It was our first night in Bologna, and we were trying to find a good authentic italian restaurant to eat at (what else would you wanna do!). We walked by this restaurant which is located on one of the smaller streets, looked at the menu and saw that most of the food they had was cheese and cured meat dishes. Not knowing that much Italian, I guess I couldve guessed that from their name of the restaurant which means "Bread, wine, and san Daniele" (san daniele being a type of ham). Anyways we decided to give it a shot and the guy at the front counter was extremely nice and friendly and accommodating to our language barrier.
We decided on the tagliatelle al ragu (a must in bologna), the "Troll", and the "Classica salad". First came the tagliatelle -- extremely al dente freshmade tagliatelle noodles lightly coated with their ragu. The whole dish was topped with two large thinly sliced pieces of their famous san daniele ham. This dish was my absolute favorite. It was so flavorful and even though there was not too much ragu on it, it was flavorful enough to flavor the whole dish.
The Troll was an interesting dish. It was grilled vegetables (eggplant, tomatoes, onions, zucchini) with fried chunks of potato, topped with melted cheese, and then topped with their san daniele ham. This dish was pretty good if you eat it with bread otherwise it's pretty salty. The grilled vegetables were nice but the whole dish was a little strange for me.
The Classica salad had tuna, fresh buffalo mozzerella, lettuce, tomato, etc. This was mediocre..just a salad. And they give you a side of olive oil, balsamic, salt and pepper to make your own dressing.
All in all this was a great experience. The pasta was amazing and the other dishes were just okay for my taste. read more