Plate up
The following is a non-exhaustive list of ways to annoy Italians:put cream in carbonara;put pineapple on pizza;crack long pasta in half;put milk in coffee after 11am and mention a dish called “spaghetti bolognese”. Because in Italy,there is no spaghetti bolognese. To begin with,the meat-and-tomato sauce that is native to the city of Bologna is never served with spaghetti,but rather tagliatelle,the long,flat,egg-based pasta of a shape that falls somewhere between linguine and fettuccine. And if you,too,are a native of Bologna,you don’t call your sauce “bolognese”. It’s just ragu,the generic name for a slow-cooked meat-based sauce. And what a sauce it is,one whose fame now stretches to the ends of the Earth,a dish beloved by everyone from toddlers being tricked into eating vegetables to full-grown foodie adults enjoying the ultimate comfort meal.
First serve
Given this is a meat-based sauce,a luxury in times gone by,the history of ragu alla bolognese isn’t as long as you might expect. Around the 1700s,at the same time French cooks were tinkering with a meat stew called ragout,a meaty braise also became popular in the city of Bologna. By the late 1700s there are references to that meat stew being served with pasta. It took until 1982 for the Accademia Italiana della Cucina to initiate ragu alla bolognese into its Hall of Fame,having decided on a definitive recipe (despite the fact every nonna and indeed home cook across the world has their own version).
Order there
Ask 10 Bologna residents for the best ragu in the city and they’ll probably point you to 10 different restaurants (or,more likely,their own grandmothers). Try Osteria dell’ Orsa (osteriadellorsa.it).
Order here