Art and culture in profusion: the entire world agrees that Florence is one of Italy’s most beautiful cities. But its best food, often outside the tourist routes, it's probably known to few. Fine restaurants and street food together make Florence a culinary destination even without its sublime Renaissance masters.
Lampredotto: the organ meat par excellence
Start off with something truly traditional such as lampredotto and other organ meats, often called the “fifth quarter”. Lampredotto is made from the abomasum, or reed tripe, one of the four chamber’s of a cow’s stomach. It consists of a lean part (la gala, in Italian) with a corrugated violet surface and a strong, assertive flavor, and a fattier part, (la spannochia, in Italian) lighter in color and softer in flavor. The tripe must be simmered for a long time in savory broth. Seasoned with salt, pepper and green sauce, it is traditionally cut into small pieces and served on a broth-moistened roll. Lampredotto panino is a classic street food here, sold from morning to night in kiosks , for example near the San Frediano market, at a stand specializing in organ meats and indicated with the sign Il Lampredottaio. Or look out for Sergio and Pier Paolo’s itinerant kiosk (it’s a 3-wheeler motor scooter-truck) in via de’ Macci (sant’Ambrogio). On Tuesdays, you find lampredotto in zimino (with greens), on Wednesdays, beans all’uccelletto (cooked in tomato), Fridays, lampredotto with artichokes and Saturdays with potatoes. There’s always a crowd.
Another option is Luca Cai and Alessandro Caldini’s trattoria. Passionate soccer fans, the two colleagues run osteria-tripperia Il Magazzino, a couple of blocks from Ponte Vecchio, the city’s most photographed bridge. Here organ meat is the star ingredient in many delicious dishes, modernized and brightened, such as lampredotto meatballs, traditionally made with leftover boiled meat and served with potatoes. Among the first courses is lampredotto with Tropea onions. Lampredotto sushi is served with rice, as is boiled lampredotto and soy sauce. Il cartoccio del trippaio is a foil-wrapped mix of organ meats baked with sage, rosemary, and mixed greens, served directly in the foil.
Wine pairings with Lampredotto
Drink a good Tuscan red with it all, or remember that sparkling wines make excellent partners. “Lampredotto pairs well with spumanti,” Luca Cai tells us. His wine cellar holds 200 labels, red and whites. “It isn’t a fatty ingredient, although it seems so to the touch, and the acidity of a white spumante enhances it.” “By creating new dishes and new pairings”, continues Cai, “we try to give new life to organ meats. We want to tempt everyone to eat lampredotto, tongue and tripe, even those who normally instinctively reject these poor relations. But innards have to be prepared well and be presented in a lighter fashion than tradition dictates. It’s essential to have perfectly fresh ingredients and use slow, low temperature cooking”.
Traditional trattorias
In a second street parallel to the Lungarno, Borgo San Frediano, we find another skilled chef who embodies both tradition and creativity. Young Matteo Fantini cooks at Io, Osteria Personale. He offers no first course pasta dishes, but rather menus to put together individually. Among the most traditional plates are warm tripe salad with puréed zucchini, ginger, spring onion and confit tomatoes, and baby calamari stuffed with string beans and smoked provola cheese, served with crisp tomatoes. Walking along the Arno, a ten-minute walk will bring you to a place with a unique history. Rari is a restaurant-terrace on the river with an open air swimming pool and a slightly raised cocktail bar with comfortable armchairs. Brac is also unusual and seldom visited by tourists: it is a modern day bookshop with a café and a kitchen offering salads, sliced fruit, and fresh pasta first courses along with magazines and books to leaf through.
Near Porta Romana, one of the most original places to eat is In Fabbrica, a silver factory’s workers’ lunch room during that day that becomes a small, but ironic restaurant at night, complete with candelabra and unpredictably uniformed waiters. The idea came to the Pampaloni family, two Florentine silversmiths with a crazy streak. Two chefs alternate in the kitchen, one an employee of the company and one a Japanese chef. They offer two menus: the Japanese prepares dishes such as Teriyaki salmon. The other menu is “communist”, with specialties such as grilled tuna with sweet and sour red onions, a dish more in tune with the hammer and sickle outlined in lights on the ceiling and the occasional Red Army officer’s uniform on a staff member.
