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I saw this advert in Sirmione - something to do with cold cuts of meat...

It says "Con il caldo... Stiamo al fresco!"

Does it mean "With the heat, we are outside!"? But that doesn't seem to make much sense to me! What is the idiomatic meaning in English?

For a bit more context the advert was basically a bunch of dry cured meats, hanging in a larder. So a few sausages and a big leg of prosciutto. Nothing else except the words at the top. I wondered if the ad was the meats addressing the viewer! Presumably it is..

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    Welcome to Italian.SE!
    – Charo ♦
    Aug 26, 2018 at 21:08
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    We probably need more details about the ad. Was it about refrigeration? Literally “with the heat, we stay cool” appears to refer to refrigeration.
    – user519
    Aug 26, 2018 at 21:19
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    According to Treccani dictionary, "stare al fresco" also means be in jail, in prison. So maybe the sentence intended to be a pun.
    – Charo ♦
    Aug 27, 2018 at 8:11
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    The pun mentioned by @Charo is definitively relevant, otherwise the slogan would be meaningless. It's not especially fun, but such slogans often include puns. Apparently, here the reference is to the meats being in a larder, a kind of (cold) prison.
    – DaG
    Aug 27, 2018 at 8:24
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    @dag Thanks for this info, I think it definitely makes sense for the slogan to be a pun, the exclamation marks suggest there's some kind of a joke involved.
    – El Ronnoco
    Aug 27, 2018 at 8:33

2 Answers 2

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It translates exactly to "With the heat... we stay cool", but I actually don't like it, it's not entirely correct.

Stiamo means We stay and al fresco translates to in a cool place, meaning a fresh place, the opposite of a heated place. So, the correct translation would be "With the heat, we stay in a cool/fresh place"

EDIT: User Gio made a good points, as it actually can be very different according to the situation. In case of an ad for a refrigerator (or ice cream, or something similar) it actually means "With the heat, we remain cool".

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    Maybe you could complete your answer adding the information about the pun mentioned in the comments.
    – Charo ♦
    Aug 27, 2018 at 8:35
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If the sign "Con il caldo... Stiamo al fresco!" was in the window of a butcher shop AND if no meat was exposed in said window... then the meaning is that due to the heat it was unhealty to leave the meat in sight from the street and that it was instead kept into the shop's cold room.

Further, as was mentioned in comments, there is an undertext pun, because "stare al fresco" means also "to be in jail" and you can compare the status of the meat in the cold cell to a person kept in a jail cell.

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    I'd like to add that, without the sign, a customer could be surprised to see no meat exposed in the windows and wonder if the butcher has no more meat to sell!
    – Poldo Sbaffini
    Sep 7, 2018 at 9:11

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