Florence Dining

Day 1

Loggia Del Grano - We arrived in Florence, checked into our hotel and then set out towards Santa Croce. Along the way, we stumbled into Piazza de la Signoria and then down the hill into this lovely little restaurant. It was 65 degrees and sunny - not a cloud in the sky, so we really couldn't resist this open air loggia.

We shared a half liter of red wine, Pizza Margherita, and a Speck & Brie Sandwich, while we perused our tour books and maps. All of the food was awful. The wine was diluted and sour and we quickly started referring to the pizza as "Skateland pizza" - you know, the frozen stuff they serve at bowling alleys and skating rinks. The speck and brie sandwich had promise, but they grilled it within an inch of its life - burning the bread and cooking off much of the fat from the speck - what a waste.

We left the Loggia, wandered over to Santa Croce, toured the church, the leather school and the convent and then crossed the Arno to see spectacular sunset views of Florence. On our way back, we wandered over the Ponte Vecchio, past the Mercado Nuovo and wound up in the Piazza de la Republica.

Giubbe Rosse - After our long walk, we stopped here to relax over some prosecco as we watched people ride the carousel in the Piazza de la Republica. The wait staff was indifferent, bordering on gruff, but then again, after the charm of Venice, everyone seemed a little "on edge." We didn't eat anything here, but it is a lovely place to sit and take in the Piazza.

Dei Fagiole - After a nap and a shower, we headed back towards Santa Croce to this little hole in the wall that one of my friends had described as, "the best steak I have ever had." Our concierge wasn't much help at handicapping local restaurants, so we decided to go it alone. We got lost, but eventually found it and had no trouble securing a two top in the front of the restaurant. After we were seated, the place filled up with locals. I only counted one other table of English speakers and one table of polyglots - alternating between Italian, Spanish and English throughout the meal. Perhaps this is unfair, but when traveling abroad, I always follow the rule of thumb that the quality of the meal can be expected to be inversely related to the number of English speakers (particularly Americans) present.

When you walk in, the kitchen is immediately on your right and you are instantly struck by how tiny it is. Inside this cramped room, a man that closely resembles Vic Tayback's character "Mel" from the television series Alice slaves over a grill that is covered with some of the thickest porterhouse steaks you are likely to see (at least, outside of Argentina).

On the menu, steak is served by the kilo. After a bit of debate as to whether it was 2.2 lbs per kilo or 2.2 kilos per pound (I argued that with respect to selling steak, seven ounces was a much more reasonable increment than 35 ounces, but I was wrong). We ordered a one kilo, bone-in porterhouse as the main event. We also ordered a Ribolita (if not in Florence, where?), Ravioli in Red Sauce and side orders of White Beans and Spinach. In re-telling this, it sounds like an amazing amount of food for two people, but after walking all day, it seemed reasonable. We paired all of the above with a Vino Nobile de Montepulciano.

The ravioli were a simple affair - al dente noodles concealing pockets of spinach and ricotta - but the sauce was outstanding. This was the first red sauce we had tasted in Italy that reminded my wife of her Italian Grandmother's "gravy." Like the ravioli, the ribolita was simple, straightforward, yeoman's fare. It was a very solid interpretation of the classic dish - a thick, rich, hearty vegetable stew.

As we were eating our first courses, the waiter walked over with our rare steak on a plate to ensure that it met our approval. Not knowing the Italian for "looks like a steak to me" (it would be days before I picked up "va bene"), we both nodded enthusiastically, hoping our enthusiasm would mask our ignorance, like junior Hill staffers at a meeting with their representative. A few minutes later, the steak arrived at our table, still sizzling in a bath of jus. The presentation was similar to that at Peter Lugar's - the meat had been separated from the bone sliced horizontally and then reconstructed on the plate.

The steak was perfect. Salty and seared on the outside and rare in the center. The jus pooled in the plate with what I believe was a bit of beef stock. In any event, we each dove in and took turns slicing a bite-sized piece of steak and then dredging it through the collected juices. At some point, the spinach and white beans arrived, but to be honest, all of our attention was focused on the truly outstanding steak.

