Florence
Pasta, wine, steak, wine, sandwiches, wine, gelato - wine.
Florence is a great city - I’d been for a day but never longer. This time, though, Mrs. B. and I went for a full week and with the sole intention of eating and drinking our way through this small Tuscan city. And to that end, we were entirely successful. Restaurants, cafes, sandwich shops and ice cream shops, we toured a great many and recorded below are the most interesting. I hope it helps if ever you visit - you should.
Restaurants
Bistro Monecanero
The streets are narrow in Florence, really narrow, and the one leading up to Bistro Monecanero from the busy Piazza Santo Spirito is typical of the old city that crowds you into a chaotic maze of one-way roads and one-metre-wide pavements. Tired, worn, and charming yellow buildings are the canvas on which a forest of green window shutters are painted. Below, grey cobbled streets zig-zag across the city and past a litany of restaurants, wine bars, sandwich shops, gelato and every major clothing brand you can think of.
The small shop fronts are equally narrow but in a homely way. You end up squeezing through the door, bar and first couple of tables before the restaurant finally opens up into a wider bundle of small wooden tables pushed into every available space. Instead of the pub, the Italians seem to use restaurants as their night out, and we saw many groups of friends and family cruise through bottles of red and bowls of pasta well into the night. They’re also far more into cigarettes then the Brits, and many a streatery saw arms waving with wine in one hand, a cigarette in the other, the smoke peeling away into the October night and the buzz of chatter filling the air. You could get used to it.
The first thing we noticed when eating in Florence, however, was the crumpled brown bag of almost-stale bread we were given at every restaurant we ate at. After a Google, it’s purpose is apparently for mopping up the sauce of your pasta cause. To be clear, though, the bread was bad, really bad, almost insultingly dry and tasteless, so I would recommend politely accepting the bag without much fuss but then not touching it for the rest of the meal or duration of your stay.
Unsurprisingly, the pasta was sensational: thick ribbons of pappardelle pasta that looped around the bowl, wrapped easily around a fork, tasted incredible and would be as nice in a plain butter sauce as in the richest meat sauce. As it happened, the wild boar ragu was a bit disappointing and did not have the depth of flavour typical of a ragu - in fact it tasted more like a decent Bolognese rather than a rich ragu that had soaked up wine and simmered in flavour for a couple of hours.
The Chianti Classico we had was rich on the nose, light on the lips, went down easily and carried the whole meal from start to finish. It’s hard to go wrong with a good Tuscan red and homemade pasta and the meal at Bistro Monecanero was no exception. The atmosphere was local and lively, with a few tourists like ourselves but a good mix of groups that made it feel easy-going and chilled - a good place to start the trip.
Food - 8/10
Service - 6/10
Vibe - 7/10
Overall - 7/10
Cinghiale Bianco
We went to Cinghiale Bianco for lunch one day and it became one of my favourite restaurants - it’s a fantastic vibe, great service and serves the simple yet delicious Florentine beef steak.
Instead of paintings or wallpaper for decoration, they’ve chosen instead to decorate their restaurant with red wine. Bottles on bookshelves cover most of the walls which, combined with the yellow lighting, produces a rather cosy atmosphere, the kind that puts you in the mood for a couple of drinks and a good time. We obliged, and the merlot was soft, sweet and highly drinkable. Meanwhile, the couple next to us had the classic Florentine meal plan - cold cuts with cheese, pasta, meat, pudding, coffee - which we simply do not have the stomach capacity for, nor the ability to eat at the pace they do. Instead, I went straight into the austerely named “beef slices with rosemary”, which turned out to be a chunky steak with chunky salt sprinkled over and around the circumference of the plate.
Something to be aware of - Florentine cuisine is known for its austerity, with some locals claiming their steak doesn’t require salt or pepper on it because it actually seasons itself, and this kind of uncomplicated attitude towards food runs throughout the menu. That said, the steak was genuinely lovely and they cooked it super rare, juicy, with good marbling, hints of rosemary and a salty note throughout. I quickly fell into a pattern of eating and then drinking steak - wine - steak - wine - steak - wine and slowly realised that spending seven days in Italy was a rather good idea.
Food - 7/10
Service - 8/10
Vibe - 9/10
Overall - 8/10
Belle Donne
If you look to the right in the first photo, you may notice a small wooden door the size of a garden gnome. It is in fact a wine window, a novel innovation residents came up with in the 17th century when the plague hit the city and prevented wine growers from easily selling their produce. Now, it is an absolute tourist trap serving instagrammers with a house red, in a plastic glass, which the posing customer takes and drinks onto the pavement on the other side and under a sign which says “no drinking on pavements”. Watching this interaction from inside the restaurant is surreal and gimmicky, but my overall take is that it’s a great way to drive interest and custom for small restaurants with even smaller margins, and they are actually very ornate features.
It was at Belle Donne that Mrs B. and I went for the famous Florentine T-bone steak and let me tell you it is 100% worth the hype. The steak pictured above is technically for one person but was easily shareable between the two of us, especially when coupled with the mountain of roast potatoes we ordered as a side. The char flavour on the steak comes through quite strongly in the bite and underlines a lightly salted, meaty and potent beef flavour. Definitely a must-have if you’re in Florence and most restaurants will serve them.