Outside the city and a thirty-minute drive towards the hills of Fiesole, you will find paradise, that is, Villa San Michele, an ex-monastery now belonging to the Orient Express group. Its restaurant La Loggia focuses on regional and Mediterranean cuisine revisited by chef Attilio Di Fabrizio, 60 years old and from the Abruzzo region. Tagliolini from stone-ground farro flour with Cinta Senese porchetta sauce is a homage to Tuscany, but Identità Golosa , the dessert created for the 600thanniversary of the monastery, is an Abruzzese inspiration. A three-layer sponge cake with creamy fillings, white, yellow and chocolate, it is bathed in Alchermes liqueur, enclosed in chocolate icing and served with a warm sauce of passion fruit. This cake, this terrace, with Florence at your feet – paradise.
Fine dining in Florence
Enoteca Pinchiorri is a temple to good eating and drinking, elegance and substance to the nth degree (but also price), a few steps from the Palazzo della Signoria. Turning the corner towards the Uffizi we find another restaurant now garnering praise, l’Ora d’Aria, owned by chef Marco Stabile. When Prime Minister Matteo Renzi was merely the mayor of Florence, he often ate here. “One of his favorite dishes” Stabile reveals, “is fassone beef tartare, marinated in Pilsner Urquell beer with truffle caviar”. What is truffle caviar? “We make it ourselves with the juice of black Norcia truffles and agar, a natural gelatin extracted from seaweed, then transferred with a syringe, drop by drop, into cold oil. On contact, little spheres form.” Voilà. Among the chef’s other creations are Stabil’ed Eggs, eggs scrambled with tarese, bacon from the Valdarno, and aged Parmigiano, served on a thin slice of fried eggplant. Seasonality and premium ingredients characterize l’Ora d’Aria kitchen. At lunchtime only, the restaurant offers its dishes in tapas form, so guests can sample alta cucina at half the price.
If innovative cooking intrigues you, one restaurant must is Santo Graal, owned by Emanuele Canonico, an architect whose design, materials and furnishings are all strictly Tuscan, as is the foundation of his kitchen. Canonico studies each recipe with young chef Simone Cipriani in order to perfect the visual effect of dishes that are already packed with flavor. Among these is “chicken liver like foie gras, with oranges and figs”, cooked in Vin Santo and served between two slices of pan-browned, buttered brioche. “Our innovation was to add orange pulp and fig sauce” Canonico points out, “for a sweet and sour note that combines well with the strong bitter flavor of the chicken liver”. Another tempting dish is mussels stuffed with pecorino romano, with dried tomatoes, crisp bread and pesto. On the plate, it looks like an impressionist palette.
Enoteca Pinchiorri: the wine temple
In the historic Palazzo Jacometti Ciofi, in the center of Florence, this elegant restaurant, created by Giorgio Pinchiorri and Annie Féolde offers an extraordinary experience thanks to its original recipes and amazing wine pairings with the over 4,000 labels collected in their cellar, unique, perhaps, in the world. This is not only dinner, but a sequence of emotions aroused by the excellence of the food and wine. In the kitchen, two chefs, Italo Bassi and Riccardo Monco, work in perfect synch, providing culinary experimentation that translates into sophisticated dishes and reinterpretations of top-notch ingredients that are never banal.
Artisans: gold, leather and shoes made to measure
Florence’s artisans are appreciated around the world. They are copied in vain. Others have not been able to imitate the level of quality and originality in the city’s unique creations, the products of deft manual labor, competence, imagination and often, artistic genius. Take, for example, the small elegant objects from the goldsmith Paolo Penko, in the historic center. Students come from the furthest reaches of Asia to become apprentices at the Scuola del Cuoio, the Leather School, an artisanal workshop that also sells handbags, belts and other objects from the hands of Francesca Gori. Short free visits are available as well as guided technical ones which include a demonstration of leather gilding.Stefano Bemer’s workshop makes and sells shoes to order. Their style, elegance and comfort are unmistakable. Among the forms on show, many belong to famous people, such as Jean Alesi, Formula 1 champion. Prices are not for everyone, starting at 2,500 euros for a pair of shoes completely hand-made.