I left my wife to finish the last of the Vino Nobile while I went out in search of an ATM. [NOTE - Dei Fagiole is outstanding and belongs on your next Florence itinerary - but it is a CASH ONLY establishment.] We skipped dessert in favor of ending a truly Tuscan evening on an appropriate note - a short stroll and a touch of Vin Santo.

Enoteca Baldovino - We strolled East from Dei Fagiole, towards Santa Croce and wound up at Enoteca Baldovino, the Sister establishment of Trattoria Baldovino just a few doors down (just across the street from the North side of the church). We were too full for dessert, but this place had some outrageous looking desserts and cheeses and the menu at the affiliated Trattoria Baldovino looked like another good option (pizza, pasta, etc.). We settled into the bar and enjoyed a few glasses of Vin Santo before heading home.

Caffe Fiorenza - On our way back through the Piazza de la Signoria, my wife fell prey to that most powerful feminine craving: chocolate. Knowing better than to try to fight the urge, we stopped into the Caffe Fiorenza for some chocolate gelato. This soon became my wife's favorite gelato place and one that we would visit several times in the coming days.

Day 2

Trattoria Casa di Dante Gia "Pennello" - After a morning walking tour of Florence, we dropped in on this little place near Dante's house (or at least, the building that houses the Dante museum). Once again, we were the only English speakers in the place - and the back room was packed with local octogenarians.

We ordered some house red, which arrived in one of those silly rotund bottles covered in what looks like wicker. It was actually quite quaffable and we were told that we would be expected to pay for whatever we drank - no more, no less. This seemed odd, but it worked - two glasses is not enough, but sometimes you struggle to finish a half liter at lunch. Anyway, we decided to share the Ham and Paté Crostini and then each get pasta - Tagliateli with Wild Boar Ragout for me and Linguini with Pesto for my wife.

The crostini were amazing. They arrived with the paté already spread on the crostini and then topped with a slice of proscuitto. The warmth of the freshly toasted bread softened the paté and the clean saltiness of the proscuitto cut through the nutty opulence of the paté to finish cleanly. This is definitely not how we pictured the dish when we ordered it, but we can't wait to try to replicate it at home.

The Linguini with Pesto was well done, but uninspiring. The noodles were cooked properly and the sauce was a very pleasant - not too overly burdensome with garlic. Where it missed the mark was the consistency - it was lumpy and uneven so that there were pockets of noodles with little sauce at all and others where there was nothing but sauce. My wife concluded (correctly), "I make a much better pesto."

Conversely, the Tagliateli with Wild Boar Ragout was excellent. The tagliatelli were thin ribbons of melt-in-your-mouth pasta and their breadth was ideal for scooping up big batches of the hearty ragout. The ragout itself was earthy and a little smokey with the tomatoes contributing just enough acidity to cut the fat flavoring.

All-in, this was quite a find and someplace we will go back to on our next trip.

Enoteca Pinchiorri - We spent the afternoon shopping the leather stores between Ponte Vecchio and Santa Croce and then made our way to the Ferragamo museum and Santa Maria Novella (especially their "pharmacy"). After a brief nap and a shower, we headed out to our much anticipated meal at Enoteca Pinchiorri. I will describe this meal in a subsequent posting - both because of the grandeur of the meal and the fact that by itself, the meal cost nearly as much as our other eight dinners in Italy, combined.

Day 3

Golden View - We awoke on Day 3 a bit groggy from our meal at Pinchiorri (perhaps more from the wine pairings than the meal), but we fortified ourselves with some espresso and were able to squeeze in a tour of the Bargello museum before lunch. After the Bargello, we beat a hasty retreat back over the Arno in search of a nice window seat in one of the restaurants overlooking the river and wound up in the Golden View Restaurant.

We were a bit skeptical of both the English name and the fact that we were the only diners in the restaurant, but the view was spectacular, so we decided to stay. I was instantly drawn to the Four Cheese and White Truffle Crostini, which we ordered along with the Gnocchi Gorganzola, Pizza Margherita and the customary half liter of red wine.

[It was about this point in the trip that, inspired by the omnipresence and ubiquity of red wine, bottled water and espresso, my wife began referring to the three liquids as, "the Holy Trinity." From there on out, every meal incorporated the "Holy Trinity" - a half liter of red wine, a liter each of naturale and frizzante water and two espresso.]