The roast potatoes are interesting. As at Cinghiale Bianco, they weren’t crispy in the slightest and they weren’t trying to be. The Italian roast potato seems instead to be focused solely on how fluffy a potato can scientifically be, a quality which I presume comes from being baked on a lower temperature and for longer. Regardless of the method, they were a good, albeit inferior alternative to the British roast potato and a viable option if you want to mix it up a bit.
Onto the pud and I’m generally not a big fan of cream, especially when it’s the main feature like in a trifle or profiterole, but this tiramisu was actually quite good. Light and fluffy cream with a warm sprinkle of coffee finished off the meal surprisingly well and left me in a very good place following the heavy set T-bone steak.
Food - 9/10
Service - 6/10
Vibe - 6/10
Overall - 7/10
Trattoria Marione
Trattoria Marione was chaos incarnate. Hams were dangling from the ceiling, waiters were bundling around and into the tables, and an American lady was singing Happy Birthday operatically to the two Italian gentlemen next to her, one of whom stood up to film her sing it for a second, louder and more excruciating time.
Add to that the huge carafe of Chianti I accidentally ordered, for only seven euros, and we were in for an absolute treat. The Lasagne was heavy on the dairy with a lovely, rich bechamel sauce, layers of cheese, a hint of the meat sauce underneath, good pasta and a classic set of blue and white crockery with sauce splattered on it for good measure. Like the wine, it practically shot out the kitchen and slid in front of us whilst more and more customers piled in.
Mrs. B. had a simple pasta with butter and pepper but even after a couple taster mouthfuls, I could deduce the sum was far greater than the parts. Rich, thick and chewy pasta was bathed in an equally rich, thick and peppery butter sauce which tasted bloody amazing. It was cheesy, chewy, and with a delicate flavour which didn’t tire, left me wanting, and I’d happily have it again and again. I’d go as far as to say it’s the bread and butter of Florence - simple, austere, bordering on plain and yet endlessly enjoyable.
Like all our meals, we finished with a coffee - a classic Italian espresso - to pep us up for the next walk or garden. Regarding the latter, the Boboli and Bardini are both admirable and ancient in their own right and both are worth the ticket price. The Bardini is cheaper but has the best views, the Boboli is an indulgent, boastful display of a garden at scale by the Medici’s but it does not fail to impress. Priceless Roman and Greek statues alternate between cypress avenues and grand fountains.
Food - 8/10
Service - 6/10
Vibe - 10/10
Overall - 8/10
Sandwiches
Pino’s
Topjaw are a popular food account to some acclaim, with the basic premise that they interview chefs and ask for their restaurant recommendations. Their video about Pino’s Sandwiches is enthusiastic and gushing, similar to the handful of other videos I’ve watched from them, but having tried the “Topjaw Special” on Pino’s menu, either Topjaw or Pino have lost their taste buds and/or minds.
Porchetta, smoked cheese, sundried tomatoes, cooked onions, hot sauce and garlic sauce. First, the porchetta - a delicately-tasting meat that melts in the mouth and is best plain. Other sources of flavour overwhelm it and crowd it out, and that’s exactly what has happened with the Topjaw Special - you can’t taste it. You also can’t taste the cheese. The spicy sauce isn’t spicy, the cooked onions are barely cooked and cut into big chunks that fall out of the sandwich unpleasantly, and the sundried tomatoes make the bread soggy and just seem out of place.
The bread was nice, and I actually think one of the other combinations of salami and cheese would’ve been a rather pleasant sandwich. The vibe was fairly chill, there was plenty of seating, and the staff were all pretty friendly, including the big man Pino himself, who operated the meat slicer with authority. However, this monstrosity of a special means both Mr Pino or Messieurs Topjaw are due serious head rattling.
Food - 1/10
Service - 7/10
Vibe - 8/10
Overall - 5/10
PRAE
My overall conclusion on Italian sandwiches is not good. PRAE served up a chunky focaccia bread that was just too…bready. The parma ham was lost amongst the ruins of wet tomato and an inch of salad, and there was no sauce to relieve the monotony of chewing on tasteless bread. Every mouthful was a disappointment. Mrs. B. had a pulled pork sandwich with pickled onion and that was actually quite good, but regrettably my experience of Florentine sandwiches was poor, and the bread in general was bad whether in sandwich or in the brown paper bags at dinner.
Food - 1/10
Service - 3/10
Vibe - 6/10
Overall - 3/10
Gelato
Gelato, sun, river, Italy, yes. We went to La Strega Nocciola and Perche No for gelato and honestly it was as good as you’re going to get. Plonked on the side of the Arno river, we had cookie crumble and chocolate gelato without a care in the world - we enjoyed every bit. The sun was shining, the buildings were beautiful, the Ponte Vecchio looked spectacular, lined with jewellery shops and packed with people, and it was one of those moments that makes you think life is good.
Needless to say, we had gelato every day, and I think it’s borderline obligatory if you visit. Come to think of it, we had wine every day, pasta every day, gelato every day, and we saw the Santa Maria Cathedral every day - and that’s Florence.
Food - 10/10
Service - 5/10
Vibe - 10/10
Overall - 8/10