Bologna!

Day One 

The journey from Venice to Bologna Centrale station takes about an hour and a half, and en route, the little cart offers a selection of beverages and a salty or sweet packet snack - we had the little olive oil flavoured crackers (plain yet somehow tasty in a savoury way) and this other sweet biscuit - popular Italian snacks found in every supermarket, I guess.

Feel myself coming down with a slight cold - which doesn’t alarm me per se (silly me for not wrapping up warmly enough today, wanting to be more comfortable on the train ride) except that if I got a real cold it would mean I can’t taste food properly - which is, as you can imagine, devastating. So I’m trying to be good and keep warm more adequately from now on.

We arrived in Bologna and checked into the very charming BnB, also via good old Trip Advisor - the Antica Residenza D’Azeglio. It’s on the second floor of a building and our room “the Green Room” came with a nice spacious sitting room. The owner kept trying to feed us from the moment we arrived with various sandwiches and pastries but we wanted to have a proper lunch instead - Roberto (the owner) recommended that we go to Trambuli, an iconic local deli that had an eating area at the back.

But we had to hurry as the eating part of it closed around 3ish.

We took a walk down to the Piazza Maggiore, and located Trambuli - interesting assortments of mortedella (a specialty Bologna sausage), cheeses, freshly made pasta galore, including the tortellini, which the region is famous for. The lunch selection (self service) that was left wasn’t great, but we were starving and settled for a plate of tortellini in ragu (basically bolognaise) sauce, and the mortedella sausage, which came drenched in a salty sundried tomato and crushed onion sauce. Both were quite tasty, but a bit cold. And it was a cold day! by then my cold had become a single-nostril blocked nose, and I was terrified that soon delicious morsels of food would taste muted with my muted taste buds - the horror!!

Teatime

Dying of thirst, and we went in search of one of the gelerattaria in the area - before we found one, J announced that I shouldn’t have any because of the non-improving cold, and I reluctantly relented, and agreed to wait till the next day, as I really wanted to recover quickly. We saw a modern looking bar cum bakery with beautiful people inside - Zanarini - with a nice looking bar and people standing around with drinks and nibbles, and guessed correctly that the staircase leading upstairs was a table service area

J had the cappuccino estivo - I’d ordered that for him because ordinary cappuccino seemed a bit predictable, and I wondered what estivo was - turns out to be like a cappuccino except that for the regular hot steamed milk with lots of foam it was very creamy, slightly chilled concoction with espresso at the bottom. “Estivo” is summer in italian - thus, when temperatures soar, cappuccinos correspondingly turn cooler, but without becoming an Iced cappuccino (I vaguely recall that real coffee aficionados disapprove of chilled coffee beverages).

I was dying of thirst yet simultaneously wanted a hot tea because it was So Cold outside! but was cautious about the 7 euros on the menu for tea - would be really mad if it was another Twining’s teabag again - and instead gulped down a large, refreshing Pellegrino. The pastry... I don’t really like Italian desserts, including the popular ones like cannoli, tiramisu and panna cotta. Something about them don’t touch my core, generally (or maybe I’ve just been having the wrong italian desserts?!) and I couldn’t find a pastry or sweet item I wanted enough from the reasonably large selection downstairs, but was still greedy enough to order a slice of Panettone, the christmas cake bread with raisins, apricot and other pieces of dried fruit that springs up everywhere during the Christmas season in Italy. It was like airy fruit bread - not too bad, but not sure if I’d wanna drag back the entire near football-sized cake to Asia.

Dinner at La Traviata

This local osteria a 2 minute walk from the hotel was recommended by Roberto, who says that they make their own pasta fresh every day.

We didn’t want to commit to reservations, and decided to go just after 8pm when the restaurant opens. Managed to get a nice table for two, sat down and ordered drinks (hot tea for me, still nursing the cold, and a glass of white for J).

The menu was fully in italian, which pleased me because it meant it was more inclined to be authentic.

The male half of the owner came over, an affable older Italian gentleman, came over and took our orders - I wanted to try real bolognaise ragu since we were in Bologna, so ordered that with tagliatelle. He recommended another pasta to balance out the tomato based ragu, and suggested that he splits the two pasta primi piattis into two plates for us. I didn’t quite understand what he was saying about the second pasta, so just said, yes, sure, ok.

This was what we ended up having:

Primi Piatti:

Tagliatelle al ragu (flat pasta noodles with chunky minced beef with tomato sauce, with sprinkled parmesan on the side) 4.5/5

Maccheroni al pettine (I don’t think “pettine” means anything specific, but this turned out to be a penne with an amazing minced pork and artichoke sauce with a touch of cream) - really good and nothing like I’ve ever had in a pasta. J was won over and said he’s never tasted pasta so good. 4.5/5

Secondi Piatti:

Arrosto Scaloppine (roasted veal)  3/5

Arrosto Pork (roasted pork, very tender and layered with balanced fat) 3.5/5

Dolci

Marscaponi with drizzle of chocolate (similiar to the thick creamy concoction from Osteria Quattro Ferri)

J wasn’t hot about the veal, I thought it was pretty good, but am not generally a veal fan. I loved the pork.

