Gourmet food tours in Italy

Ravenna is 9 kilometres from the Adriatic. Most visitors who come for the mosaics do not realise the coast is this close — a bus or taxi from the city centre reaches the nearest beach in under 20 minutes. The coastline here stretches from Porto Corsini in the north to Lido di Savio in the […]

Ravenna sits in Romagna — the eastern half of Emilia-Romagna — and the food here is quite different from Bologna despite the short train journey between them. Bologna’s tradition is built around egg pasta, slow-cooked meat ragù, and pork fat. Romagna’s is built around flatbread, fresh cheese, Adriatic fish, and a lighter hand with the

Bologna bakes differently from the rest of Italy. The city’s food culture is built around egg pasta, cured meats, and slow cooking — and the bakeries here reflect that. The benchmark is Panificio Atti, which has been selling crescenta and torta di riso from the same address in the Quadrilatero since 1868. Beyond Atti, a

Tagliatelle al ragù is the dish Bologna is most protective of. The Chamber of Commerce holds a gold replica of the correct width — 8mm when cooked, one twelfth the height of the Asinelli tower. The sauce is a long-cooked combination of beef, pork, and vegetables with very little tomato, nothing like the minced-beef and

Most visitors to Cinque Terre and La Spezia spend their time on the coast. Few realise that just over an hour’s drive inland, through the Cisa pass into the Parma Apennines, they are within reach of some of the most authentic Parmigiano Reggiano production in Italy. This is mountain Parmigiano — Parmigiano di Montagna —