Emilia-Romagna Trip Report 2025 in Courses

So, a big thank you as I begin these travels and reports to all of the people her on H.O. who guided my thinking!

My cousin and I arrived in Bologna yesterday afternoon, and as he was arriving from NY and needed a nap, I put on my sneakers and took a little jog toward a restaurant I had been trying to reach for almost a week to try and reserve with no luck. (We are staying about a half hour’s jog from city center.) Every post I read said it was imperative to get a reservation far in advance, but I could not get them to answer their phone, much less reserve!

I arrived at Trattoria di Via Serra di Tommaso & Flavio as they were finishing their lunch service, only to learn from Flavio that they were fully booked for last night (Saturday). He suggested that if we got there before their opening at 7 pm, and we were “first on line” we might get a table. (I was a little dubious about this, as I did not know if my cousin who had flown overnight and driven to Bologna would even be awake by 7!) I asked about all of the other days we were going to be in Bologna, and he said they were closed, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday (turns out they are open for lunch on Tuesday), but we were due to leave Bologna on Wednesday and I was able to get a reservation for lunch on Wednesday!

I was completely happy with that, but it turned out my cousin was not only awake but game to get to the restaurant to wait for a spot last night! (He and I are as simpatico about restaurants as any two people, and he saw how eager I was for this hard-to-land reservation.) We got there first (much to the clear dismay of an older couple who did not know how to react to us, and refused to stand behind us on line.) Anyway, Flavio honored his promise, and we snagged the only open table in the restaurant while the others waiting filled the four seats at the bar (we would have been totally happy with these.)

We ate (and these are my descriptions, not the menu’s which we forgot to take a picture of, and anyway it did not include the specials):

Flat biscuits, just baked, with soft (ricotta?) cheese and fig jam. (So, my hotel is blocking downloading of my pictures to my computer…Going to pause this report till I can fix this issue!)

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