Fab Fabio's in Bologna

When Americans see the word Bologna, many of us are fondly reminded of Oscar Mayer's 1973 commercial featuring a little boy singing: 'My bologna has a first name it's O-S-C-A-R'. And while the city of Bologna in northern Italy is where mortadella, the pre-cursor to modern baloney, originates, the Emilia-Romagna region has plenty more culinary gifts to share.




It was at Ristorante da Fabio where we were able to try a bit, and more, of this prominent region's gastronomic pleasures: prosciutto de Parma, parmasean cheese, ragú bolognese and Sangiovese wine.




Dining at Fabio's place is done differently, starting with the constant presentation of aperitivos of all kinds to be shared; egg soufflé, stuffed tomatoes, liver pâté and ricotta cheese were delivered to our table by a handsome man with striking blue eyes.




Mortadella was prepared into a light paste that was delightful on a simple piece of toast. Ham salad is not my thing. In fact, it mortified me as a kid. You know, it was one of those food items that made my nostrils automatically flare out in denial. It was pink, and smooth, and what is it made of? Mom, no.

But 'mortadella surprise' scares me not anymore; I was going to try everything that came across my plate here. The 'meat fluff' had not a hint of miracle whip, was light and smooth, with only a hint of salt and smoke. It welcomed us in as the chef.




The walls were lined with knick knacks, old wine bottles, cds, cook books and US license plates, three from Wisconsin. As guests arrived they were greeted with a warm embrace and escorted with care to the back room where seats were still available.




Grilled zucchini continued our culinary embrace, the pieces delicate in olive oil and darkened just enough to punch up the taste.




For our main course I headed straight for the classic tagliatelle pasta with Ragú alla Bolognese. Bolognese sauce is famous. It's often seen on menus as far as Africa and Brazil described as spaghetti bolognese. This is the medieval city that gave the world this satisfying dish.

Tagliatelle is an egg pasta that is flat in shape and long. The sauce, or ragú, is started with a soffrito base, typically a mix of carrots, onions and celery sauteéd in olive oil and butter. This is a dish I love to try at well-known restaurants, and I've found that my favorite recipes include a good amount of carrots. A slow cooked pork or combination of meat is added to the mix. A good bolognese sauce is comfort food at its best.




Fabio's Tortellini in Brodo proved to be silky and inviting. The brodo, or broth, is made with various meat parts slowly simmered over a long period of time. Only with such care can a dish be so exquisite yet simple. It is rich like butter and nurtures in the same way, warm and smooth down the throat.




Desserts are served at Fabio in the same way as the starters. Like at the beginning of our meal, our table was once again loaded with dishes to share. We were surrounded by: fresh strawberries, dark chocolate cake, flan and apple torte.




And wow - the absolute highlight of it all - was homemade gelato made especially for our table. The cool creme custard had a real vanilla taste with a touch of anise.
I-N-C-R-E-D-I-B-L-E!




The small slices of schaum torte were sweet and sour when saddled with cool fresh strawberries. And the hot chocolate sauce hardened into a shell when poured atop the frozen ice cream on my plate.




Nestled prominently in the tiny front dining room of four tables, the bar is stocked with fine cognacs, liqueurs and port wines. There are even a few props hanging around for when dinner's conversation needs livening-up.




To accompany the end-of-evening sweets, our server delivered us glasses with a small bucket of ice and a bottle of Sambuca, which paired very well with the homemade gelato. We laughed and remained in awe of the experience we had just had and continued to. Nestled in the Castiglione area of the city, Ristorante da Fabio impressed us, and gave us a dining memory we won't soon forget. Its certainly a place we hope to return to again.

Our laughter continued outside and down the old, winding stone street,'my Bologna has a first name, it's F-A-B-I-O.'




Did I mention that I wasn't able to finish my Bolognese? Amongst close friends I'm known as the 'Leftover Queen'. It can't go to waste - and I needed room for dessert.

Fabio gave me a weird look when I asked to take it with. Look, when in Rome or not, there was no way I was going to leave homemade pasta and sauce behind from the city that invented it if I could take it along with me.

It was eaten late night in Paris two days later - enjoyed again and wasted not. I added some Tabasco too - that's allowed the second time around.




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Picassos are there, in Basel

I spent some memorable time in the Swiss city of Basel in my early twenties. The city is charming, artistic, simple and free—being in love at the time with a local hipster certainly has something to do with it's impression on me. Still, my traveling buddies felt its spirit too. It's a great place.




The city's Kunstmuseum was a favored spot to roam on cold or rainy days, and a place I wanted to share with my family. On this latest visit we were fortunate that the museum was hosting a very special Pablo Picasso exhibit Die Picassos Sind Da!




