A single great cuisine that goes from Comacchio to Cattolica and reaches all the way to the Apennines: all of Romagna is a restaurant that can satisfy any palate and that is capable of transforming food into a real event with lunches and dinners in places of history and culture. In Romagna, the best products of the land and sea are delicacies to be enjoyed at the table, prepared according to tradition or revised by talented chefs, but they are also experiences to be enjoyed to discover the roots and traditions of the territories: from fossa cheese, with the opening of the cave for maturing, to bluefish and re-enactments of trawling, from tours of the wineries to courses on making piada with the azdore (The housewife, the one who presides over the governance of the house) .
And when we talk about handmade, we don’t just mean tagliatelle rolled out with a rolling pin: on an authentic Romagna table, alongside the Sangiovese (a kind of wine), there are typically the handmade creations that have always made adding a place for a guest more delightful. Because in Romagna, gastronomy is truly the perfect match for craftsmanship: wine is served in ceramic jugs typical of the Rimini area and piadina is cooked strictly on terracotta trays from Montetiffi. Every dish here is exquisite and tells the story of the local tradition, amidst food, art and history.
A journey in search of gastronomic craftsmanship in Romagna can begin in Comacchio, a hamlet overlooking the sea that preserves the tradition of fishing and eel breeding. Here, the Manifattura dei Marinati (Marinated Factory) is a meeting point amidst history, anthropology and cuisine, a bit of a museum and a bit of a factory: throughout the year, it is possible to watch the marinating of fish, and in the months of November and December, the spectacular fireplaces are lit to roast and marinate the eel according to the ancient Comacchio technique, while at the Museum shop, it is possible to buy the traditional eel of the Valleys, sold in iconic vintage packages.
We continue down the Adriatic Sea to Cesenatico, where the Seafaring Museum tells the story of fishermen and their boats. And if the woodworking for the construction of boats is an integral part of a Romagna artisan tradition that still lives on today in some shipyards where only natural materials are used, on the upper floor you can also discover the ancient tools used for fishing, such as hand-woven nets and rush baskets, and the artisan techniques women used to make them. The Museum also continues outdoors, in the Porto Canale, where it is possible to admire the ancient ships and especially the famous vele al terzo (a specific type of sail, typically triangular), exclusively sewn and painted by hand by the fishermen's wives, declared Intangible Heritage by the Superintendence for Cultural Heritage a few years ago.
Leaving the sea, you enter the heart of Romagna and arrive in Forlimpopoli, the birthplace of Pellegrino Artusi, the man who invented Italian gastronomy. Casa Artusi, a museum and centre of gastronomic culture, is not only a tribute to traditional recipes, but also a journey through the tools of home cooking. Here, among ancient rolling pins, wooden pastry boards and pasta moulds, you rediscover the value of the often domestic craftsmanship applied to the preparation of food. Each tool tells the story of a piece of history: from the beech cutting boards used for pastry, to the various kinds knives for cutting fresh pasta, to the shapes for cappelletti and passatelli (two kinds of fresh pasta).
Along with the cuisine, the art of rust printing on canvas plays a fundamental role in setting the table: tablecloths printed with wooden matrices are still made by hand today and embellish the table settings of families in Romagna. In Romagna, and Casa Artusi proves it, every element of the table is the result of craftsmen’s knowledge that has its roots in the past and that is still carefully preserved and passed down today.
Our journey continues to Faenza, the town of ceramics: we are in Romagna; can the tradition of craftsmanship not meet the table? For centuries, the workshops of Faenza have created plates, jugs and bowls that enrich the lunches and dinners of the people of Romagna with refined decorations and brightly coloured enamels. The ceramics of Faenza, famous throughout Europe, are not only decorative but also functional: jugs and mugs are used to serve wine in many taverns in the centre and on the hills, while the Gotti, the typical ceramic cups, are the absolute protagonists of the "Nott de Bisò", the Christmas celebration when mulled wine is drunk from these hand-decorated artifacts: every year each district produces new models.
From Faenza, we then move to Montetiffi, a hamlet in the Cesena Apennines: here you can find the last artisans who still produce the traditional terracotta pan for cooking piadina. This peculiar process, handed down over the centuries, allows for uniform cooking, enhancing the flavour of the bread of the people of Romagna. Each pan is made with local clay, to be precise, a combination of local types, and is then cooked in wood-fired ovens, with drying that can last up to a month, keeping the processes of the past intact: over the years only the dimensions have changed, to adapt them to use on modern gas stoves, smaller than the traditional fire that the azdore used