Real Traditional Taste of Bologna

We arrived at 10:25 in the restaurant for the cooking class,when we immediately started. No appetizers whatsoever for us like we read with others. We learned to make the tagliatelle en tortelinni, and Federico opened a bottle of wine for us. We mixed the mascarpone with sugar and egg yolks and put it in the fridge. Then Federico defridged the 'bolognaise?' sauce for us (saying it took 4 hours to make, but all it was, was minced beef with celery and onion. No tomato sauce like the recipe in it... But then we made his special treatment sauce. He melted butter, sliced 3 tomatoes which he juiced over the pan, add passata et voilà. Spécial treatment sauce. It then was 11:30 and we went at table to taste our own made food. It was good, in the way you expect it would be. The fresh pasta itself, very good. Tomato sauce, good. 'bolognaise sauce' nothing special. Tiramisu: nothing wrong with it, but expected more from 'grandmother's recipe'. So around 12, we finished the lunch and Federico then started his second job: selling wine. He started to tell us great things about his knowledge of wine, that he started a new company and sells directly to the customer from the winery itself,so the price is better then what we used to give. He asked some things to us about what we liked and we arranged that he could make a mix of 10 bottles between a range from 5 - 15 euro. Later that day, he came to our car and gave our wines. We moved on and went for groceries to the local supermarket for our regular needs and we saw on of our bottle in the racks. It was only 5.49 for 1, and if we bought 2, the price was 7.00.... That's when our suspicion started. We came back to our car, and then started to look at the bottles. Every bottle (except the Massimo bergomas) contains sulfites. The sulfites he told us, that are bad in good wine... Then we went on and just Googled every name of the wine and found every bottle in every big supermarket's webshop. The most expensive was 8 euro, the cheapest was 2.79.. Let us say that we are not suspicious anymore now, but a little bit angry. We told him that we aimed for 5-15 euro/ bottle and he 'sold' us every bottle for 15 euro. That means that the cheapest one (most fun fact here: he told us that was the best one to save on a special occasion, is a carrefour label and also available in big bags of 5 liter) he valued it at 6 times it's price. I tried to confront Federico with it, but he laughs it away, which made clear it isn't the first time he does this. So be aware of the people like him.

A fantastic cooking class in Central Bologna, we loved it from start to finish, a great welcome platter of local cheese/meat with wine, followed by hands on demonstrations of multiple pastas & the best tiramisu we’ve ever had! This was followed by a lovely meal with plenty more wine. Thank you so much. I’d highly recommend this experience to anyone visiting Bologna who is interested in local food.