Oltre. — Restaurant in Bologna

Went to Oltre last night with my son, and we had the ala carte as he was fighting the jetlag. The food was great, the tagliatelle ragu was very tasty but the star was the Tortellino with butter and black truffles, it was perfect! The Tortellini was very skillfully put together, you can only experience it when it's in your mouth and you bite into it, and the cooking was extremely well executed with the right amount of butter, salt, and truffles without overwhelming you but inviting you for another. Wine list is very modern, going down the minimal intervention route, and the cocktails menu looks solid.

What's even better than the food is the service. All the staff were very attentive and friendly, and very proficient with conversing with international guest. The right amount of attention without becoming excessive but always looking at your table, stepping in at the right time to remove the previous dish, top up water, check in on you. We just arrived in Europe and my son was noticeably tired, yet the servers were not agitated and remained very patient, and even offered to speed up the dishes (Not often in a semi fine dining restaurant).

The decor is very classy, fun and chic, great for a date but probably a little tad dim/dark for me.

Overall, great experience. Pity I couldn't try the degustation menu in our condition, and they are closed Tues/Wed. Comfort favourites reimagined with a touch more finesse, very refined and paying lots of attention to the taste of the ingredients.

Price is very friendly, totally worth it for the experience. You get charged the same or more at tourist traps that churn out average food, so...

We were disappointed. After the cool interesting entrance we had high expectations for the promised “Bologna food with a twist” We took the vegetarian tasting menu costing €70 pp The starter was a nicely cooked porcini mushroom but it came with a very watery tasteless Jerusalem artichoke sauce. The mushroom is strong enough to take the flavours so it would have been nicer to taste it! After that we had a a creamy, sticky ( texture of wallpaper paste) mashed potato enclosed in a tough cabbage leaf with a (too) small bit of tasty pumpkin sauce on the top- no twist or surprise flavours there. Then followed two pasta dishes which were too filling considering how many courses and they also weren’t exciting- tagliatelle with butter sauce and little bits of avocado which we were wondering what they were doing there. They didn’t add much except to make it more creamy, but we missed flavour and texture- some crunchy chili bits- bread- pistachios- garlic- lemon rind?? The second pasta was just too filling and nothing special- one nicely made tortellini or something with the mushroom would have been nicer than those thick picis. The only thing we really enjoyed and what we were hoping for the whole meal was the desert- so good on all counts- texture, flavour, interest… I would rather have eaten 3 of those and skipped on both pastas! I paid €180 for two people and felt later that I would have rather given a homeless person €100 and gone to a normal delicious restaurant in Bologna. I think there is work to be done in the kitchen of Oltre. Also visually there was no art on the plate to...

This is a cozy spot with low lighting and a modern interior. Food is a bit weird. The menu makes no sense and the Asian inspired dishes really don’t work very well. So let’s pretend those don’t exist for a minute and talk about the Italian dishes. The tortellini is the high point of the meal and the cook is perfect. Nice chew and top flavours. The sauce is delicious and everything works. This is a must try. If you’re smart you’ll skip the starters and mains and order strictly from the pasta menu. The bolognese is also pretty good but not flawless. The seasoning was a bit heavy handed on this one, and the flavour and textures were a bit off here. I like my pasta on the crisper side of al dente but this was borderline raw. I’m not gonna mention the fish either cause there was absolutely nothing remarkable here other then the continuing trend of improper seasoning (not enough on this one). The real issue with our meal was 100% the service. It shouldn’t take half an hour to get a menu and many times throughout the meal we just felt forgotten about. We had to just call the waiter over when we needed something. Would be nice to have a bit more hands on approach here. You could tell us what you’re serving rather than plunking down on the table and running away. And let us order some wine cause 40 minutes is quite a long time to make your customers wait...