While the food in Venice was fine, it wasn't the level of amazement that I was expecting from food in Italy. But the food in Bologna?!? Holy fuck - even if you aren't into food, it's definitely worth a stop on your Italian itinerary. The culinary capital of Italy is in the Emilia-Romagna region - it's where you find Bologna, Modena and Parma and some of the best food you'll ever have anywhere. Bologna is also a quaint old university town, so it's a bit bigger than the other two sleepy cities.
As soon as we walked into town, I knew that I would love it there. There aren't a lot of tourists but with the influx of students there lots of people still speak English. What's also great about it being a student friendly city is that you can find lots of affordable eats. After settling in our hotel for a bit, we headed to Osteria Dell'Orsa, which I had read was popular with the student crowd. They weren't kidding. Despite it being almost 2pm, the place was spilling over with locals and college kids. It's a pretty casual eatery with large communal tables inside and small outdoor seating in the front of it. Somehow, we miraculously got a seat right away outside. Although everyone here speaks English, the menus were pure Italian - love it. It really tested my knowledge but we ended up getting the caprese salad (8 euro) to start and we split the taglitatelle bolognese (6 euro) and the tortellini (10 euro). Yes, you read those prices correctly. One of the best things about being in a smaller city, is that the prices are so much more reasonable. The caprese salad was HUGE - it was a kitchen sized mixing bowl of super ripe red sliced tomatoes, wedges of mozzarella and lots of green olives. It's served pretty plainly but they give you salt and local Modena balsamic vinegar and olive oil to mix it up. I would have preferred less tomatoes and more mozz but it was still a incredibly fresh and tasty dish. Next came the pasta - now this is what I've been waiting for. While we had some pasta in Venice, none of it tasted really authentic. But that wasn't the case here. They both tasted homemade, fresh and they were just the right amount of food. Everyone here eats their bolognese sauce with taglitatelle pasta so don't look for spaghetti pasta - the sauce was hearty and flavorful and it reminded me of why I love red sauce pastas. The tortellini (this is THE famous local pasta here) was stuffed with cheese and local Parma ham and tossed in a cream sauce which wasn't too heavy. Both dishes were fantastic and for less than 10 euros, how can you beat that?!
Since the pasta portions weren't too big, we had some room left for tiramisu - the first time and only time we had it on the trip. It was sweet and good but it didn't have a ton of lady fingers in it, so it felt like it was missing a key ingredient to it. But overall I can't really complain much about our meal here. The total bill for all of this delicious food plus a small beer was 32 euros for 2 people. I love fucking this city.
Trattoria Di Vi Serra Via Luigi Serra 9B, 40129 Bologna, Italy 5 Forks
If you ever want to go into the restaurant business, please take a page from this place because it's everything and more that a 5 star restaurant should be: warm and friendly service, cozy setting, amazing menu and fantastic food. If you plan to go here, reservations are an absolute must. As we walked in, a dejected couple walked out and said "I hope you have a reservation" - which I had made over a month ago. The restaurant is totally off the beaten path in an area that's no where really near anything but it's still easy enough to find with GPS.
You are immediately greeted by the owner (Flavio) when you walk in and he was so so nice. He told us that the restaurant was strangely full of tourists that night but that they generally catered to locals but he was more than happy to have all of us there. The menu here was again all in Italian but the words were much harder to read so he graciously went through the entire menu in perfect English which I'm sure he must have done 10 times that night with all the other non-Italians in the restaurant. Everything sounded amazing - sophisticated but not snotty at all. I seriously wanted every god damn thing on the menu but we settled on the ricotta (18 euros) to start, the pasta special of the night (sorry, I can't remember what is was but it started with a "G"), meatballs (16 euros) and a selection of salumi. I also got a glass of lambrusco, which happens to not only be a local wine to this region but is also one of my favorite wines ever and it was only 2.50 euros. Heaven.
The ricotta was mixed with other cheeses, sprinkled with panko crumbs and lightly fried in a flat pancake like shape and served with sour cream and local jam. Amazing and light. The pasta was pre-split into two plates and was simply gorgeous. It made me wish that we had room for 2 pastas...I really don't know how Italians do it. It was served with a non-red sauce pork ragu-type sauce that was so good that it made me forget that I had just declared my loyalty to red sauce earlier in the day. The pasta was perfectly al dente with the right amount of chewiness to it Next was the meatballs which was a mix of different kinds of meat and served with porcini mushrooms - super moist and great mushroom mix. Finally we got the salumi plate - a wonderful mix of thinly sliced cured meats. I could seriously eat like this every day of my life. We ended the meal with a refreshing apricot ginger sorbet - it was a nice respite from the heavy meat and cream we had over the course of the day. The owner checked on us constantly and you could tell he really had a lot of pride for the food there. A meal of this caliber in NYC would have easier been over $100/pp, especially with the multiple glasses of wine I had. But in Bologna, the total bill was 64 euros for two people. I was flabbergasted. I don't how that is even possible but this was THE experience I had been waiting for in Italy and the fact that it was practically the cost of brunch in NYC made it even better. I would gladly make another trip to Bologna to come back again.
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