Ceccarelli Amedeo and the salumerias east of Piazza Maggiore

Pork cheek guanciale and other smoked hams like speck stagionato. Good between two pieces of crusty bread or sizzling in a hot pan.

After climbing down the medieval Asinelli tower I was carried as if by providence into Ceccarelli Amedeo at Via Pescherie Vecchie 8, one of several specialty food shops in the Quadrilatero that sell only local certified (DOP) products produced by methods handed down from generation to generation. The entire street is a goddamn food paradise, as are the alleyways that run parallel to it.

I walked out with some salame Piacentino, a hunk of pecorino di fossa (sheep cheese ripened in pits of volcanic rock) and a pound of fresh tortellini. A little spendy, but the hard cheeses take a year to produce, and some poor lady has to fill each of these belly-button-shaped pasta pieces with prosciutto and Parmagiano-Reggiano, and it's supposed to rain all night and I've got a bottle of Gutturnio and you can't talk me out of any of it. So take "Yasss queen," or "I am deceased" or any contemporary expression of delight, multiply it by ten and poach over a low flame; there is basically no point in going back home now.

A collection of this many pecorino varieties is known collectively as a shit-tonne, and it speaks to Italians' food sickness.

One etto = 100 grams, enough for a decent sandwich. For a couple, due etti oughtta do it.

On Via Pescherie Vecchie, market stalls from the Middle Ages house restaurants that play to the shopkeepers' strengths. Foremost on the menus: charcuterie plates arrayed with meats like raw prosciutto and lean, dried salame golfetta, side by side with mozzarella and spreadable squacquerone.

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Renato DAll'Ara Stadium

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The Duca D'Amalfi pasticceria

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336 hours in Bologna

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