Bologna Street Food Tour

Our Experience - Bologna Street Food Tour

After spending the previous day traveling through the countryside surrounding Bologna and eating what felt like our combined body weight in Parmigiano Reggiano, we were ready to explore more of the food found within Bologna itself. This street food tour offered a shorter and considerably more affordable introduction to the city's food scene while also giving us another opportunity to explore its beautiful historic center.

Our guide Sara was fun and welcoming, and as we walked through Bologna, she mixed the food stops with stories about the city's history and culinary traditions. That's something we've come to really appreciate about food tours. The food may be what gets us to book them, but learning why certain dishes and ingredients became part of a city's identity often ends up being just as interesting as eating them.

Our favorite — and easily the most unique — bite of the tour was the fried tortellini. Tortellini itself is deeply connected with Bologna and the surrounding region, but eating it fried was an entirely different experience from the traditional preparations we'd encountered. Crispy, snackable tortellini while walking through Bologna? We were completely on board.

We also sampled sandwiches filled with local meats including prosciutto, enjoyed some wine, and naturally encountered Parmigiano Reggiano again. Under normal circumstances, we'd be thrilled to see more Parmigiano. Unfortunately for the cheese, we'd spent the previous day at a Parmigiano factory consuming quantities that probably shouldn't be attempted without professional supervision. We still hadn't completely recovered.

Compared with many of the food tours we took throughout Italy, this one included a smaller amount of food. But we don't necessarily consider that a negative. The tour was also considerably less expensive than many of the longer food experiences we booked and lasted only around two hours, so the amount of food felt appropriate for the price and length of the experience.

And, of course, we finished with gelato — because apparently Italy has established a rule that no food tour may legally conclude without it. After several weeks of traveling around the country, we certainly weren't going to argue.

This wasn't the enormous multi-course food adventure that some of our other tours became, but it didn't need to be. We got to walk through Bologna's historic center with a fun guide, learn more about the city's history and food culture, sample several regional specialties, discover that fried tortellini absolutely deserves to exist, and finish everything with gelato. For a reasonably priced two-hour introduction to Bologna's food scene, we had a really enjoyable experience.