La Grassa

It's not for no reason that Bologna is called "la grassa". There certainly are nice eateries to choose from, such as the chain with the cool name Eataly, which is devoted to the Slowfood concept, not that the service is slow, too.

Needless to say, coffee tasted as it should be and our really nice and highly recommendable hotel had proper coffee-from-the-bar included in the breakfast. The photo below was taken in a nice café shortly after we arrived:

Having had several dissapointing encounters with Italian ice-cream (I firmly believe that all really good Italian ice-makers can be found in Vienna, inofficial capital of quality ice-cream), I gave ice-cream parlours a wide berth. When I saw people with interesting looking ice-lollies, I was intrigued, though. The shop those originated from was aptly called Stick House and the ice-cream I tried, a strawberry stick half dipped in dark chocolate and covered with hazelnut chunks, was as delicious as it looked:

Myself, I'm not too fussy about "recommended" restaurants when travelling and usually don't plan ahead, but rather start looking for something to eat when I get hungry (admittedly not always a good idea), but the Snow White loves proper dining and therefore insisted we check out one of the restaurants my Wallpaper city-guide was enthusiastic about. Ristorante Diana it was then. The food really was exceptionally good quality and the book definitely was right about service being "brusk but efficient". We got the message that closing time was approaching when the uniformed waiters subtly (not!) began pulling down the shutters (visible in the background of the picture below) and only stopped short of putting the chairs on the tables next to us. Dinner for two with half bottle of wine cost more than our hotel and sort of confirmed my approach to dining when abroad (see above), but at least it was molto autentico: