FICO Eataly World is an amusement park, a museum, an exhibition hall, and a shopping center all in…read moreone huge building located in the outskirts of Bologna. FICO is dedicated to showcasing the best of Italian food, and visiting this attraction was a food lover's dream! Our visit started with a brief tour of the park, and our guide explained that the concept of FICO was to bring together the farming and factory aspects of Italian food production, which is why the park included displays of animals, a fruit/vegetable garden, a vineyard, and an olive grove. FICO also had a number of small-scale food production operations, and our guide started by bringing us to the Mortadella factory, where she explained how this pork sausage was made and brought us to taste a sample. We made additional stops at the exhibits on San Danielle prosciutto, Grana Padano cheese, Parmigiano Reggiano, pasta, and fruit preserves.
Our tour guide could have gone on explaining more and more, but our time was up and we had barely scratched the surface of the park, so we were left to explore on our own! FICO was divided up into five different food sections: cured meat & cheese, pasta & pizza, wine & vinegar, oil & beer, and sweets. Each section had its own selection of eateries/restaurants, vendors, and interactive educational displays, which dove into some aspect of how people interacted with some aspect of the world related to food including fire, animals, plants, the sea, and the bottle (wine, oil, beer).
It would literally be impossible to write about all the different aspects of this park, and it is simply a must-visit for food lovers. Seeing all the different displays about DOP (protected designation of origin) gave me a much better appreciation about the particularities about regional specialty foods-- for example, mortadella could be made at FICO because the park is located within the relevant region, but Parmigiano Reggiano could NOT be made at the park, because it's located just a few kilometers outside the designated region.
On the flip side, much of the park felt a bit commercialized, as there were obviously many corporate sponsors and vendors showcasing their wares, along with an entire shopping section at the end that included a bookstore, kitchen appliance vendors, and plenty of Italian foodstuffs. Nevertheless, the 10 Euro admission fee to FICO was an absolute steal, and you could easily spend an entire day here going through the exhibits, admiring the animals, relaxing in the outdoor areas, sampling different foods, and shopping your heart out.
