hot black coffee or cappuccino with a side of ice cubes. The closest you can get is a "shakerato" — a dairy-free espresso drink made by shaking espresso with ice and, typically, sugar, then straining it into a glass, often a martini glass. If you want the Roman way of cooling off, latte e menta is the way to go — although you might have to dig through the city's more traditional cafés nowadays to savor it in all its nostalgic glory.