A Tavola: Cities That Know How to Eat & Drink
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- Aug 10
- 3 min read
BOLOGNA
The City That Takes Eating Seriously
Bologna has many nicknames, but the one we care about is La Grassa — “The Fat One.”
It’s not an insult. It’s practically a Michelin star.
This is a city where food isn’t something squeezed between sightseeing. Food is the event.
Handmade pasta. Deeply savoury ragù. Mortadella sliced paper-thin. Parmigiano Reggiano cracked straight from the wheel. Lambrusco poured alongside it.
Bologna understands that a good table should be generous, slightly excessive, and never rushed.
A City Built Around the Table
Bologna’s culinary reputation goes back centuries.
Its position at the crossroads of northern Italy brought farmers, merchants, students, butchers and cooks together, while the surrounding Emilia-Romagna countryside supplied extraordinary pork, dairy, wheat, wine and eggs.
Recipes became family property.
Pasta was rolled by hand with long wooden mattarelli. Tortellini shapes were debated from one household to the next. Ragù recipes passed from one generation to another.
Even today, ask three Bolognese grandmothers how to make ragù and you’ll probably get four correct answers.
Just don’t mention spaghetti Bolognese.
Tagliatelle al Ragù
Forget the mountain of tomato sauce most of the world associates with “Bolognese.”
Proper ragù is deeper. Slower. More savoury.
Finely chopped onion, carrot and celery soften gently before beef and pork are browned. Wine hits the pan. A little tomato joins the party, but never takes over.
Then comes the ingredient you can’t fake: time.
Everything cooks slowly until the meat becomes tender and the sauce turns dark, silky and intensely savoury.
It’s spooned over ribbons of fresh egg tagliatelle, whose slightly rough surface catches every bit of ragù.
Then Parmigiano Reggiano.
Obviously.
Rich without being heavy. Comforting without being boring. It’s the kind of food that makes conversation disappear for the first few bites.
Tortellini in Brodo
If ragù is Bologna’s famous dish, tortellini may be its soul.
Tiny rings of fresh egg pasta are traditionally filled with pork, prosciutto, mortadella and Parmigiano Reggiano, each one folded by hand into its distinctive shape.
They’re often served simply in a steaming, intensely flavoured meat broth.
No elaborate garnish.
No twelve ingredients scattered around the bowl.
Just delicate pasta, rich filling, clear golden broth and generations of muscle memory folded into every tortellino.
At family tables — especially around Christmas — making them becomes a group project. Everyone gathers around the table folding pasta, talking, arguing and occasionally producing one that looks absolutely nothing like the others.
It still gets eaten.
Lambrusco & the Aperitivo Hour
Around Bologna, Lambrusco makes perfect sense.
Forget the overly sweet fizzy red some people remember from decades ago.
Good Emilian Lambrusco can be dry, tart, dark-fruited and beautifully refreshing, with enough acidity and bubbles to cut straight through mortadella, Parmigiano and rich handmade pasta.
It’s basically the wine saying: Don’t worry. Have another bite.
And before dinner comes one of Italy’s greatest traditions: aperitivo.
A bitter Spritz. An Americano. Maybe a Negroni. A few salty bites arrive while the city moves from afternoon into evening.
You’re not drinking before dinner.
You’re beginning dinner.
Why Bar Corso Loves Bologna
Bologna makes a lot of sense to us.
Fresh pasta matters. Great salumi matters. Parmigiano matters.
Wine belongs beside food. Bitter cocktails belong before it. And nobody should be looking at their watch halfway through dinner.
That’s pretty close to the philosophy behind Bar Corso.
We love a Negroni before the first plate lands. We love handmade pasta in the middle of the table. We love a bottle of wine that somehow becomes two.
And we’re firm believers that amaro tastes considerably better when nobody is quite ready to go home.
Bologna figured this out centuries ago, we’re just doing our version of it on Commercial Drive.
