Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
L
$$$
Hotel Ambassador
, Falken-
(Napfgasse 4;
&
41/44/251-80-60
), located
in a nearby 14th-century building.
strasse 6 (
&
41/44/258-98-98;
www.
ambassadorhotel.ch). $$
Lady's First,
Mainaustrasse 24 (
&
41/44/380-80-10;
www.ladysfirst.ch).
(
Zurich (16km/10 miles).
Chocolate World
469
Chocolate Bolognese
Where Italian Chocolate Started
Bologna, Italy
Any gastronomic tour of Italy absolutely
has to include Bologna, the city that gave
its name to the most classic of ragout
sauces, not to mention sublime
mortadella
sausage, which bears about as much
resemblance to American-style bologna as
chicken Marengo does to McNuggets. Ital-
ians call the city “Bologna the Fat,” and for
good reason; its restaurants are of a high
caliber for a city of this size, and the num-
ber of excellent food specialty shops is
extraordinary. Strolling through the Pesche-
rie Vecchie, the city's market area near the
landmark Due Torri, it's easy to lose all
sense of time. But to satisfy your sweet
tooth, wend your way past the salumerias,
cheese shops, pasta factories, bakeries,
and produce, and you can visit two of Italy's
most venerable chocolate shops.
Near the Pescherie Vecchie,
Roccati
is a
family business founded in 1909 in Tren-
tino; the current proprietors, a husband-
and-wife team, moved it to Bologna a few
years ago. Roccati is still celebrated for the
gianduja
orange chocolate that their ances-
tors made specially for the princes of Savoy
a century ago. In their smart modern shop,
you'll see some amazing chocolate sculp-
tures—books made out of chocolate, boats
and cars made of chocolate, horses and
birdhouses of chocolate—there's even a
box of chocolate that's literally a box of
chocolate. In their open-air laboratory, you
can stand and watch these heavenly
delights being created by hand. The only
catch is that the shop closes in summer,
but that's a tricky season for chocolate
anyway.
A few streets farther south from the
Piazza Maggiore, on Via Carbonesi,
Majani
claims to be Italy's oldest sweets shop, in
business since 1796. Behind a gleaming
old-fashioned wood-paneled shop,
resplendent with gold letters and coats-of-
arms, you'll find a wide assortment of
chocolates, artisanally made with the
highest-quality ingredients (though they
eventually moved the chocolate-making
operations out of the back room to a small
plant in nearby Crespellano). Their special-
ties include a wonderful coruscated choc-
olate bark, scrumptious little tortellini-shaped
ganaches, and their classic confection:
melt-in-your-mouth Fiats, bite-sized cubes
of layered satiny chocolate invented in
1912 to honor the Italian car of the same
name.
Majani,
Via Carbonesi 5 (
&
39/51/
234302;
www.majani.it).
Roccati,
Via Clav-
ature 17A (
&
39/51/261964;
www.roccati
cioccolato.com).
(
Marconi International (6km/3
3
⁄
4
miles).
L
$$$
Grand Hotel Baglioni,
Via
dell'Indipendenza 8 (
&
39/51/225445;
www.baglionihotels.com). $
Albergo Della
Drapperie,
Via della Drapperie 5 (
&
39/51/
223955;
www.albergodrapperie.com).