Picasso helped lead the movement of modern art in the early twentieth century. He stirred up controversy and gained acceptance and clout unlike no other living artist before or since. A passionate man of many women, and visualization and creativity at his core, he often alluded in obvious and other times more subtle ways to sex and all the parts that entail 'it'.




Like my love affair with and around the city, Basel fell hard in adoration for Picasso in 1967 in what was known as the Picasso Year. In fact, the people of of the city were so in love that it approved a loan of 6 million Franks and raised another 2.4 million Franks in a strong initiative to acquire two special paintings of the artist.




The current exhibit introduces various works that are privately owned and have never been on public display as well as pieces on loan from the Foundation Beyeler. It includes paintings, sketches, drawings and sculpture from Picasso's early to late years taking visitors through his various artistic phases of Cubism, Neo-classism and Surrealism, which this featured vibrant beret painting is. The idea was to create art 'as beautiful as the chance encounter'.




It is an impressive collection that pulls together the visions, thoughts and talent of Picasso. The Girl in the (irange) Beret is an oil painting chosen to promote the exhibit, and one that turned out to be a favorite of ours. The posters are fantastic, but hold nothing to the real painting hanging on the wall.His sequence of sketches shown in one room convey the immense talent he had for combining a few simple lines together to deliver a clear visual message. In these I found great humor. The Picassos are there in Basel now, and it's well, well worth a short trip, or long. Do not miss this special collection. If I still lived there, I'd go for Happy Hour every day - between 5-6 admission is free.




The Basel Kunstmusem has a Picasso exhibit book for sale that describes the city's love affair with Picasso and offers photos and descriptions of every work included in the exhibit. We didn't pick one up because of weight, but I've already ordered a copy to be mailed home. Look up the 1903 sketch The Kiss. It was one of my favorites.
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Giverny: Monet's Place of Inspiration in Normandy

Claude Monet, the world famous Impressionist painter of the late nineteenth century, was a bold, gifted man. Giverny, France is where Monet made his home in the final years of his life. He lived in a large country home with a gorgeous blue tile kitchen and large yellow-walled dining room fit to hold twenty comfortably.





It is the place where he established his prominent brightly colored gardens of various plant species. It is home to the lily pad pond and green Japanese bridges that gave inspiration to some of his most popular paintings.


The aura of the place is powerful.


At this time this year the air is crisp. The weather has been much cooler overall for longer moving into spring—we're only hitting mid-fifties in mid-April. Monet's gardens would normally be well-moving into hearty bloom by now. For us the flowers are just beginning to bud and expose their petals, reaching out hungrily for the sun's warmth so to draw out full and complete.


With this irregular infancy in the flowers' growth we had the opportunity to imagine the fresh, vivid rainbow that clutched Monet's heart and hand, creating lurid expressions that have brightened the light of the world for millions over the years, and more and more to come, for certain.

The place is enchanting. It's inspiring. I felt as though I could spend months there drawing out the magic of the place to create my very own unique communication of life's treasures, it's flow, adaptation and progression.


Walking along the budding paths of the garden and over the bridges, around the pond dancing with the flow of winter's snow melt reflecting in the sun's rays, nude from the luscious Water Lilies (1906) painted in summer's flourish, Monet's impression is clearly seen. It's there in the water of the earth linked to all that surrounds it, including us.


The hairs on my body stood tall. I could feel it acutely—the magic of Giverny.


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Paris: croissant class and culinary tour

We kicked off our European Adventure in Paris, a city with historic buildings and culinary traditions that command respect. To immerse ourselves properly we attended a croissant making class, straight off the plane from Chicago, at La Cuisine Paris located on Quai Hotel de Ville just on the river Seine in the Le Marias district across from Notre Dame.


Chef Eric instructed us through the sensitive and enduring process of making the luscious French croissant, a bakery item found through out the world, but one that is only truly fantastic in its home country of France. Once we made our dough, we placed the ball in a plastic wrap in the fridge for a while. Then we pounded out about one stick of butter, or around a quarter pound, into a perfect square.

We rolled the ball of dough flat to the length of a rolling pin and into a four petal flower shape where the butter is placed in the center. Next we carefully folded the petals acutely around the butter square and rested the lot in the fridge once again.


With the butter folded, we rolled the dough a few times over, repeating the process of rolling and resting in the fridge. The dough was at last cut into triangles and made into croissant shapes and baked, initially at a high temperature and then 'dropped' by turning the heat down straight away.

