143. The Taste of Bologna

It quite a feat to be known as the best food town in a country world famous for its cuisine. But Bologna, a city of 400,000 in the heart of Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region, would give some of its better-known competitors a run for their money.

So we decided to investigate this for ourselves. I normally consider myself too cool to do an organized tour, but sometimes, there’s no better way to get the lay of the land, fast, and we would only be there one full day. So we signed up for a “Taste of Bologna” food tour and found ourselves early one morning meeting a family from Texas, a couple from London and our guide, Sara, in the main square of Bologna.

Bologna, site of the first university in the western world, is a lively prosperous city, famous for its two distinctive architectural features — its medieval towers, of which there are twenty remaining, and its twenty-four miles of porticos, for which it was named a 2021 UNESCO World Heritage Site. We learned from Sara that the porticos, first in the historical record in 1040 AD, were originally a tax evasion ploy by wealthy homeowners to increase their living space by expanding the upper floors of their houses without increasing the street-level footprint, on which property taxes were based. The city expanded their use after realizing they came in handy in inclement weather.

After coffee, our first stop was the marcelleria equina, or horse butcher. Rationally, there is no reason to feel worse about eating one sort of meat over another; nonetheless, the very idea of it made me queasy. But it seemed to be something that should be experienced, so I took a little bit of horse carpaccio and forced it down. It was actually quite good, but I am sure I will never, ever eat horse meat again.

Bologna actually does seem to feature meat in its cuisine, more than other regions in Italy. It is famous for its Bolognese meat sauce.

More famous even than that, especially in America, is what we call bologna (pronounced “baloney”) — our much-less-good variation of the Bolognese specialty mortadella.

But the high point for me was a stop at a tortellini factory. Watching the half dozen employees go about their tasks, weaving around each other with choreographed efficiency grown from decades of working together in limited space, was to be in the presence of ballet at its highest form.

I probably ate more meat in more one day in Bologna than I do in a month in my normal life. And it was all really, really good, free from all the additives and shortcuts that we just accept here in the States. Thankfully, the lower quality here makes it easier to avoid, allowing me to do the right thing with regards to environmental impact, animal ethics, and my cholesterol level. But if I lived in Bologna, I’m not so sure.