Italy

Bologna

Two thin sheets of egg pasta sealed around a spoonful of filling, cut into squares or rounds, boiled for a few minutes and dressed simply: ravioli are the oldest and most widespread of Italy's stuffed pastas, mentioned in Genoese and Venetian documents from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and now made, under one name or another, in every region. The classic fillings are ricotta with spinach or chard in Emilia and Tuscany, meat in Piedmont's agnolotti and Liguria's ravioli di carne, fish along the Ligurian coast, and potato with mint in Sardinia's culurgiones; each region also has its own shape, from the half-moon of the Emilian tortello to the pleated culurgiones. What distinguishes a ravioli from a tortellino or a cappelletto is only the fold. The dressing is kept quiet, butter and sage, a light tomato sauce or the meat's own juices, so the filling is tasted.

Fresh pasta is the first requirement: soft wheat flour, or a mix with semola, kneaded with whole eggs at about one egg per hundred grams, rested, then rolled thin enough that the filling shows through, which in Emilia means close to a millimetre. The sheet is laid out, small mounds of filling are placed at even intervals, a second sheet is laid over, and the air is pressed out around each mound before cutting with a wheel or a stamp, because trapped air bursts the pasta in the water. Fillings are drained and dry enough to hold shape: ricotta is strained overnight, greens are squeezed hard, meat is braised and chopped fine with parmesan and nutmeg. They cook in well-salted water at a steady, not rolling, boil for three to five minutes, until the seam is tender, and are lifted out rather than poured into a colander, then turned gently in the sauce for a moment.

Judge the pasta first, because it is the hardest part to buy and the easiest to fake. It should be thin, silky and yellow with egg, with the seam only slightly thicker than the rest and no dry white edge; thick, pale, chewy pasta points to a machine-made product or a factory packet. Cut one open: the filling should fill the pocket, be seasoned clearly and hold together without being pasty or wet. Mark down ravioli that have burst or leaked, a sauce heavy enough to bury the filling, cream added to a butter-and-sage dressing, a sweet or bland ricotta, and frozen ravioli served in a restaurant that claims fresh pasta, recognisable by uniform size, a gummy seam and a grey filling. Six to eight large ravioli is a portion; a pile of twenty small ones is a different, lesser dish.

Ravioli

L'Antica Bottega Bologna

We took ravioli with asparagus along with parmagiano sauce. This restaurant was in one the food passage. I would say it was a tourist scam. The sauce was really bad and the cheese it self was also not delicious. 

Savoiardi biscuits dipped in strong coffee, alternated with a cream of mascarpone, egg yolks and sugar, chilled for several hours and finished with a dusting of cocoa: tiramisù is assembled, never baked, and it comes from north-eastern Italy. The name means pick me up, a nod to the coffee and sugar. It is young by Italian standards. Treviso, in the Veneto, has the strongest documented claim, with the restaurant Le Beccherie serving it from the early 1970s and the first printed recipe appearing in 1981, though Friuli Venezia Giulia argues for earlier versions under other names. Both regions agree on the structure, which is what matters to anyone eating one: coffee-soaked biscuit, mascarpone cream, cocoa, nothing else. Alcohol, cream and chocolate shavings are later additions.

The cream is the whole dessert. Egg yolks are beaten with sugar until pale and thick, then mascarpone is folded in cold, a little at a time, so the mixture stays smooth and holds its shape without whipping cream or gelatine. In the Treviso version the whites are beaten separately and folded in for lightness; many restaurants now pasteurise the yolks over a bain-marie or with hot syrup for safety, which is fine if the cream stays glossy. The coffee should be real espresso or strong moka coffee, cooled, barely sweetened, and the savoiardi should be dipped for a second a side, not soaked, so they turn tender but keep a trace of structure. Two layers of each is standard. The assembled dish rests in the fridge for at least four hours, better overnight, so the biscuit absorbs the cream's moisture and the layers knit together. Cocoa goes on just before serving, otherwise it turns damp and grey.

