Eating in Northern Italy

The planned itinerary: 2 days in Venice, 1 day in Ravenna with a stop in Padua, 2 days in Bologna, 2 days in Milan. The actual itinerary: 2 days in Venice, then a lunch in Padua, a dinner in Ferrara and a night in Ravenna, Ravenna by day and Bologna by night.  Modena by day and Bologna again by night. Friday started in Bologna, went to Modena, then to Spilamberto, then Parma, then a harried drive through a snowstorm to Milan. 2 exhausted weekend days in Milan and back home. Italy was lovely, cold, fun, tiring and delicious. We ate without relent, eating again and again when either the clock or our stomachs or our eyes gave the slightest clue that there might be something delicious around the corner that we could possibly cram into ourselves.  Which is not to say that we did nothing but eat; we did an absurd amount of things, up until we ran out of feet and wakefulness in Milan, but the thing that we never stopped doing was eating. Some highlights, on that front: In Venice, you can expect to find relatively mediocre food, for relatively high prices. That is, until you try the Fritelle. Crunchy, deep fried sweet balls of donut dough and cream or ricotta filling, these are so ridiculously good that the raisins they stick in them somehow only make them better, and I detest raisins. €1 each at the Majer bakeries in town, these are worth the train ticket to Venice. Ferrara is home to tortellini filled with sweet pumpkin in a sage and oil sauce.  This is delicious and well worth getting stuck in Ferrara waiting a couple of hours for your train. The Grom gelatoria chain is a bit overrated, according to our gelato- snobbery, but they make a lovely caramel and salt flavor. Hot chocolate in northern Italy was the weird characteristic of tasting as if it's not all that hot, until you swallow too much of it. I think they make it with foamed milk.  It's very good, and somewhat dangerous. Bologna, we hear, has outstanding food on every corner. All we know is that we only ate at Osteria dell'Orsa, which was so ridiculously good (and cheap!) that we went back the following night. I suspect we will only learn about Bologna's other offerings if dell'Orsa is closed or we get sick of insanely good pasta, bruschetta and fresh desserts. Unfortunately most of Bologna's famed gelatorias close when it's freeIng cold outside for some reason, and we were  unable to try them all and compare them. La Sorbetteria Castiglione was pretty good in general.  They make an amazing crema di latte and an excellent pistacchio. Their dark chocolate is too dark and their various mixes of pine nuts and almonds and liquours and things are kind of too complicated to be amazing, but hey, they're still ice cream. Yum. Modena's Hosteria Giusti provides some of the best food either of us has ever had, consistently from the beginning to the end of the meal. Their saffron pasta with pork cheeks is worth a flight and a train to Modena.  They have 4 tables and typically a 2 month wait for reservations but we found an opening and took it (yay February!) Federica, of the Parmeggiano-Reggiano Consortium, is a wonderfully enthusiastic tour guide and lover of the cheese. The dairy at Caseificio Castelnovese produces the best panna cotta you will ever eat until you're sick. They sell it in single servings (ha!), half liters (aka single servings) and full liters (aka single servings). Their yogurt is also hella good. Balsamic vinegar of Modena is apparently not real balsamic vinegar unless it says "tradizionale" on the bottle and it comes only in 250ml glass bottles. The production process is fascinating and the results were somewhat surprising to us. The flavor changes drastically over the aging process: 5-year old stuff (which is not allowed the "tradizionale" marker) is sweet and delicious (to me). 12-year old stuff is acidic and complex (and delicious, to Melanie). 25 year old stuff has a texture like molasses, and it's not as acidic tasting, with a crazy complicated mixture of sweet and sour and bitter. We didn't get to try any 50 year old stuff, but it certainly exists. Prosciutto di Parma is amazing. With a wonderful, tender texture and delicious flavor that somehow has notes of Parmeggiano-Reggiano in it (maybe from the whey they mix into their feed, or maybe because both the cheese and the ham are in the end, products of the grasses and grains that grow in the Parma region). If you go to Pane e Vino in the touristy Garibaldi square in Parma, they will give you a wooden platter called a Tagliere just covered with prosciutto and accoutrements. Wonderful. Gelato at Odeon Gelateria across from Milan's Duomo is really quite good. Chocolate and pistachio are both excellent. Avoid the semi-freddi; they have a weird texture - they taste..oddly warm and squishy (and too sweet!). Luini Panzerotti, also near the Duomo in Milan is spectacular, making fresh fresh fresh savory and sweet pastries sort of resembling calzones and giant hamentashen, respectively, but much much awesomer. Lastly, the Mozzarella bar Óbiká in Milan serves up various forms of DOC Mozzarella, some of which we've never ever seen. The dripping-with-cream liquid mess that is Stracciatella di Burrata is wonderful and weird. They have a location in New York, but I can't attest to the freshness of the stuff, which I assume doesn't last very long. Now I'm going to go make some burgers and stick them on a salad, because as wonderful and perfect as Italian cuisine is, we've had enough of it to last a good while.