The gnocchi gorgonzola was a massive plate of gnocchi swimming in a thick gorgonzola sauce with swirls of spinach. The sauce was sharp and rich, not at all grainy the way many cheese sauces can be. The dumplings themselves were a little hard (they definitely didn't pass my wife's "stick to the roof of your mouth" test), but I would gladly have eaten a cardboard box served in that sauce.

The Pizza Margherita afforded me just such an opportunity. The pizza was fair - actually, by the standards of what we found in Italy, it may have been the best - but it just isn't really a strong suit over there. You would have thought that by my sixth day in-country, I would have stopped ordering the stuff, but I kept hoping that eventually one of them would have some redeeming quality. I ended up using the pizza as a conduit for the luscious gorgonzola sauce - folding bits in half to form a scoop that could maximize cheese sauce throughput.

Gelateria Carabe - After lunch, we met a guide for a tour of the Ufizzi Gallery and then headed over to the Academy to see David. Just a few blocks from the Academy, heading back towards Santa Maria del Fiore, our guide told us we would find the best gelato in Florence. She boasted of using only the freshest, natural, in-season ingredients. My wife ordered chocolate chip and I opted for hazelnut.

The chocolate chip was a disaster. Imagine miniature chocolate kisses suspended in ice milk. Wretched stuff that we discarded before we reached the end of the block. The hazelnut was totally different. This was thick, gooey, frozen custard punctuated with bits of roasted hazelnuts. It had a uniformly smooth consistency with none of the ice crystals that sometimes plague gelato. I would definitely put this on your next Florence itinerary, but be careful to order flavors based at least in part upon local ingredients.

La Pentola dell'Oro - Before heading to Italy, I emailed a friend who had spent a year in Elba studying and cooking and asked, "I am going to Italy, where should I eat?" Without any notion of my itinerary, the reply came back, "you need to try Pentola dell'Oro in Florence." Luckily, Florence was on our itinerary, but the fact that my friend made this single recommendation - without knowing if we even planned to be in Florence - rocketed this restaurant to the top of our "to do" list.

Pentola was about a 20 minute walk from our hotel and didn't look like much from the outside. The front door lets you right into the kitchen, from which point a quick left turn takes you to a few large communal eating tables, crammed with locals, and a right turn takes you downstairs to a tiny (6 tables) dining room.

We had apparently made quite a stir by booking reservations a month in advance (apparently, outside of Manhattan, nobody else feels the need to do this). They greeted us enthusiastically, apologized that the hostess, who is the only one who really speaks any English, was out sick that evening. The chef/owner, Giuseppe Alessi, came out and in very broken English, apologized again, but said that he hoped we could make it through the menu together.

As we perused the menu, Giuseppe brought out bread and some of his private stash of olive oil. He held up a clear bottle containing yellowish liquid and proclaimed, "this you buy in market." He then pulled out a similar bottle full of bright green liquid and explained, "this I make." His was young, spicy and the raciest olive oil I had ever tasted. We poured some of each and the chef's own pressing made the market variety - outstanding, local Tuscan olive oil by any other measure - pallid and greasy by comparison.

As we picked over the bread and sopped up the delicious olive oil, Giuseppe led us on an Italian/English journey through the menu. He explained the ingredients in each dish as well as the careful preparation and even the history of the recipes. It turns out that when he is not cooking, Giuseppe researches Medieval texts for signs of ancient Tuscan cuisine. While others re-invent and experiment with food, he looks back - to the roots of Tuscan cuisine - and takes his inspiration from there. The result is a very eclectic combination of flavors and presentations, born from culinary passion the likes of which I have never seen before. He became more animated with every dish and the gleam in his eye flickered as he flipped over the menu and built to a crescendo - a dish he claims Brunelleschi served the men who worked on constructing the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore.

We ordered a Mixed Antipasto, Ribolita, Papardelle Chingale, Boar in Chocolate Sauce and Beef in Five Peppers with Pear (Peposo).

The antipasto was your standard spread of salami, roasted red peppers, fresh cheeses, etc. It was nothing to write home about, but after a long walk to the restaurant and the spirited discussion of the menu, it performed well at staving off our initial hunger and preparing our minds and stomachs for the culinary journey that was to follow.

