A ragu in Italy is a meat sauce. That meat doesn’t have to be beef. It could be any animal suitable to be eaten, including Octopus. In this primo piatto the meat is from a roe deer, so we’d call it venison.
As this is meat, and an intensely flavored meat at that, we can use cheese as a condiment. You’ll notice also that there isn’t a ton of tomato sauce; the tomato balances with the meat, and the sauce as a whole is meant to balance with the flavor of the house-made egg pasta, in this case Papparadelle. The dish as pictured comes from Tuscany, and was eaten (with much gusto) at La Dogana restaurant in CCapezzano Pianore right outside of Pietrasanta.
This is a fall game dish, so you’ll more likely find it late in the year.