This one-of-a-kind cook program takes you from the city’s center, filled with beautiful squares, the Medieval food market, ancient towers and cafes to the ‘city of arches’, ~and then on to Sarvingo revealing Bologna’s love affair with food and introducing you to its vibrant markets, artisan pasta and cheese makers and renowned food purveyors. 

You will be staying at charming boutique hotel in the center of the city, just steps from the center of town, the Piazza Maggiore and close to the famous towers of Garisenda and Asinelli. 

Each private room is comfortably furnished, offers modern amenities and a private bath.  Guests can enjoy the convenience of walking out of the hotel and spilling into the colorful Piazza Maggiore and Fountain of Neptune.  There are Medieval archways hovering over cafes, bookshops, and museums.  While sipping your morning cappuccino, sit back and read “The Broker,” by John Grisham.  Grisham, who lived in Bologna while writing his book, takes you through the labyrinth of small Medieval streets, tiny cafes, and food shops. 

The program offers 4 hands-on cooking classes featuring Emilia Romagna foods.  What better opportunity to feel part of this wonderful region than enjoying cooking with our chefs followed by beautiful meals to follow.  You will discover all the best & favorite addresses in Bologna for produce, cheese, wines, chocolate and everything for a feast. It won’t take long before you begin to feel just like a local! 

During the first part of your journey, you will be guided by Anna, a professional English speaking host and tour guide.  The first two cooking classes are held in the city at a fully equipped kitchen.  You will learn how to make traditional tortellini, pasta Bolognese and gnocchi~to name a few.  After each cooking lesson participants join in for lunch or dinner and share the foods prepared in class, local wine is included.

During your stay you will have an unforgettable guided tour and tasting at a dairy farm where Parmigiano Reggiano cheese is made.  You will be able to see the artful hands and refined operations that create this fine sweet cheese.  Tastings follow.  Next we take you on a guided tour and tasting to a traditional Balsamic Vinegar producer.  You will see how the fine Balsamic vinegar is made in Modena.  Tastings follow.  Lunch is included and the recipes are based on using Balsamic vinegar.  The Medieval Foodie Walk tour, set in the heart of Bologna leads you through shops, markets and archways with venders selling their best products.  The marketplace is a vibrant and fun place to see locals and chefs alike, select their ingredients.  Anna takes you through the famous marketplace of Bologna and its stores, stands and venders.

After 3 nights in Bologna city, you are off to Sarvigno, the green countryside and land of truffles.  Check into your deluxe accommodation with Amerigo, one of Italy’s most celebrated truffle traders & Michelin Restaurants with your Alberto.  Alberto welcomes you in and shares an aperitivo.  In the late afternoon, roll up you sleeves and get cooking. Alberto and his chefs lead a hands-on cooking class featuring the region’s cuisine.  Your typical menu may include a slow cooked soup finished with fresh tortellini, braised veal or rabbit, truffle soufflé, flash fried artichokes, a basket of artisan breads and sweet tortellini cookies.  The “Trinity,” a compilation of creamy caramel, cream and apple ice cream are made and served for dessert.  Everyone eats the fruits of their labor after class.  Local wine, café and water included.

On your second day, and after breakfast is served, take a tour of the small charming town of Sarvigno, untouched by tourism.  The small shops sell artisan Balsamico, Parmesan, sausages, hams, breads, chocolates and wine.  Your second cooking class starts out in the morning.  You will learn the secrets of making the pasta and folding them neatly into tortellini.  Our two chefs, who have making tortelli for over 25 years, will lead you through the craft.  The hands-on cooking class ends around the table with everyone eating together the foods prepared in class.  Local wine, café, water and dessert included.

This hands-on Michelin Star cooking class is a must do~!!!

Bolgona
If it’s true that you go to Florence, Venice, or Rome to sightsee, then there’s no doubt that you visit Emilia-Romagna is to eat.  One of Italy's wealthiest regions, it is home to the fertile plains of the Po River Valley, and produces much of the country's wheat and dairy products. Just think – one of Bologna’s nicknames is Bologna la grassa (Bologna the fat one!). A traveler surely cannot miss such cities as Bologna, home to some of the finest culinary traditions in Italy with its tagliatelle al ragu’, tortellini served in broth, and its delicious mortadella.  Ravenna, famous for its spectacular mosaics from the Byzantine empire; and the charming Parma, its claims to fame of course being Parmigiano cheese and Proscuito crudo (Parma ham). For the food lover, the culinary traditions of Emilia-Romagna won't fail to impress.

Medieval Foodie Walk
Life in Bologna centers around the kitchen; and the Medieval Market.  The morning Medieval Foodie Walk explores the gastronomic side of Bologna, its street markets, wine bars, fourth generation grocers, traditional pasta makers, and storied chocolatiers.  You start early, around 8am, with Anna, private guide, and mingle with the market workers, professional trattoria chefs, and home-kitchen master chefs out doing their morning shopping.

We begin three blocks east of Piazza Maggiore, just off Via Castiglione at Paolo Atti & Figli, Via Caprarie 7, purveyors of Bologna's finest baked goods since 1880. Under high frescoed ceilings, crisply-aproned saleswomen bustle about arranging fresh pillows of pasta into rows in the glass display cases. The signs at each tray of pasta translate as, "Classic Ravioli—we put our art into it!

