Petra & Frank Mehler emailed me a nice photo of a curious plate they recently encountered in a restaurant in Rome:
Yes, it is indeed Luigi Serafini‘s signature in the corner:
It turns out that Luigi Serafini is (when in Rome) a regular visitor to the Armando al Pantheon restaurant, Salita de Crescenzi 31, Rome, which is where the Mehlers saw the plate. The menu explains…
Nostro Amico da Sempre, Luigi Serafini, ha creato per noi il logo del Ristorante. Per chi si domandasse il significato del disegno vi do l’interpretazione che ci e’ stata data da lui : Il foro del Pantheon, compie attraverso il suo linguaggio, una metamorfosi trasformandosi in Uovo. Ora, simbolicamente, per Luigi Serafini, l’Uovo e’ Appunto l’inizio del tutto… quindi essendo alla fine del disegno… L’Uovo Primordiale e’ al Centro dell’Universo e porta con se Il Pantheon e di conseguenza « Armando al Pantheon » !!!
Translating freely for flow and fun (rather than for strict accuracy), I think this means:-
Our restaurant’s logo was designed for us by our Eternal Friend Luigi Serafini. For those who would ask us its meaning, feel free to interpret the explanation that he gave: that the hole [at the top of the Pantheon’s dome] undergoes a linguistic metamorphosis into an egg. Now symbolically, according to Serafini, the Egg is eggsactly the beginning of everything… so placing it at the end of the design shifts the Primordial Egg to the Center of the Universe, thereby bringing with it the Pantheon and consequently the “Armando al Pantheon”!
Indeed, if you stand in the middle of the Pantheon in Rome (which is, unsurprisingly, only a few steps away from the restaurant) and look right up, do you not see a Cosmic Fried Egg hidden in plain sight in the cupola overhead?
