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Tuscan Feasts

A quick guide to dining in Florence: Typical dishes, hours of meals (or meals that last hours), and the best trattorie, pizzerie, gelaterie, and restaurants in the city

TThe typical Florentine meal has many courses, and it can take a few hours to work your way through them properly. It starts with an antipasto (appetizer), the two most traditionally Tuscan being affettati misti (assorted salami) and crostini misti (rounds of toast topped varously with liver pâté, mushrooms, tomatoes, cheese, etc.).

Your primo (first course) could be a soup—try the stew-like ribollita (made with chard-like cavolo nero, cannellini beans, tomatoes, and various other veggies, poured over thick slices of day-old bread then, as the name says, "reboiled" again)—or pasta. Popular pastas in Florence include spaghetti alla carrettiera (in a spicy tomato sauce) or pasta al pomodoro (in a plain tomato sauce); papardelle al cinghiale (wide noodles in a wild boar sauce); and crespelle Fiorentine (delicate pasta crepes layered with cheese and béchamel sauce).

Your secondo (main course) could be a pollo (chicken) dish, scallopine (veal cutlets, cooked in a variety of ways), lombatina di vitello (veal chop), involtini (veal rolled with veggies and stewed in its own juices), or the mighty bistecca Fiorentina (a huge steak grilled and brushed with olive oil and pepper).

You are expected to order a contorno (side dish) to go with this main dish. They will try to foist spinaci (spinach) off on you, but beware: the Tuscans are partial to boiling spinach til it be dead, dead, dead. Far better are the fagioli, which just means "beans" but in Tuscany always always implies white cannellini beans; these are best served all'uccelleto, stewed with sage and tomatoes.

Ice Cream Alert
Florence makes some of the world's best ice cream, called gelato, and no visit is complete without indulging. The city's most renowned temple of the cool, creamy snack is Vivoli (tel. 055-292-334) at Via Isole delle Stinche 7r, off Via Ghibellina east of Santa Croce. Other ice cream parlors around town are good, too; just look for a sign proclaiming produzione propria (homemade).

Finish your meal off with cantucci con vin santo, which are tiny, hard almond cookies (the original biscotti) for dipping in sweet dessert wine, or a tiramisù, which is espresso-soaked lady fingers layered with sweetened, creamy mascarpone cheese and dusted with cocoa.

The countryside surrounding Florence is world-renowned for its wines—especially the famous red Chianti Classico, which will most likely be the table wine in a Florentine restaurant. Also try the more complex and expensive reds from southern Tuscany: Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and Brunello di Montalcino (perfect to go with steak).


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This material was last updated January 2007. All information was accurate at the time.

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