Learning the process will have me appreciating the fine croissants I'll have the pleasure of eating for years to come. It should take about five hours to make a croissant, requiring bakers to rise as early as 2AM to produce the crusty delight for local Parisians or French villagers. Let's hope we learned enough to make our own at home in Wisconsin on a weekend afternoon. Maybe we'll even customize them for our own local tastes - cheddar cheese croissants anyone? :-))


While waltzing through Le Marais area, the quaint Jewish quarter in this City of Love, a local friend pointed out L'As Du Falafal on Rue Rosiers. She said it was the most popular Middle Eastern place in town, one that had a line full of hungry locals and tourists alike all throughout the day.


An old Zagat restaurant guide for Paris 2009-2010 found on our apartment bookshelf also listed L'As as a hot spot, and cost effective too.


The line grew longer as we waited; the wait is worth it. L'As falafel are the size of small gum balls, so they are more easily eaten on a stroll through the dilapidated cobble roads and pack more of a crunch with each bite. Crisp pickled cabbage and zesty hot sauce liven the creamy white sauce. For €5.60, the spot fully delivered to its accolades.


Cafe Constant was recommended in the Travel & Leisure April 2013 feature Insider's Guide to Paris as an intimate food lover's spot where chef Christian Constant shares his grandmother's recipes.


From the top of the bi-level brasserie located only blocks away from the Eiffel Tower, we could see the top of the famous 49-story infrastructure through the window at our table.


Elbow to elbow with Parisians to the right and Americans living abroad in the UK to our left, we enjoyed a rich beef stew, a poached cod with garlic mayonnaise and a seared salmon. The highlight of our lunch—and the winning dessert so far on the trip—was the profiteroles. Something like the Wisconsin State Fair cream puff, profiteroles are a lush puff pastry, except rather than fresh whipped cream in the middle, Constant filled his with ice cream. Warm chocolate sauce was poured atop the freshly baked, stuffed pastry upon presentation.


Chez Omar is a Moroccan restaurant also located in Le Marais (there's a lot going on in this area, including wonderful vintage stores abound).


Again the place was slammed in the early afternoon with families, couples and business folk. In fact, here we might have been the only foreign visitors. A simple pot of legumes, or vegetables, in a subtle broth served with seriously fluffy couscous filled our bellies and gave us the endurance we needed to continue adventuring long enough to beat out any jet lag.



The Zagat guide proved to be a great tool for hunting down more of the city's most favored dining experiences. Le Dôme du Marais achieved high scores for its cuisine and atmosphere, housed in a historical building that relates back to Louis VIII. The dome is a gorgeous glass feature that was the auction room of the nation's first pawn shop.





(Are you getting the blue, white and red of the French flag here??)


While the main dining room is enchanting, the former sales and bank room is charming and bright filled with plants, old needlepoint sofas and a metal bird cage. This is where we chose to dine, sharing a rich, piping hot corn chowder with popcorn and sensual truffle pizza. Go there. The atmosphere is unique.


Chez Georges was ranked high by Zagat and was also written-up in Bon Appetit magazine in March 2012. Said to have been a favorite of Julia Child during her time in Paris, the bistro was packed at 2:00 when we arrived sans réserve.


Maintaining its integrity of a nostalgic time, the duck breast served with mushrooms and a delicate brown sauce tasted so clean it tasted almost of beef steak rather than the rich flavor of the classic bird.


After the guests immediately next to us departed, a little hairy guest was revealed - to our pleasure. If only my buddy could have been there with us, she would have been just as polite, and very happy to try the meal with us.


There was even a pooch behind the bar! Encore un verre de vin rouge s'il vous plait, mademoiselle.


Le Petit Marche is near the Place de Voges and is recommended as a spot with great food, service and atmosphere that serves late into the evening. When we arrived famished at 11PM after a long day's adventure around the winding Paris streets, the scene was indeed lively still.


We enjoyed watching a table of twenty somethings shoot vodka before, during and after their meal of tuna steak seared with a sesame crust. Our meals of filet mignon and foi gras pâté were rich with French tradition, inclusive of a modern flare. It was so nice to be able to enjoy a real meal at such a late hour.


The inside was rustic with walls lined with drawings and paintings of women of all sorts. Colored lamps and fresh flowers brightened the dark room lit almost entirely by candle light.


With so much culinary tradition in Paris we did our best to visit spots with 'a name'. Each offered classic cuisines in somewhat traditional settings, although we felt that the price for a few outweighed the quality of food delivered. We're eager to work on the art of croissant making when we go back home and look forward to returning to some of the spots on our next visit to this immaculate European city.


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