A good slice holds its shape on the plate and shows clean, distinct layers. The cream should be smooth and faintly sweet, with the slight tang of mascarpone, and it should not weep liquid at the base. Biscuits that have dissolved into mush mean over-soaking; biscuits still dry in the centre mean the dish was served too early. Taste for coffee: it should be clearly present and a little bitter, not a vague brown sweetness. Mark down whipped cream in the mix, which makes it airy and bland, stabilised versions that feel waxy, a boozy top note so strong it reads as liqueur cake, and chocolate curls, strawberries or caramel on top. A supermarket tub decanted into a glass is easy to spot: uniform texture, no layers, sweetness without any bitterness.

Tiramisù

Caffè Letterario - Sebastiano Caridi

This was not a traditional tiramisu. It was a modern version of it. The creamy and ice creamish texture of the cream was super satisfying. The cake was also super good. I didn’t taste the coffee much but overall it was a really nice desert

Sixty to ninety seconds in a wood-fired oven at around 450°C is what separates pizza Napoletana from every other pizza: the dough puffs into a soft, leopard-spotted rim, the centre stays thin and almost wet, and the whole thing folds in four to be eaten by hand. Naples has made flatbreads with tomato since the eighteenth century, and the two canonical versions are the marinara, with tomato, garlic, oregano and oil, and the margherita, with tomato, mozzarella and basil, the latter popularly dated to 1889 and a royal visit, a story the city repeats more confidently than the records support. Since 1984 the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana has written the rules down, and the EU registered the style as a Traditional Speciality Guaranteed in 2010. Neapolitan pizza-making was added to UNESCO's intangible heritage list in 2017.

The dough is only flour, water, salt and a very small amount of yeast, hydrated to about sixty percent, kneaded until smooth and left to ferment for eight to twenty-four hours, then divided into balls of 200 to 280 grams and proved again. It is opened by hand, pressing from the centre outwards so the air is pushed into the rim, never with a rolling pin, to a disc of about 30 centimetres with a base a few millimetres thick. Toppings are sparing: crushed San Marzano or other plum tomatoes, raw, with salt; fior di latte or mozzarella di bufala torn and scattered; a few basil leaves; a thread of olive oil. The pizza is slid onto the oven floor and turned once or twice with the peel. There is no cheese on a marinara. The pizza is served whole and uncut on the plate, and it is meant to be eaten at once.

Judge the cornicione first: it should be puffed, airy inside and spotted with char, not pale and dense and not burnt black. The base should be thin and tender, soft enough to fold, with a little pull; a cracker-crisp bottom is a different style and a soggy, grey centre means the oven was too cool. The tomato should taste fresh and slightly acidic, the mozzarella melted into pools rather than a uniform sheet, the basil present. Mark down a dough that tastes of raw flour or yeast, a rim that is bready all the way through, excessive toppings that weigh down the centre, pre-cooked tomato sauce, and a pizza that has been sitting long enough for the base to go stiff. A margherita is the test of a pizzeria because it hides nothing.

Pizza Napoletana

The House Of Pizza

One of the best napolitan pizza I’ve ever had. The dough was super fluffy and delicious. The pesto and cheese was amazing. I wish the restaurant was is my city so I could order it every week 

Rank	Place	Top dish	Reviews	Score
1	The House Of Pizza Via Maurizio Padoa, 6h, 40138 Bologna BO, Italy Top dish: Pizza Napoletana	Pizza Napoletana	1	91 review
2	Caffè Letterario - Sebastiano Caridi Via Manzoni, 2, 40121 Bologna BO, Italy Top dish: Tiramisù	Tiramisù	1	81 review
3	L'Antica Bottega Bologna Via Clavature, 12, 40124 Bologna BO, Italy Top dish: Ravioli	Ravioli	1	4.291 review

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Ravioli

Tiramisù

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