Bologna

Bologna has given its name to perhaps the most famous pasta sauce in the world - Bolognese. Spaghetti Bolognese is possibly the best known Italian dish in the world, but the funny thing is you wont find it in Bologna. Here the sauce is called Ragu and is served with tagliatelle, not spaghetti. Another very famous product of this area is Bologna Sausage, which Amercans call Baloney and Australians call Mortadella.

One of the restaurants I that decide to try is called La Trattoria del Rosso, which has a very reasonably priced lunch menu and is almost always full. I started with the antipasto of mixed salumi served with a fresh creamy cheese and fresh fried dough crostini.


This was a great selection of four different salumi, including prosciutto and mortadella. The cheese was creamy and mild.

Of course had to try the ragu, but since the menu had both tagliatelle and tortelloni with ragu, I decideded to try the tortelloni.


The meat was very finely minced, even though different restaurants have different ragus, some chunkier than others. The pasta was very nicely cooked and I was full at two courses, a great lunch.

After spending several days walking around the town looking at all the chruches and sights of Bologna (it's a beautiful city and many of the sights are within walking distance of each other) and doing a bit of research on the internet about which restaurants to visit, I found some discussion of a restaurant called Ristorante Pappagallo, a very old school place (90 years old) which is very proud of it's history and has photos all over the walls of famous people eating there from many decades ago. Located under the shadow of the Two Towers (a major landmark near the centre of the town), Papagallo serves high-end Bolognese cuisine. I wasn't anywhere near hungry enough for a full meal, but I didn't want to miss out on the opportunity to eat here, so I decided on entree and dessert. To start, the risotto with prawns, apples and zucchini flowers grabbed my attention.


These flavours worked very well together and the rice was perfectly cooked and seasoned, I was very happy with this. For dessert I had the strawberry mousse with balsamic vinegar reduction.


The mousse was light, without being too airy, the flavour of strawberries was delicate and the blasamic balanced the sweetness with its acidity.

Bologna is an amazing place to visit and I would love to come back here again.