Giuseppe described his ribolita by saying, "Ribolita is uniquely Tuscan and in all of Tuscany, Florence is the home of the dish - nowhere else is it authentic. I make the best ribolita in Florence, which is to say I make the best ribolita anywhere." With a lead-in like that, I had to order it. The ribolita I had two nights earlier at Dei Fagiole was some of the best I had ever had, so I was anxious to see how Guiseppe's stacked up. It arrived as a mound of thick greens and white beans, which Guiseppe dressed tableside with a liberal dosage of his homemade olive oil. The dish had the consistency of porridge - no broth at all - and the flavors were amazingly concentrated. The principal is the same as behind any other reduction - boil off the liquid to concentrate the flavor. I had never had anything like it - and I think it is safe to say Guiseppe can walk the talk.

My wife was intrigued by the papardelle chingale. After a few days in Florence, you begin consuming more boar than anything else, but again it was Guiseppe's tutorial that put us over the edge. He said, "Papardelle began in Tuscany and we still do it better than anyone else." The plate he brought out was a pile of inch wide ribbons of pasta that were so fresh that they melted in your mouth. Their supple structure and large surface area also aided in getting the thick, hearty, tomato-based boar ragout to adhere. The result was that each bite was the perfect ratio of noodle and sauce - with no effort wasted trying to chase bits of meat around the plate with your fork.

We finished each dish, then wiped the plates clean with bits of bread. Guiseppe came out and thanked us for the complement, saying "this is, for me, the best anyone can say."

The boar in chocolate sauce was described as, "like a Mexican mole, but the dish originated in Tuscany." I can not vouch for Guiseppe's anthropological accuracy, but just like when Bluto in Animal House suggested that it wasn't, "over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor," I didn't want to stop him, because he was on a roll. The presentation was awful - a steaming pile of dark brown nuggets. My wife never really got past the visual impact of the dish (perhaps owing to the fact that she shoulders the bulk of the care, feeding and cleaning up after our 115lb Labrador retriever). Oh well, I suppose the medievals were long of function and short on form. The flavor of the dish was outstanding. It was, as Guiseppe promised, very much like a Mexican mole. A combination of sweet, spicy, smokey intensity that clung to the palette even after a thorough flushing of Chianti. The boar itself was as tender as can be - like the meat from a good osso bucco - it fell apart at the first sign of contact from a fork. I thoroughly loved it and licked the plate clean.

The culmination of our culinary tour was the beef in five peppers with pear (beef peposo). This is the dish that Brunelleschi supposedly served his workers, from the kitchen he had constructed in the drum of the dome at Santa Maria del Fiore. I can't really imagine day laborers eating so richly, but then again, they were all members of the guilds, so perhaps they got good food as part of their collective bargaining agreement. The dish was nearly identical to the boar in chocolate sauce in presentation, the only difference being a slightly darker shade of brown and the occasional appearance of a sliver of white pear. The flavor was a combination of intense blood and beef essence, a little salty and very spicy. Imagine the richest beef stock, cooked down to a slurry and laced with piperine/capsaicin. Unlike many Thai and Indian dishes, where the heat comes with other flavors, this dish was primarily seasoned with peppercorns, so the heat was immediate and intense, but didn't convey much additional flavor. The pears provided a needed respite from the heat and achieved a sweet/hot balance that has proven successful in every corner of the Earth. The meat itself was a little tough, like the lamb in a good Irish stew.

At the end of the meal, we had some espresso, finished out Chianti and then Guiseppe thanked us profusely. On the way out, he gave us a copy of one of his cookbooks, apologizing that it was only in Italian.

This was a truly unique evening. I have to admit that towards the end of the meal, my wife was longing for some simple pasta and red sauce, noting that, "I could have stopped at the papardelle and been happy - the rest was more Indian than Italian," but I wouldn't have missed the experience for the World.

Caffe Fiorenza - On our way home, we bid Florence ciao! with one final trip to Caffe Fiorenza for gelato. My wife swears by the chocolate, I found the pistachio to be grainy and uneven - far inferior to the hazelnut I had had earlier that afternoon.