Castelfranco Emilia

We made a reservation for a highly rated restaurant called Danilo e Patrizia. If you think of Bologna as a circle, our hotel is at the bottom and the restaurant is in the top right quadrant. So, we had to take a bus for about half and hour, which worked out well because we got to see a lot of another area of the city.

We ended up way in the suburbs and found the restaurant nestled in a park like setting. Danilo himself greeted us and seated us outside (al fresco!). He told us all the pastas were handmade. We began to look at the primi menu, which is always the pasta course, and there were at least 20 pastas! One even had donkey meat. We passed on the donkey, but instead tried the tagliatelle with ragu, tortellini in brodo (a meat broth), and ravioli stuffed with cheese and bacon and topped with white truffles. It was all absolutely stunning! There isn't too much that beats fresh pasta! Brad and I also tried a local wine called Lambrusco, which is a sparkling red wine. It is lovely on a hot summer's day.

For the secondi, Danilo recommended the suckling pork with roasted potatoes. He added some fried zucchini and fried cream for us (as in, he didn't charge us for these). Yes, fried cream! Apparently it's tradition to eat it with meat, and it is amazing! It is sweet and salty and crunchy - to die for. The pork was succulent as well.

We shared a dolci of creme caramel and Danilo also gave us little pieces of an almond and chocolate cake as well. By this time we were stuffed! We eventually got our bill and then Danilo insisted we have an apertif. He brought out two bottles and two shot glasses and just left them on our table. Brad chose limoncello and I had a liqueur called Corvino which seemed like sherry. We were treated like family and we had such a lovely meal!

Afterwards, we caught the bus home. Well, truthfully I got us on the wrong bus, so we had to get off and Brad got us going back in the right direction. Nonetheless we made it back to our hotel!Les mer