Ragu And Me

One taste of tagliatelle al ragù in Bologna was all it took to be hooked, writes JOHN IRVING, but it was merely the tip of a pasta-sauce obsession.

It was the mid-1970s and I was about to read Italian at the University of Edinburgh. My knowledge of the language was limited to the bits and bobs I’d picked up from the stilted dialogues of BBC TV courses and phrasebooks. I’d never been out of the UK before, never mind to Italy, the country of my teenage dreams. So, Eurail Pass ticket in my pocket and rucksack on my back, I set off for a month travelling around the country before the degree course began. It was a chance at last to visit the art towns I’d only read about and eat the food I’d only ever seen in photographs. I spent a lot of time on trains, but if they were running late, if I had a long time to wait, all the better. Back then, every Italian station, even the smallest, had a trattoria of its own, serving basic but delicious local food. And if I was just passing through, there were hawkers on the platforms selling the same stuff from stainless-steel cooking carts.

Which brings me to ragù and an epiphany on a platform in Bologna station. An elderly white-coated man was bawling his wares – “Tagliatelle al ragù! Tagliatelle al ragù!” – and I was on a train headed for

Florence. I asked for a portion. He spooned it into a foil tray and handed it up through the compartment window. I knew what tagliatelle were, but ragù? What was that? It turned out to be what I knew as sugo di carne, meat sauce: rich and unctuous, with only the slightest hint of tomato, as is the Bolognese way, more burnt umber than red, highly addictive.

After that, I ordered ragù wherever I went – and contrived complicated detours to go through Bologna station whenever I could. I was supposed to be having a total immersion in the Italian language but I was drowning in Italian pasta sauce.