What puzzles me is the dry, tasteless bread they serve in restaurants here... even to mop up the pasta sauce it was quite tasteless. And do we just crunch into breadsticks as well?!

Day Two

Had too much to eat today. At the end of the last meal of the day, J asked me if I had any indigestion pills... I’d forgotten to bring them. The last time we were on a trip (our trips tend to revolve around food because I’m the one who plans the details and invariably my detail = where to eat, what to eat, what shall we eat next - you get the idea.

Breakfast at hotel: Antica Residenza D’Azeglio

Quite gross actually. The pastries and hard little buns with cold cuts looked like the same ones from last evening, and anyhow I have never been a fan of cold pastries. France manages to make a cold pain au chocolate still seriously gorgeous, but other countries don’t measure up quite as much, or perhaps it’s the asian in me that prefers something hot - eggs, congee, pancakes, that sort of thing. The B and B served breakfast on nice personalised plates that they got made for their property, very nice, but didn’t make up for the sad breakfast. Didn’t understand how Trip Advisor’s reviews insisted breakfast was “plentiful and excellent”. Plentiful for sure... but plentiful of processed, packaged, not really all that fresh stuff. The proprietors are so charming though, that I would feel bad if I said anything....(!!!)

J had a cappuccino (large cup but looks better than it tastes) and I had some green tea and we headed out.

stars: 1/5 (mostly for effort and effusiveness)

Lunch - da Matusel

• Tagliatelle tradizionali al ragu - minced beef with flat noodles in tomato sauce
• Gramigna con salsiccia - mortadella sausage with curved hollow pasta

Starving and in search for more delicious pasta - found it at this little place we chanced across that looked nicely local and crowded, always a good sign. 

The menu was in italian (generally this was the case in Bologna) and we were conservative and only had a primi piatti - and completely cleaned our plates. The tagliatelle ragu was almost as tasty as what we had last night at La Traviata - very very good, so good that it didn’t need the obligatory grated parmesan. On occasion, when I’ve had bolognaise pasta outside of Italy, I find that it’s always ok (hard to make a truly Bad bolognaise?) but always needed lots of cheese to make it better. And this was a large portion - we gobbled it all up.

The pasta shape in the other dish was particularly interesting - I’d never had gramigna pasta - it’s like a very firm, thin noodle that’s longer than a typical piece of penne and aptly curled around the generous sausage pieces - seriously tasty and we also cleaned that plate.

Agostini from the hotel later on told us that this is one of the oldest osterias around, with a good reputation - how serendipitous!

Dinner - Trattoria Serghei

Primi Piatti

• Tortellini in brodo (meat stuffed pasta in broth - a Bologna specialty) - 3.5/5
• Gnocchi al gorgonzola, burro e oro, ragu (gorgonzola cheese stuffed little dumplings in a meat tomato sauce) - 3.5/5

 Secondi Piatti

• Zucchine tipiene e polpettine in umido (zucchini stuffed with mortedella sausage, and mortedella meat balls) - 3.5/5
• Bollito misto con salsa verde (mixed roast meat with a vegetable dipping sauce) - 3.5/5

Been looking forward to this - recommended by the hotel and this eatery is a member of Slow Food, and Roberto said it’s one of the very best and we should expect a slow, leisurely meal (usually I rush through multicourses and can be in and out with starter, main, dessert and coffee in 1.5 hours!!! dammit.).

J decided to order a bottle of wine thinking the meal would take several hours, even though I don’t generally drink and especially tonight as I’m still fighting my cold.

The pasta arrived quite quickly to our surprise - and was pretty tasty. The tortellini in brodo was like little mini chinese dumplings in a clear chicken broth - some fresh cut chili padi in soy sauce would go very nicely with it, I thought. The other pasta was in a smooth ragu tomato sauce, and each piece was extremely tender and fresh. Pecorino cheese was grated on the spot over both.

The secondi.... we were trying to decipher the menu items and only ordered the secondi after we finished the pasta. I’d initially wanted the fish but they didn’t have it; and then the osso bucco, and they didn’t have that. The guy (owner?) recommended the bollito, which is a selection of meat) and so we went for that.

The secondi dishes appeared literally in one minute flat. Sure, I know sure these items need to be preprepared, and they were tasted not bad, really - but still... it kinda spoiled things, felt that there was not much effort involved!

The various meats went well with the salsa verde which tasted like the asian salted vegetable (“kiam chye”) - tender pieces that fell apart easily with a fork. The stuffed zucchini and meatballs were soft and tender in a savoury tomato sauce - pretty good but nothing out of this world (am I getting jaded?)

Gave dessert a miss as haven’t had a really good italian dessert so far... missing large slices of american style cakes indeed.

Martusel VIA BERTOLONI 2 - BOLOGNA - TEL 051 / 23.17.18

Serghei Trattoria. Via Peilla, 12. Tel: 051 23 35 33