Today in Food on Fridays, we take a look at the comeback of the Dolomiti.

As you may recall, Chris and I spent a little more than 3 years living in Bolzano, Italy, a place that I always described as a town “nestled at the foot of the Dolomite mountain range.”  Every day I would walk around town and catch a glimpse of the Dolomiti, as they are called in Italian.

But here in Tübingen we’ve run across Dolomiti of a different sort:

That’s a big poster advertising the frozen ice cream pop called Dolomiti. Here’s a translation of the text from the sign:

Comeback des Jahres!  – “Comeback of the Year”
So lecker wie früher – jetzt probieren. – “As tasty as before – try it now.”
Original Waldmeistergeschmeck – original Waldmesiter taste

Right. Now we just need to figure out what Waldmeister is. I looked in the online  German>English dictionary that I normally use, dict.cc., and it translates Waldmeister as “wild baby’s breath” or “woodruff”. Hmm. I’m having trouble imaging this as an ice cream flavor. I’ve only see baby’s breath in bouquets of roses; I never thought to try eating one.

Anyway, click here to go to the webpage for the Dolomiti pops The webpage is in German, just like the print ad in the photo above, which makes sense since the brand, Langnese, is only marketed in Germany. It’s a sub-brand of the giant international corporation Unilever, which markets different products in different countries under different names.They own tons of brands: for example, the American Good Humor brand has been owned by Unilever since the 1960s. Who knew.

Anyway, the name for this particular German ice cream pop is Dolomiti, which is an Italian word, not a German one. The Dolomiti mountains are in Italy, though, but the region is more German-speaking, as historically it was Austrian. So, people in that area speak German as well as Italian.

But that’s neither here nor there, and it also does not explain why the video ad on that German webpage is sung in English. To see the video, scroll mid-way down the page (look for where it says “Film”). Yup, the lyrics are all in English:  “… Like ice in the sunshine, I’m melting awa-ay, on this sunny day.” In the video, the cartoon kids are snowboarding down the mountain, evoking surfing images from this old Langnese ad from the 1980s, which covered  a variety of their products, not just the Dolomiti pops (watch closely, though, and you’ll see a little girl eating a Dolomiti pop in the old ad).

Anyway, watching the video may also give you a sense of why the pops are called Dolomiti:  the 3 “peaks” at the top of the pop are supposed to represent the spiky peaks of the Dolomite mountain range.  My guess is that we can interpret the white on top as the snowy peaks, the green on the bottom are the trees in the valley,  and the red in the middle is supposed to suggest the rosy glow these peaks get at sunset:

Now, a friend, who grew up in Germany but who currently lives in Bolzano, recalls how the Dolomiti pops were quite popular when he was a kid.  Apparently his Facebook friends have been all a twitter (as it were) about how the Dolomiti pops have made their comeback, as it was their favorite as kids.  Our friend, though, preferred to get his Waldmeister taste from a product called Wassereis-Sticks.

I’m sure that I’ve seen my niece and nephews eating stuff like this in the recent past in Florida, but I don’t know what they are called there, or what brand makes them. I remember them being around when I was a kid as well, but I don’t know what they were called then, either.

As I turns out, I couldn’t find the Wassereis Sticks here in Tübingen today, but I did discover that it was possible to buy a Dolomiti pop. So I did. Well, Chris and I have to try these things to complete our food research. 😉 Here’s what it looks like in person:

So where do I begin about the taste? Each color had a distinctive flavor: the white part Chris identified as lemon, the red part I said was raspberry, and the green part — well, I said that it was sort of like green apple, but it wasn’t a good green apple. In fact, it was particularly off-putting. Blech. Each color actually merged with the one above in spots, so perhaps taken together they were the mythical Waldmeister taste?

Well, probably not. Chris did a little bit of additional research and discovered that you can purchase the Waldmeister flavor as a green syrup that you add to things. So it now seems likely that the green stuff was the Waldmeister flavor.

Personally, based on the flavor of that green part of the pop, I have one word: Blech.

We will only confirm that the Waldmeister syrup is the same as the green taste in the Dolomiti pop, though, if Chris is willing to sample things made with that syrup. You’ll have to encourage Chris to try them – personally, I found the green layer of the Dolomiti pop so disgusting I am loathe to try anything Waldmeister flavored again.

Of course, truth be told, both of us abandoned the Dolomiti pop after just a quick bite of the green layer,  quickly reaching for a piece of chocolate to wash away the taste of the Dolomiti before we had eaten very much of it.

Ah well. More fun to blog about than try, as it turns out. I guess it’s really aimed at a younger (i.e. kid’s) pallete, at least the palette of a kid who hasn’t yet tasted a truly good gelato. I doubt that a Dolomiti pop will replace regular gelato as our frozen treat of choice anytime soon… I’m just saying.

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But while we’re on the subject of gelato, that reminds me —  I’ve got big news! My book, Life on a Gelato Diet, is now available in paperback. This seemed like a good day to bring this up. After all, the title of my book was inspired by the fact that when Chris and I first moved to Bolzano, I ate a scoop of gelato everyday because everyday I really was “melting awa-ay on this sunny day.” As the say. 😉

Anyway, you can click here to order your paperback copy from Amazon today. Thanks!