The Medieval Market Food Tour continues down the block to the corner of Via Drapperie, marked by stacks of salami and pendulums of prosciutto.  Take a sharp left onto Via Drapperie to enter Bologna's main street market.   On your left you'll see another Paolo Atti outlet, and across the street is the Drogheria Gilberto, at Via Drapperie 5, its entrance marked by a suit of armor grasping a bottle of the family's wine old-school.   At this point, the market is earnest. Fruit and vegetable stalls hold-up under the weight of purple-fringed artichokes, crinkly bunches of arugola, sleek indigo eggplant, pink pomegranates, orange zucchini flowers, pungent mushrooms, tiny susine plums, pointy San Marzano tomatoes, mounds of grapes, trays of chestnuts, garlands of fiery red pepperoncini, and ropes of garlic.

Where Via Drapperie meets Via delle Pescherie Vecchie there are a pair of fishmongers always mobbed by Bolognesi waiting patiently on the water-slicked cobblestones, numbered tickets clutched in their hands, admiring the trays of squid, scampi, octopi, anchovies, every type of fish.   At no. 3A hangs the sign for La Baita Formaggi, another traditional deli with an excellent selection of cheeses—eight types of mozzarella, six kinds of ricotta, and 21 different varieties of pecorino—in addition to the usual mortadella, salami, and both kinds of prosciutto (the world-famous prosciutto di Parma, selling at €26.90 per kilo, and the even pricier, gourmet-beloved prosciutto di San Daniele, from up in the Friuli mountains, going for 31E per kilo.    Turn right onto Via Farini, which becomes Via Carbonesi. At no. 5, step into the divinely scented shop of Majani, chocolatiers extraordinaire since 1796.   The highlight of the tour includes this visit to the traditional chocolate maker where chocolate was invented.  4.50E will buy you a sampler baggie filled with their greatest hits chocolate "tortellini" coming in milk, dark, and white, and each filled with a chocolate cream, a selection of the famous cremini Fiat Napoleons, and a few scroza, thin sheets of dark chocolate, roughly shaped into an accordion-like bar.

Turn right up Via de' Gombruti, then sidestep left on Via Porta Nova to visit the Stregate Tea Shop at no. 7A, its air scented with more than 160 varieties of tea piled into numbered crocks on the shelves. I know: you're thinking: Tea isn't Italian! Well, they got coffee—espresso and cappuccino alike—from the Turks, pasta from the Chinese, wine from the Greeks, and tomato sauce from the Native Americans, so what, really, is Italian cuisine if not borrowed? And besides: this shop smells incredible.  Via Belvedere 7B, is Le Sflogline, is another traditional sfoglini shop run by a trio of smiling ladies who spend their days making fresh pasta, pastries, and simple lasagne in tiny take-away foil containers.

Bologna’s Parmigiano Cheese
Visiting "Caseificio" is like going back in time. The "King of the cheeses" actually has very old origins and today, keeping the old world way of 7 centuries ago, Parmigiano Reggiano cheese is still made following the same traditional and genuine methods. Parmigiano Reggiano cheese is protected by the European Union and can only be produced in a restricted area, the so called "zona tipica", which includes the provinces of Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, and a part of Bologna (left of the Reno river) and Mantova (right of the Po River).  It takes about 2 hours to see the whole production, preferably early in the morning.

Bologna’s Prosciutto di Parma
The production area of Prosciutto di Parma or Parma ham is located in the southern part of Parma province. Here, and only here, can genuine Parma ham be made.  Using very heavy and selected Italian pigs and following the traditional and genuine method, Prosciutto di Parma is still produced like it was about 2000 years ago. Only four ingredients are necessary to produce Parma ham: a pork leg, a minimum quantity of salt to preserve the meat, the air to dry it out, and time, a lot of time, at least 12 months to get a perfect flavor.

Balsamic Vinegar Tour
You will visit a typical workshop where world-class balsamic vinegar has been produced for over 150 years. Once inside these sweet-smelling ancient walls, you will learn how this gourmet delicacy was born right here in this area. In fact, though aceto balsamico is a relative newcomer to fancy food shops outside Italy, its origins go back so far that even in the year 1046 it was already a rarity craved by kings and emperors (and virtually unknown to the common people). Throughout the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, the vinegar-makers of Reggio Emilia had one of the richest and most powerful trade guilds in central Italy, their secrets as closely-guarded as those of the Murano glass-makers. By the 1800s it had become commonplace to enrich the dowries of local noblewomen with jars and little barrels of this precious liquid. During your visit to the workshop you will see the maker’s own vineyard, witness how a grape eventually meets one of its most glorious ends inside these little containers, and taste several types of vinegar made from various grapes and aged for various lengths of time. Believe us, even if you are a balsamic vinegar devotee, if you have never tasted one of the older ones – aged, say from 25 to 100 years – you still haven’t experienced a drop of heaven on your tongue. There is nothing like it!

Bologna’s Famous Two Towers
Bologna's towers were important for warning and defensive purposes and were naturally a sign of prestige for the families who lived in them. At the end of the 12th century there were one hundred of them, today around fifteen remain. The two towers are the symbol of Bologna. The taller one is Asinelli Tower built in the 10th century. It is 97 m high with a 2.23 meter inclination The base was modified in 1488 to house guards. The smaller is Garisenda Tower, a contemporary of its neighbor. Its strong inclination (3.22 m) is striking, caused by an earlier greater settling of the land.

Don’t forget, that Bologna has the oldest existing university in Europe that dates back to an incredible 1088. All through the middle ages, the city was an important intellectual centre and attracted scholars from all over the developing world. In 2006 Bologna was also appointed a UNESCO City of Music, and in fact, music is at the heart of the city’s professional, academic and social life.