‘Our revenge on spaghetti Bolognese’: Italy’s food theme park

“Our revenge on spaghetti Bolognese,” is how Virginio Merola, the mayor of Bologna, describes Fico Eataly World, the 20-acre food and farming theme park billed as Disneyland for food lovers, which opened on Wednesday.

You won’t find the ubiquitous pasta dish on any menus in the northern Italian city, where its proper incarnation is tagliatelli al ragù, and the mayor’s joke reflects the city’s pride in its food heritage – and in this new attraction, which is expecting six million visitors annually.

The venture, which cost €140 million, is located on the site of the city’s former wholesale fruit and vegetable market, a 15-minute drive from the city centre. Shuttle buses run throughout the day from Bologna’s central station.

The jokes continue in the enterprise’s name: Fico stands for Fabbrica Italiana Contadina, which translates as Italian Farming Factory, but fico also means cool in Italian. And it is awesomely cool. The park is a joint venture between the Eataly Italian food markets, of which there are now 17 worldwide and 18 in Italy, and two Italian co-ops.

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The theme park feeling takes hold right at the entrance, where you can pick up the keys of an adult-sized turquoise tricycle, specially designed by the leading Italian bike firm Bianchi. The trikes are equipped with wicker baskets front and back, one of them refrigerated, to store your purchases. If three wheels don’t appeal, you can board a train to tour the sprawling site.

Passing through the entrance doors, adorned with apples – 2,000 of them, each of a different variety – you’ll be in no doubt that you are in food and farming territory. And, with more than 40 restaurants (four of them outposts of establishments with Michelin stars), bistros, trattorias, food kiosks, bars and wine cellars on site, eating and drinking are also high up on the reasons for visiting.

Six strands

The park has six strands running through its vast indoor halls and many outdoor spaces: farms and breeding; factories; restaurants and bars; training and education, events, and shops and marketplace. Like a giant IKEA, the 9,000sq m Italian food, wine and kitchenware marketplace, located just before the exit, is where the majority of the financial damage will be done.

Bought too much to carry home? Not to worry, you can dispatch it from the on-site post office. So go right back in and buy some more extra virgin olive oil, milled on-site; mortadella, made (you guessed it, on-site), and Fico-branded organic wine, not made at the park, but packed there, if you buy the bag-in-a-box version.

Most visitors will begin by checking out the park’s farm animals, 200 of them, including pigs, cattle, sheep, geese, goats, rabbits and hens. There are cute donkeys and furry little horses, too. Italy has the highest consumption of horse meat in Europe, and donkey stew is a speciality of Verona, so the farm-to-fork message is not entirely sugar-coated.

Other outdoor attractions include a truffle wood where you can watch clever hounds sniff out the buried treasure, olive and citrus groves, vegetable gardens and cereal fields. You can follow the grain through its journey from field to mill to pizza restaurant, where it is used to make the dough.

“Small, medium and big companies are here, to represent biodiversity in Italian food production,” the media relations representative showing visiting journalists around says. But there is a fairly commercial feel to the shiny, lavish production areas where you can watch some of Italy’s big names in charcuterie, cheese, pasta, olive oil and confectionery create their products right in front of you – well, from behind glass walls, in most cases.

Pasta-making

Hands-on experiences can be booked, but have to be paid for (entrance to the park is free). You can sign up for a pasta-making session (€20), a workshop on beekeeping (€20), or a tutored tasting of olive oil (€20), among others in a daily menu of 20 hours of classes and courses. Cookery demonstrations are also on the programme of events, and celebrity chef Massimo Bottura is curating the line-up of chefs who will participate. Guided tours (€15) can also be booked.

Fico Eataly World’s theme park “rides” come in the form of its six multimedia carousels, pavilions in which you can explore themes such as Man and Fire, Man and Earth and Man and Future, through immersive learning experiences. There is, after all, only so much time children and young adults – expected to visit in large numbers via school tours – will be willing to spend watching cows being milked and cheese being made before the need to watch giant video screens and press brightly flashing buttons wins out.

When you’ve petted the ponies (don’t think about it too much), watched a mortadella sausage being made, seen olives transformed into luminous pea-green oil, and marvelled at the wall of chocolate, constructed with 30,000 Venchi brand chocolate pralines, it might be time to eat something.

The choice, like the place, is vast. All of the “factories”, as Fico Eataly World describes its large-scale food production collaborators, have kiosks, so you can snack on the goods minutes after seeing them in production. But, like most theme park visits, there will probably come a time when you’ll be willing to part with a few (or a lot of ) euro just to take the weight off your feet. So park the bike, spread out the map, and choose from 21 restaurants, cafes and bars.

Truffle restaurant

There is a pizzeria, naturally, serving Neapolitan pies from a wood-fired oven, lots of places to satisfy pasta cravings, an osteria offering salami and cheese, a seafood counter, a Mediterranean vegetarian option, a truffle restaurant, several smart tablecloth and polished glassware options . . . and more. Quirky choices include Bistrot della Patata, where the spud is king, and La Locanda Dell’Uovo, all about the eggs.

After lunch, or dinner (Fico Eataly World is open from 10am until midnight), you can sip a digestif in full view of the beach volleyball courts, complete with sand, mindfully (or bizarrely) located in the dessert and confectionery area and a virtuous hat tip to healthy living in what is essentially a temple of indulgence.

Fico Eataly World is a beautiful space, filled with fabulous food products, a cavernous wine cellar, and enough attractions to keep you walking and build up an appetite for just another small slice of pizza, taster plate of prosciutto and porchetta, or bowl of truffle-infused risotto.

Much like a day at a Disney theme park, it’s best to surrender to the inevitable. You’re there, so you might as well enjoy it to the full. So park your cynicism at the apple-scented entrance, go with the flow, and buy into the experience.

Just remember to bring plenty of euro. Admission may be free, but there’s no such thing as a free lunch here.

And if you find it is hard to tear yourself away from the sweet- and savoury-smelling halls, fear not, there is a hotel under construction, so from next year you can stay over, and order room service.

[ See eatalyworld.it/en ]