Besides the sun, choosing Italy as a destination was mostly about food. So when we bought the guide book and saw that it referred to Bologna as, “The culinary capital of Italy”, and “la grassa,” (“the fat one”), we knew where our trip would begin. This stop was all about pasta, and lots of it.
And yet, we screwed up. As the church bells rang early on our first morning, we realized we had arrived on a Sunday. Even if there is no pope for the moment, Sunday is something Italians take seriously. Almost every store and restaurant was closed. On our first night, we had managed to find a greasy student cafe that made unbelievable pasta, but even they were shuttered on Sunday. We wandered the streets through the morning, enjoying the sun when it peeked below the arcaded sidewalks. Our stomachs soon started grumbling though, Anna’s especially: when traveling with a pregnant woman, meal breaks come early and often.
It was while we were walking along the Via Ugo Bassi towards a rather far-flung cafe recommended by our guide book, that we came across Il Saraceno, a small restaurant tucked away on a narrow piazza. Pushing through the glass doors we saw we were not the first guests, even if it was barely after noon. Just next to where we were seated, a large group was already laughing and shouting, refilling their cups with wine and their plates with course after course of food. We were struck in Italy by just how much food people could eat in restaurants – that somehow even while we were full after a pasta primi piatti (first course), the tables around us would be plowing happily through appetizers, primi piatti, secondi piatti (second course), desserts, a digestif, on and on. And the worst part? They all were so thin! How could it be possible?
We ordered bruschetta alla pomodoro to start. The waiter smiled and nodded and gestured to the open kitchen in the back of the room where a bearded man in a white apron was kneading a ball of dough.
“Pepe,” our waiter said, “Mr. Bruschetta.”
How true! The bread was warm and the tomatoes seemed like they had been marinating in oil and basil for days. Anna had the hand-made tagliateli al ragu, and I ordered pene alla pomodoro. Hand-made pasta is incomparable to the store-bought stuff, they are two totally different foods, they don’t even deserve the same name. And then there is the Italian ability to always cook pasta to perfection, and the sauces – “It’s the ingredients,” Anna said, “The olive oil, the basil, they’re better quality.”
I am accustomed to deferring to her on all gastronomic questions, but in Italy I could never quite accept such easy explanations. Is it just the ingredients? It seemed like so much more!
