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Emilia-Romagna: Italy’s Gastronomic Paradise

Do you love food above all else, especially pasta and visiting food producers to taste world famous cheese, balsamic vinegar, and prosciutto first hand? With an interesting mix of other cultural experiences too? Yes? Emilia-Romagna is for you! Emilia-Romagna is Italy’s gastronomic paradise. Emilia extends along the flat land west of Bologna to cities like Parma and Modena. Bologna sits in the centre. Romagna extends east to the Adriatic Sea. Florence is one hour south of Bologna and Venice about 2 ½ hours north by fast train.

making parmesan cheese

Emilia Cities

Emilia is world famous for its prosciutto, Parmesan cheese and balsamic vinegar. Food lovers feel they’ve arrived in heaven!

Modena is home of balsamic vinegar, Pavarotti and Ferrari, Maserati and other car companies. The Ferrari museum is 17 km south in Maranello. At the balsamic vinegar producer’s cellars, you see how they make and age the vinegars in series of ever smaller barrels and taste 12 and 25 year old balsamic vinegars—like liquid velvet!

Parma and its surrounding countryside are famous for prosciutto and Parmesan cheese. You can visit a prosciutto factory to see how they prepare and age it. At a parmesan factory, you see the men making it from start to finish, learn how it’s aged and taste young and aged cheese. The vast warehouses filled with thousands of prosciuttos or thousands of rounds of Parmesan will overwhelm you.

The city has a charming walled old centre and a wonderful array of Romanesque churches, art museums, elegant 17th century palazzos, theatres and restaurants. You can visit Toscanini’s birthplace house in the city and Verdi’s home in the country town of Roncole Verdi.

Bologna

Bologna is an ancient city famous for its university, its many covered, arched walkways in its picturesque historic centre, and its food markets and food shops that are a paradise for the food photographer too. Shops are stuffed to the gunnels and the displays look like works of art too beautiful to eat.

Bologna and all Emilia-Romagna are famous for exquisite, silky pasta and an incredible variety of pastas from stuffed pastas like tortellini, to pastas for soup like passatelli to the classic tagliatelle with Bolognese ragu.

Romagna Cities

Romagna also offers an excellent, light olive oil, some very good red wines, many dishes with herbs and wonderful fish from the Adriatic.

Ravenna on the Adriatic is world famous for its incredible Byzantine architecture and mosaics. Faenza is well known for its ceramic studios and shops.

You can unwind at the spa in little hill towns like Riolo Terme. Rimini, a large seaside resort city, is lined with hotels, commercially run beaches with rows of umbrellas, restaurants and discos.

Emilia-Romagna cooking school tours

Emilia-Romagna Cuisine

Some sample dishes: piadina (type of flat focaccia) with fillings, prawns wrapped in prosciutto with chick peas, marinated sword fish with herbs and balsamic vinegar, pasta with arugola and prosciutto, risotto with nettles, chicken broth with tortellini, "strangle the priest" pasta with scallion ragu, steak with rosemary and other herbs, vanilla ice cream with balsamic vinegar, pannacotta with wild berries, nocino liqueur (of nuts).

For cooking school tours in the Emilia- Romagna Region, please see www.italycookingschools.com/emilia-romagnalist.html