Mercato Centrale: between the market and cooking school
Whether starting from scratch or trying to improve one’s own repertory, try the Mama Florence cooking classes, Officine Gullo. Another company, another approach. Riccardo Barthel, known for producing up-market furnishings of exquisite design, also founded Desinare, with a full range of cooking and wine courses for enthusiasts and professionals, as well as courses in food photography and table design. A cooking school inside the Mercato Centrale of Florence has reopened thanks to the work of restaurant entrepreneur Umberto Montano and tourism family, Cardini di Prato. Among the new projects is also Enoteca Chianti Classico, a space dedicated to wine on the upper floor of the market, which also holds 12 food shops, a restaurant, a pizzeria, a bookshop and more. This is also the Florentine home of Eataly, the famous market for a range of top-quality Italian food including various little eating places, tasting seminars and cooking lessons.
by Massimiliano Rella
Addresses
Where to stay
Fattoria Lavacchio| via di Montefiesole, 55 | Pontassieve (Fi) | tel. 055 8317 472 | www.fattorialavacchio.com| double room, breakfast incl. from 80 euros
Residenza d’Epoca |via dei Magazzini, 2 | tel. 055 2399 546 | www.inpiazzadellasignoria.com| double room, breakfast incl. from 250 euros
Villa San Michele|via Doccia, 4 | Fiesole (Fi) | tel. 055 5678 200 | www.villasanmichele.com| double room, breakfast incl. from 1,538 euro | open March-October
Antica Dimora Johlea| via San Gallo, 80 | Florence | tel. 055 4633 292 | www.johanna.it| double room, breakfast incl. 100-165 euro
Where to eat
Cibrèo Teatro del Sale|via del Verrocchio, 8R| Florence | tel. 055 2341 100 | www.edizioniteatrodelsalecibreofirenze.it| closed Mondays | average price 70 euros without wine
Enoteca Pinchiorri|via Ghibellina, 87 | Florence |tel. 055 242 757 | www.enotecapinchiorri.it| closed Sundays and Mondays| tasting menus from 195 to 255 euros without wine
Io, Osteria personale| b.go San Frediano, 167r | tel. 055 9331 341 | Florence | www.io-osteriapersonale.it| fixed menus at 40 and 55 euros
Ora d’Aria|via dei Georgofili, 11R | Florence | tel. 055 2001 699 | www.oradariaristorante.com| tasting menus at 75- 65-70 euros. Only at lunch: tapas-menu
Santo Graal|via Romana, 70R | Florence | tel. 055.2286533 | www.ristorantesantograal.it| closed Wednesdays | menus from 15 to 40 euros
Rari Ristoro sull’Acqua|Lungarno Ferrucci, 24 | Florence | tel. 055 680 596 | open from March to October | average price 35 euros
Il Magazzino Osteria Tripperia| piazza della Passera, 2-3 | Florence | tel. 055 215 969 | open every day | menu 3 courses 25 euros
In Fabbrica|via del Gelsomino, 99 | Florence | tel. 347 5145 468 | www.pampaloni.com/infabbrica/ | menu 30 euros women, 35 euros men
Tripperia Il Lampredotto | Sergio e Pier Paolo| via de’ Macci angolo Borgo La Croce (Sant’Ambrogio) | Florence
Brac|via dei Vagellai, 18R | Florence | tel. 055 0944 877 | www.libreriabrac.net
Gelateria Carapina|piazza Guglielmo Oberdan | Florence | tel. 055 676 930 | www.gelateriacarapina.it
Where to shop
Penko Bottega Orafa | via F. Zannetti, 14-16 R | tel. 055 211 661 | www.paolopenko.it
Scuola del Cuoio | piazza Santa Croce, 16 | via San Giuseppe, 5R | tel. 055 244 534 | 14 euros – reserve ahead www.scuoladelcuoio.com
Stefano Bemer | via San Niccolò, 2 | tel. 055 0460 476 | www.stefanobemer.com
Officine Gullo | via della Torricella 29 | tel. 055 656 0324 | www.officinegullo.it/
Cooking Classes
Mama Florence | Firenze | Viale Petrarca, 12| tel. 055.220101 | www.mamaflorence.it
Desinare | via dei Serragli 234, r | tel. 055 221 118 | www.desinare.it/it/
Mercato Centrale | www.mercatocentrale.it Open every day, from 10-24
Eataly | tel. 055.0153601 | www.eataly.it Open every day 9-22.30 cooking lessons starting at 25 Euros.
