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Vintage 1972 Italian Fortnight Rainbow Room The Pierre NYC Menu Program
Previously owned original 1972 Italian Fortnight Rainbow Room and The Pierre La Forêt regional Italian dinner menu program showing moderate age-related handling and storage wear. Front white card stock cover displays overall toning, scattered small spots and smudges, a few shallow creases along the left edge, soft handling waves, and lightly rubbed and rounded lower corners, while the gilt Italian Fortnight title, Rainbow Room arc, and tricolor edge accents remain intact. Back cover shows uneven discoloration near the upper edge, a darker stain along the right margin, and additional marks and soiling toward the lower edge. Interior pages are lightly toned, clean, and fully legible with the fold secure, offered as a single multi-page menu program without an envelope or additional inserts.
Original vintage printed menu program created for "Italian Fortnight" at the Rainbow Room in New York City, documenting a January 20–February 5, 1972 series of regional Italian dinners presented in collaboration with La Forêt at The Pierre hotel.
The tall white card stock cover is framed in metallic gold and titled Italian Fortnight in matching gilt lettering at center, with THE RAINBOW ROOM arched across the lower border and slim red, white, and green bands echoing the Italian tricolore along the fore edge, giving the piece a restrained but glamorous early 1970s New York supper-club aesthetic.
Opening the program reveals a green title page repeating the Italian Fortnight heading above the date line January 20, 1972—February 5, 1972 and a SPONSORS section naming CIGA HOTELS and other Italian luxury brands, followed by pages introducing CIGA HOTELS Compagnia Italiana Dei Grandi Alberghi with a roster of grand hotels in Rome, Firenze, Lido (Venezia), Milano, Stresa, Torino, and additional cities, together with the stylized Ciga crown-and-horses logo.
Further pages carry promotional text under the bold headline EVERYBODY SHOULD BE ITALIAN AT LEAST ONCE A YEAR, celebrating Italian Line travel, along with full-page graphic advertisements for Gucci, Salvatore Ferragamo, Pirelli, and Montedison USA, Inc., reinforcing the event's positioning as a showcase for contemporary Italian style, fashion, and industry.
A spread titled A Program of Italian Regional Cooking outlines the nightly schedule for the festival, pairing regions such as Tuscany, Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, Liguria, Emilia, Abruzzo-Molise, Lazio, Campania, Romagna-Marche, Calabria, Sicily, Apulia, and Sardinia with their principal cities and specific January and February dates, and announcing Regional Dinners priced at $11.75 with an à la carte menu available in the centerfold.
Within the CUCINA REGIONALE ITALIANA centerfold, successive pages present complete fixed-price menus for particular evenings at La Forêt in The Pierre, including Veneto, Lazio, Sicilia, and Emilia-Romagna dinners, each framed by an ornate border and dated individually—for example Friday, January 21, 1972; Saturday, January 29, 1972; and Saturday, February 5, 1972—with multi-course progressions of antipasti, soups, pastas, fish and meat dishes, contorni, and desserts such as Cannoli alla Siciliana, Torta Mimosa, and Torta alla Modenese followed by Caffè.
An appealing piece of Rainbow Room and The Pierre hotel restaurant history, as well as early 1970s New York Italian festival and culinary ephemera, suitable for framing, display, or addition to collections of vintage menus, luxury hotel brochures, Italian regional cooking memorabilia, and advertising material from Gucci, Ferragamo, Pirelli, and Ciga Hotels.
MSC198-218
