For anyone traveling abroad to Europe, the best thing is the food, but more specifically, the dessert. With every bite of the small dish, your mouth melts from sweetness. You don’t want any of it to run out, but, of course, it does with each taste.
The best dessert item I tried while in Bologna, Italy, is from a restaurant I fell upon while walking around the city looking for a place to stop for some food: Ristorante Da Cesarina. I ordered Zuppa Inglese, which is a traditional Italian dessert with layers of custard, chocolate cream, and sponge cake soaked in alchermes. Priced at € 9, this dessert embodies what all desserts should be: a dish that’s mainly sweet with each bite but as a counterpart to help balance out the flavor.
If you like chocolate but want more in a dessert than what Zuppa Inglese has to offer, Piano Piano’s € 7 “Tenerina Una soffice torta al cioccolato con cuore fondente, una delizia per gli amanti del cioccolato” (Tenerina a soft chocolate cake with a dark heart, a delight for chocolate lovers) is a perfect option. The cake was rich and soft with a velvety texture, and I didn’t think anything could make me love it more, that is until I had the custard that came with it. The combo of the two added a lighter texture to the cake and made the chocolate stand out.
One thing I never knew could be a dessert is tortelloni, but if there’s one thing Europe has taught me, it's that with the right chef, anything is possible food-wise. Bottega Portici Pasta Bolognese & Co. (a takeout pasta place) serves Tortellone Fritto Dolce priced at € 3.50, which is sweet tortelloni consisting of ricotta filling, lemon zest, acacia honey, and icing sugar. This was a very sweet treat that I ate way too fast. The lemon zest matched perfectly with the ricotta filling in a way that made me think this should become a more widespread dessert to have after dinner.
From Bottega Portici Pasta Bolognese & Co. I also ordered a Brioche Crema e Fragola priced at € 1.90, which is a croissant with strawberries and vanilla custard. This could be either a very sweet breakfast croissant or a well-fitting dessert. The vanilla custard added a sweet note to the flakey croissant, with the strawberries adding some delectable flavor.
Matterello is a restaurant that drew me in with the gorgeous outdoor seating area and I’m glad it did. The Semifreddo al Pistacchio, priced at € 6, is a half-frozen dessert with a texture combination of ice cream and mousse. The pistachio flavoring was very prominent, and even though it was supposed to be a half-frozen dessert, it was very hard to cut without the dessert moving toward the edge of the plate. But overall, it basically was a pretty pistachio ice cream cake.
I went to Bruscè after a classical music concert mainly for a drink with friends, but when I saw there was raspberry cheesecake on the menu, how could I refuse? Priced at € 5.50, there was bright reddish-pink raspberry sauce on top with plain cheesecake under it, and this was a nice surprise compared to flavored cheesecake. The raspberry sauce was sweet and tasted just like any other raspberry flavoring with a fresher taste to it. Everything in Italy tasted as though it was fresh and “healthy” compared to anything in the U.S., and that goes for this cheesecake being light, airy, and flavorful.
Now, this I might’ve had for breakfast, but looking back on it, it tasted like a dessert. Cafe Aroma’s crepes with handmade custard and red berries, priced at € 5, were sweet with small hints of a tangy berry flavor coming through. These had a perfect balance between the custard and berries, as the crepes were gone before I even realized it.
Now to the gelati.
I visited La Sorbelleria Castiglione twice, as one time is never enough for any food place in Italy. First up is the Gianduia gelato, which has hazelnuts from Piemonte and fine cocoa. To a nice surprise, it wasn’t just a hazelnut flavoring, as the hazelnuts were mixed in the gelato. The hazelnut overpowered the cocoa flavoring, but personally, this is the highlight of the dessert. The other flavor I had was the Vice Verse, which is zabaione, sour cherries, and chopped hazelnut. This was delicious, with the sour cherries mixing with the hazelnut flavor to create a sense of a cherry hazelnut spread that needs to be made.
Venchi is the Häagen-Dazs or Cold Stone of Italy. Depending on which Venchi shop you go to, there could be an overwhelming amount of flavors or just five or six flavors to choose from. One nice thing is you can have more than one flavor in a cup, and I did that both times I went. Stracciatella (milk and chocolate chips) reminded me of cookies and cream, but instead of cookies, it was shaved chocolate. Crema Venchi (custard cream) tasted like every custard I had on this trip but frozen in the form of gelato. Nocciola Piemonte Igp (Piedmont hazelnut) is like eating actual hazelnuts but in the form of gelato. Cremino (cocoa and hazelnut) is the gelato version of Nutella and my favorite of the four I had from Venchi.
No matter the dessert you have, any dessert in Europe will make you want to move to Italy.