Birthday family dinner, 5 dishes at Bologna, a Dunsan-dong Italian

What kind of restaurant is Bologna Daejeon Dunsan Branch?

Bologna is an Italian restaurant in Dunsan-dong, Seo-gu, Daejeon, known for its pasta and gnocchi. Hours are 11:00 - 21:00, with a break time from 15:00 - 17:00, and last order at 20:30. Parking gives 2 hours free at the Hyeongseong parking tower.

An Italian restaurant with an exotic feel, "Bologna." A Dunsan-dong local favorite, a date course spot, an anniversary dinner spot. It's an Italian pasta place where you can eat pretty vibes and upscale menu items at a reasonable price. The entrance is all red brick, and the calm, warm color really looked pretty.

We went as a family to celebrate my sibling's birthday, so we ordered a bunch of different dishes and reviewed them — please read to the end!

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There were photos hanging up of Bologna's signature dishes — the truffle cream gnocchi and the bolognese ragu pasta — and they looked delicious. Since the whole restaurant serves Western dishes you'd find at an Italian restaurant, the overall atmosphere felt like a genuinely upscale interior, as if you'd stepped into Italy.

Inside Bologna: interior and burgundy sofa seating

Pretty poster photos hung in different-shaped frames, which seemed to create a vintage yet classic café mood. I especially coveted the comfortable burgundy sofa seats 🪄 The restaurant is on the larger side, so it seems like there'd be enough room for a wedding invitation gathering or a group meetup with friends.

Since it's an Italian restaurant, there's an array of different wines on display too. Every bit of the interior was pretty, my eyes kept catching on things •••

What the family ordered from the Bologna menu

Bologna's signature dishes are the bolognese ragu pasta and the truffle cream gnocchi. There's also a set menu made up of best-selling dishes sized for your party, which seems like an easy option for first-time visitors. ✔️Since both signature dishes looked delicious, we ordered both.

Ragu pasta, pasta, gnocchi & risotto, pizza. They sell every category you'd think of when you think of Italian food! With such a wide variety, it's easy to pick whatever you're craving that day, and the menu descriptions are well written so ordering isn't hard 😃 Of course you have to eat pizza at a Western restaurant haha ✔️We ordered the margherita pizza and the crab risotto.

There's steak and a refreshing salad too. It was especially nice that they make the salad with seasonal fruit each season.

Butter soup and pre-meal bread at Bologna

After ordering, they bring out soup for each person, which works well as a simple appetizer. Seeing the dishware set up gave me the feeling of receiving an upscale reception. The soft, savory butter soup is nice to eat warm.

Dip the pre-meal bread into the balsamic-drizzled olive oil sauce and let's slowly wait for our dishes 👍🏻

Bolognese ragu pasta: fresh noodles in a rich sauce

The signature bolognese ragu pasta. A perfect meeting of meaty depth from ragu sauce slow-simmered for 4 hours the authentic Italian way, and tomato. Since it used fresh noodles, which I love in a ragu pasta, I was really looking forward to it 😋😋 The sauce soaked tightly into the flat noodles, and I could really feel the deep, thick flavor of the ragu in my mouth.

What I especially loved: you can dip the bread into the leftover sauce once the noodles are gone, so you're set up to finish everything without waste — what a genius touch ~~~~

Shrimp and scallop aglio olio

The shrimp scallop aglio olio is a clean, savory oil pasta with the added umami of chewy scallops and plump shrimp, filling your mouth with flavor. It's an oil pasta with springy noodles well coated in a properly seasoned oil sauce. The plump shrimp and chewy scallops add a nice bite, which made me notice the sauce's flavor even more. Eating it together with the arugula cut through the richness, so the combination worked well.

Truffle cream gnocchi, the dish on every table at Bologna

The signature truffle cream gnocchi. You won't regret the combination of crisp-outside, chewy-inside gnocchi texture with Bologna's own special cream sauce! Topped with the premium spice truffle, it's not a mushy, soft gnocchi but one with real chew and texture. It goes well with the walnuts served alongside, so mix it well with the cream and enjoy.

Clearly, since it's a signature dish, every table around us had ordered the truffle cream gnocchi too, so we ordered it as well. That's how confidently this dish is presented as a Dunsan-dong local favorite!

Truffle crab risotto, for when you want rice

The truffle crab risotto combines fluffy domestic crab meat with a special sauce — one bite and you get a deep, full Italian flavor! Koreans really do run on rice. My mom said she wanted something with rice in it, so we ordered the crab risotto. It's a house-made rosé sauce with a slight kick of spice, which made it a dish I kept going back to. The rice had just the right bite, and the subtle truffle aroma paired well with it.

The sauce doesn't spread out, so it's easy to spoon up, and being a house-made sauce, it clearly doesn't taste like a store-bought one — it has real depth of flavor. There's shrimp in this one too, and it's delicious eaten together with the crab ✌🏻

Margherita pizza on pastry dough

The margherita pizza is a perfect trio of basil aroma, savory-salty mozzarella, and tangy tomato! Bologna's take on margherita. The cheese pulls in long stretchy strings, topped with a basil sauce and finished off with pepperoni ham. What I especially loved — the crust portion is pastry dough, so it's crispy and really, really good.

The dough is thin but loaded with toppings, so it was the savory-plus-salty pizza I love 🍕 The textbook definition of pizza, margherita pizza! Piled generously with savory mozzarella cheese too haha, and you can easily eat 2 slices without even trying 👍🏻