Friday 24 October 2014

The food of Florence.





As you may have picked up on in my first Florence post, I was pretty taken by the food. The Italians sure know how to eat. Also, for such a touristy place, it was quite cheap to eat out. Most nights, we were happy with just a bowl of pasta each, which was often as little as 8 euros each. And the house wine is often less than that! You can see why I love it so.


Wine Tasting Lunch of Dreams
I looked into wine tasting, but unfortunately that was less cheap. It was over £100 a person for the day, and although that included transport, food and lots of wine, it was more than we both wanted to spend. Instead, I booked us into the wine tasting lunch at Enoteca Pitti Gola e Cantina. For 35 euros each, we got three courses of gourmet food and four glasses of incredibly good wine. The waiter talked us through every glass, telling us the history and what was special about it. I was so impressed. The restaurant is ranked really highly on TripAdvisor (the number 4 restaurant in Florence), and deservedly so. The wine was excellent and the food was almost the best meal we had there. It was amazing, and such good value!


Biggest Steak in the World
Our most expensive meal out was on the first night. We went to Osteria De'Benci and had a three course meal of bruschetta, Florentine steak and chocolate pudding. It came to about £50 each, which I still don’t think is too horrific. And let me tell you, that was one of the best steaks I’ve ever had. It was so flavourful – to me, the test of a good steak is if you don’t need a sauce with it, and we really didn’t. It was also huge at 1.3kg – if you ever go to Florence, just bear in mind the steak is to be shared. They also love their steak rare and bloody in Florence - right up my street!


Sandwich Shop of Wonder
I was super intrigued by All'Antico Vinaio, a tiny sandwich shop that is ranked the number one restaurant in Florence on TripAdvisor. Wee went twice. The first time, I specified what I wanted, but I wasn’t feeling great at the time and didn’t ask for any input from the staff, and it was a little dry. The second time, I asked them what would go with their mushroom spread, and they put together an incredible combination of prosciutto, cheese and mushrooms. It was so good. The reason this place is ranked so highly is the staff – they aren’t shy about telling you what works, and if they think you could be doing better, they’ll tell you (such as telling Matt to swap his mozzarella for pecorino). Also, their sandwiches are as big as your head, on just-baked, warm focaccia with great quality, super fresh ingredients… and cost five euros each. We grabbed a couple on our last day in Florence, and took them to the Boboli Gardens for a little picnic. It was an excellent plan.

Sandwich as big as your head!

Blueberry Steak
In the research I did before we went to Florence, a few blogs mentioned Acqua Al 2 which was famed for blueberry steak. I was intrigued, Matt was suspicious, but we decided to give it a go. We emailed for a reservation a couple of days ahead of time (as a lot of the reviews advised to book). The reviews were pretty mixed on Trip Advisor, but I’m not sure why – it wasn’t just the best meal I ate in Florence, but it was one of the best meals I have EVER had. We shared the sampler menu, which included a salad sampler – three pots of salad (these were just okay) – a pasta sampler, and a steak sampler.

The pasta sampler was five small bowls of vegetarian pasta, which might sound a little dull but they were all incredible. There was a broccoli pasta, a red pepper, a tomato pasta, a pesto gnocchi and a mushroom risotto, all full of flavour and beautifully cooked. Then we shared the steak sampler, which was something else. There was a toasted muffin, topped with steak slices delicately infused with rosemary – if I went again, I would have this first, because eating it last meant it was overshadowed by the other two steaks. The other two steaks were fillets. One was topped with balsamic sauce – rich and delicious, without being overly sweet or vinegary. I’ll be thinking about that for a long time. And the other was the famous blueberry steak! It didn’t disappoint – the blueberry sauce was slightly spicy, and complimented the steak incredibly. So good. Oh, and we had the dessert sampler too, which was awesome. Including a bottle of wine, our bill came to around 70 euros which I think is incredibly cheap, considering the amount of food and the quality of it.


The Food Court to end all Food Courts
The market in Florence was near our hotel and so we popped in to the indoor part to have a look around. There are lots of stalls selling incredible ingredients – we both agreed that we wished we’d gone self-catering so we could have taken full advantage! Upstairs is a food court, although to call it that seems a bit of an insult. Everything seems to be made fresh, and everything seems to be bloomin’ delicious. We were queuing at a bakery stall, watching the chef prepare fresh pizza breads and by the time we got to the front, they were out of the oven, steaming and delicious. Obviously we indulged, and obviously they were amazing. I wish we could have tried more – I was eyeballing everyone else there and their food all looked incredible too.



Holy Cannoli!
I only had cannoli for the first time last year, in New York. I must confess, I thought it was just okay, but we decided to seek it out in Florence and my googling led me to Gelateria Carabe. It was just around the corner from the museum where Michelangelo’s David is, so we popped there before getting in the queue. The cannolis are prepared on the spot once you order them, and then are beautifully packaged. They were definitely not JUST okay. They were huge and yummy. The cream inside had cream cheese in, I think, and little crystallised pieces of fruit. It was almost impossible to finish them, but I persevered. I’m so proud of me.


There are even more places I could recommend – the gelato at Grom, the pizza slices at Toto’s and the fresh pizzas at Il Francescano. I’d also tell you to avoid Zio Gigi (great reviews but it was so blah, and the wine was crappy) and any of the wine bars on the Duomo piazza - we only had a drink in one but it was the same price as a bottle of wine in most restaurants!).

Have you ever been to Florence? Let me know your recommendations in the comments or on Twitter, I’m sure I’ll be back!
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3 comments

  1. Oh I'm so jealous, all of this food looks to die for. I've always wanted to eat my way through Italy haha!

    ReplyDelete

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