Food

After realising the best food is in the country, we left around 11am, heading 2 hours north, near Parma to check out some cool Trattorias.

A nice (and somewhat bumpy) ride through the farming countryside, we ended up in Zibello, at Trattoria La Buca.

I had read this place is run by an old lady and her daughter and that the pasta is pretty awesome. It did not disappoint.

We sat outside under a canopy of trees and vines, and it was about 30C, but with a slight breeze.

We shared some culatello to begin with, which the area of Zibello is famous for. Yes, that is butter on the culatello, and you are supposed to have butter with your ham.

We shared our pasta as well, which was a tagliatelle al funghi and a gnocchi con pomodoro.

These were pretty awesome. Homemade fresh pasta, not too full on in flavour, just delicious. Would definitely recommend going here to anyone in the area.

For dessert they bring out a dessert trolley, which you can choose off. Ben went for a Cacio bavarese and I had a plum torta (I think).

This place was pretty awesome.

We wanted to go to a nearby place for dinner, so drove past to get our bearings then headed back towards Parma.

We needed to do a load of washing, so found a laundromat, washed some clothes, dried some clothes, and by the time we were done it was time to head back to Zibello.

As we were a tad early, we went for a walk around the little town, saw lots of cats on the streets, and then went for a walk down the river, the River Po, and saw a hare having an evening jump.

We headed into Al Cavallino Bianco at 7.45, and we were the first ones there, but not for long.

This was a little bit fancier than the other places we had been eating at, my bag even got a stool for itself to sit on.

We got some tasty bites to start off with.

I started off with pate, which was nice but huuuuge. The ratio of pate:bread was also bad, waaay too much pate for the bread. Ben had culatello and other cured meats which looked awesome. They brought out a big wooden board with half a cured ham on it and served the pre-sliced bits.

Then our pastas : gnocchi for me and asparagus and cheese for Ben - these were pretty awesome as well.

By this stage I was feeling a bit full so Ben helped me a bit with the gnocchi.

Next up was secondi, and I had some duck from the river Po, about 20m from the ristorante, and Ben had some pork stuffed with pork.

The duck was very good, but I couldn’t quite finish it. I don’t know how people can eat like this all the time!

We shared a dessert, but I mainly had the strawberries on it.

And just when I thought we were done, more desserts were brought out. I really could not handle any more food, tasty as it was so I passed on these after a quick taste.

After this it was time to head back to Bologna, a nice leisurely 2 hour drive. The roads in Italy are fairly bumpy, but we got back to the hotel in good time.