Sunday in Bologna

Weekend in Bologna part 3

There are a lot of students living in the historic center of Bologna, and it shows.  There are bars, tattoo parlors, young people on bicycles, and graffiti everywhere, some of it quite good.

ATM machines seem to be a popular target. 

On Sunday morning I visited Forno Brisa, a bakery, pizza place and coffee shop that has become famous for revolutionizing bread making.  Two young Italians (one a geography major at the University) met at a Rural Seed Network gathering for diversity in wheat cultivars on a farm in Tuscany in 2013.  One of them describes that meeting as a “bread-making big bang,” with a before and after, as bakers began reintegrating heritage wheat varieties into their products. 

Forno Brisa has grown largely through crowdfunding, emphasizing farm to table baking: the farmers they work with are part of the collective, as are the millers, the largely young employees (average age below thirty), and so on.  Their Manifesto in eleven principles is posted outside the front door (focusing on sustainability for people and the planet, shared profits, working to have a positive effect on the ecosystem that we are part of, etc.), and their revolutionary spirit comes through on the t-shirts and stickers for sale: Sourdough is Not a Crime, Legalize Marinara (with a drawing of basil leaves), and my favorite: Fanculo la Dieta (Fuck the Diet). 

I had an excellent cappuccino (though I had to wait 20 minutes for it, which is an eternity for coffee in Italy) and an amazing pastry called a Veneziana that was basically a donut filled with fresh cream. 

I found a busy Sunday farmers market and bought some 36 month Parmigiano.  I saw someone reading the Sunday paper the old-fashioned way, standing on the sidewalk where it was posted in one of the porticos.

I wandered around and took more photos of graffiti, making my way slowly to the restaurant I had reserved for lunch.  I was there before they opened, and was the first person seated.

As I said in my previous post, this was not only my best restaurant experience in Bologna, but the best of the entire semester in Italy.  Everything was wonderful: the décor, the atmosphere, my very friendly waiter, and of course the food.

My first course was gazpacho with a sous-vide cooked egg.  There was a profound depth of flavor in the gazpacho, making me think that maybe they roasted the tomatoes before blending them with the other ingredients.

People at tables on either side of me were eating the crescentini I saw yesterday, the fried pillows of dough, with mortadella and other charcuterie.  I mentioned to my waiter that I was sad that I couldn’t try them, traveling as a single person, and he said that I could order as many or few as I wanted at 50 cents each.  I got two, and they really were delicious.

I had lasagna for my main dish. At this restaurant, they only serve lasagna at lunch time on Sundays, “in the traditional fashion.”  Lasagna is a labor intensive dish that was reserved for Sundays or holidays in the past.  This was Lasagna Bolognese – made the local way with green spinach pasta, ragu (see ingredients in this post), béchamel sauce, and a small amount of Parmigiano Reggiano. 

It was truly amazing, definitely on the list of the top ten things I’ve ever eaten in Italy. Most of the customers in the restaurant also ordered it. 

I learned that the lasagna I usually make, with fennel spiced sausage, ricotta, mozzarella, and so on is a more southern Italian style.  This makes sense since many times more migrants came from to the US from southern Italy, the much poorer region.

After the lasagna I had porcini mushroom fries, another revelation.  They were strips of porcini mushrooms, lightly battered, deep fried, and served with a mushroom sauce.  So much umami and so delicious.  I’m still thinking about them months later.

Dessert was also wonderful: green apple and celery sorbet with star anise, topped with a spoonful of “sparkling sugar” that was basically pop rocks: crystalized lumps of sugar with trapped carbon dioxide bubbles that burst when the sugar melts in your mouth.  It was light, not too sweet, and the perfect way to end an amazing meal.

I walked back to my Airbnb and did three hours of grading.  One of the things that horrifies my French husband about my job is that there are never really days off, not even Sundays.  I worked on Saturday too, as I do every weekend during the academic year. 

I went out in the early evening to a local grocery store and got fruit for dinner.  I couldn’t resist buying two of the dozens of varieties of packaged and refrigerated fresh pasta to take back to Rome with me.  They were affordable and made without preservatives or dough conditioners or any of the additives that we tend to find in the US in ready made foods. The ingredients were just flour, egg, and whatever was in the filling. 

The next morning I got up early, did two more hours of grading, then packed my suitcase and left the apartment by 9:30.  My train wasn’t leaving until the afternoon, and I had planned for one more restaurant meal before leaving.  I walked twenty minutes to the train station and left my suitcase and backpack at a newsstand on Platform 1, using the Bounce online reservation system.  This is a very convenient service that charges 5 euros per item for up to 24 hours of storage.  They are located inside other businesses: I’ve left my luggage at restaurants, coffee shops, hotels, and newsstands. 

I had more than two hours of time before my lunch reservation and I explored more of the city.  I went back to the pasta shop called Sfoligne.  I had read that it was famous for having the best tortellini in Bologna and I had seen it the evening before, not far from my apartment, but it was closed then.  

Today it was open, and I went in and asked whether I could take some back to Rome and eat them that evening.  They said yes, of course, you can even eat them a day or two later.  I should have bought more than one serving… I had them with my homemade chicken broth and they really were the best.

I didn’t fully appreciate the significance of this humble looking fresh pasta shop staffed by women in their sixties until near the end of my semester, at the pasta making class that I took with my students in Rome.  One of our teachers was a woman in her late twenties who is a “sfoglina” – an artisan who makes sfoglia, sheets of fresh pasta rolled with a huge wooden rolling pin. 

It takes years of training to become a master sfoglina, and our teacher apprenticed at this very shop in Bologna.  She explained that using the wooden rolling pin and a wooden board is similar to the effect of the bronze cut die for dried pasta (see here if you didn’t read the Italian Pasta 101 post): it creates a microscopic roughness on the surface of the pasta sheets that helps the sauce cling better to the pasta.  I saw some of these boards and rolling pins in a kitchen store in Bologna; the boards were bigger than my desk, and the rolling pins were easily five feet long.

Carrying my small bag of tortellini, I continued my walk to the far western edge of the historical center and then beyond, which gave me the chance to see some of the more modern part of the city and its graffiti.

I was once again the first person to arrive for lunch, but I wanted to make sure that I could catch a bus in time to return to the station for my 2:30pm train.

This restaurant experience was the only time during my three days in Bologna that I did not speak Italian. Not by choice, but because the waiter insisted on responding to every one of my questions or requests in English; by the time we got to dessert I had given up.  I realized later that he no doubt has many fewer opportunities to practice his English than I do my Italian, and I should have gone along with that from the beginning. 

The food was good, but it paled in comparison to what I had yesterday.  I ordered an artichoke salad: thinly sliced, raw small artichokes that were served very simply with just shavings of Parmigiano Reggiano, olive oil, and lemon juice.  It was refreshing and full of the particular flavor of artichokes.

After that I had tagliatelle with what was called “old fashioned onion sauce,” roasted onions in a rich tomato base. 

And finally, for dessert, the best panna cotta I’ve ever had, rich and creamy with a homemade caramel sauce.

I got on the train back to Rome, already trying to plan when I can return to Bologna. 

Next up: my visit to Rimini on the Adriatic Coast and the tiny country of San Marino.