Sfoglia Rina — Restaurant in Bologna

I really wanted to love this place. I came here twice. Even though my first experience was extremely poor, I still gave it a second chance and it fell short in every way. Let me explain.

First time there, we came on a Saturday around 700pm. There was a line and the waitress mentions the kitchen closes at 830 so it's possible we don't get seated. Understood and we still put our name in line. Behind us in line there was an Italian family and then an Asian family. We waited quite a while and we were next in line at around 740pm. The waitress came out and proceeded to completely ignore us and I watched her ask the Italian family to come in to be seated. I stopped her and asked why we weren't being seated and she said to me "this is the last table we can seat as the kitchen is closing at 8pm". To which I replied "OK, but we are line before this family." She didn't believe me and we double checked the list she had in hand and there my name was but crossed out. She apologized and seated us. What was really surprising was that shortly after she still decided to seat the Italian family that was behind us.....even though she was prepared to turn us away because the kitchen was closed. I won't jump to any conclusions here but it felt very weird. When we sat down to order our food, we put our order in maybe 2-3 minutes after the Italian family that was seated right next to us. However their food came out almost instantly while we waited almost 40 minutes for our food. The servers were incredibly dismissive to us and didn't even bring us water after multiple asks. When our food did come out, the server was so careless that when she was setting our dishes down in front of us, she smacked me in the face with the wooden board. She didn't even say sorry until my boyfriend kind of made a big deal out of it.

Onto the food..... The pasta is great. I love the mouth feel and the taste. I will give them that. But the flavors were not. The lasagna was under-seasoned and very mushy. The ravioli was undercooked as parts of the pasta were still raw. Sauce was not memorable at all. The cherry tomatoes had no flavor and didn't add to the dish whatsoever. The basil lacked flavor as well. To me, it seems like the ingredients outside of the pasta itself were of low quality or someone is just not doing quality control. The wine and beers were also some of the worst I've had in Bologna. Hell, the 2 buck chuck I got at the open market tasted miles better. The only thing we liked was the Tortellini in brodo. Very simple and the meat inside the Tortellini very tasty.

But like I said, I WANTed to like this place so I told my boyfriend it was maybe just a fluke and perhaps dining too close to closing hours was what impacted the taste.

So we came again on Monday at lunch at opening. It's dedication, to pass up other restaurants in the area to come get in this freaking line for pasta again. The service was MUCH better at least. We ordered 3 dishes betwen the two of us. The Tortellini with sage and butter, broccoli risotto and the tagliatelle ragu. The sage and butter dish is good but nothing very special. I would have appreciated more sauce or a stronger sage taste. In fact I tasted no sage at all. The broccoli risotto was a disaster. The full broccoli pieces that were garnished on top were still cold/frozen in the center! Not even fresh broccoli?? Seriously? This is probably why the risotto barely had any broccoli flavor. The cuttlefish was OK but quite a delicate flavor which made the huge chunks of candied lemon confusing. You have this risotto with very light cream and cuttlefish flavor and then huge chunks of candied lemon overpowering the entire dish. It just didn't work. The ragu was the nail in the coffin. The noodles while deliciously al-dente but were covered in cold ragu sauce.... We asked them if the dish was meant to be cold and he said no and that he would get us a new dish. The second dish came out pretty fast but was STILL COLD. How? And why?

This place is all hype. I would not recommend...

I always give restaurants I go to 5 stars, if not 4. This is my first 1 star review on Google. Where do I even start. Waited outside for 10-15 mins to be seated which is ok, but when I was shown my seat it was on the corner of this big table next to other guests. Imagine a high school cafeteria. So the vibe was bad, but hey it is €12 pasta that’s supposedly good—so I sat down. I chose this restaurant over plenty in the area because they are the only ones who offer vegetarian tortellini (famous in Bologna, also I am vegetarian) and I really wanted to try tortellini! I didn’t really understand the ordering system at first because you have to write down your order on a notepad, but also call a waiter to come get it? I don’t know how that works still. Regardless, I had waited for a while at this point and I was very hungry. When my food arrived, I was served tortellini in like soup form (picture attached) which I didn’t expect but I thought since I wrote down my order myself I must’ve messed up the part where I said I wanted regular tortellini, not soup. No, that was someone else’s order and you want to know how I found out? After eating the first piece of tortellini I tasted something that seemed to have some meat. I spit it out, of course in front of the random people sitting two inches from me, only to find out the tortellini was COMPLETELY filled with ham🙂 not even one minute later the waiter comes to me and tells me “oh…sebastian?” and hands me my original order and takes away the one I had started. I get that mistakes happen but bro! They literally mark the item I ordered as vegetarian. The waiters KNOW the tortellini I ordered is vegetarian. How hard is it to keep in mind which customers order a vegetarian dish and think twice before placing down their plate. ESPECIALLY when the meat in the dish is hidden inside pasta!! Atmosphere 1/5 because I hated sitting next to random people. Service 1/5 because either the kitchen or the waiter messed up badly. And food 1/5, well for...

Ok… I need to take a moment to properly review this place and also make some caveats to previous reviews of other pasta places.

I gave a few pasta places in Rome, Cinque Terre, and Florence the full 5 stars, and they deserve it still, based on what I knew at the time.

Now I journeyed to Bologna and the game has changed.

This is the BEST pasta I have ever had and I’m not even exaggerating. Based on all of the places I’ve journeyed to in Italy, this is hands down the best. The price is half of what you what pay in Rome, the seasoning is just right (ie: not too salty), and the pasta is cooked perfectly.

They are a super busy location where line ups occur and it’s not too clear whether you wait in line, walk in, etc, but that can be fixed with some simple directions. Service is decent, we got lucky as we were served quickly and had very friendly staff. The table beside us wasn’t ready to order the first time during the service walk through and it took them a while before someone else came to check on them, so I can see how some people can have gripes. They also had a long talk with the server, apparently they ordered something thinking it was a pasta dish but it wasn’t. Anyway, small logistical issues that can be remedied with multilingual menus.

Overall, everything we ordered was delicious and was exactly what we wanted. I wanted to come back for dinner or order seconds but only having a day in Bologna meant we had to spread our time and stomach around.

100% worth it. Come earlier to avoid the line, and you won’t be disappointed. If I ever get the chance to come back to Bologna, I will definitely be making...