John Hornick — Chef’s Apprentice
Here’s a collection of Tastes and Toasts from our recent Travels to Florence. If you have a few days in Florence and want good food and wine with local ambience, this is your budget-friendly gourmet guide. We also visited two wineries about an hour outside the city.
Getting to Florence
My brother, who doesn’t have much travel experience outside the U.S., asked “is Italy a good place to go in June, and if so, where should we go, where should we stay, and what should we do? And why don’t you come along and be our tour guide?” So we jumped at the chance to go to Italy with my brother, his girlfriend, his son, and his son’s girlfriend. We visited Rome, Florence, and Venice. Look for my Travels Tastes & Toasts posts on Rome and Venice.
To book your trip to Florence, or anywhere, use this Expedia box:
We used United points to fly to Rome, then took a train to Florence. If you have slightly fewer points than you need, you can buy enough to get you a free trip from United. If you want to stay in Marriott hotels and don’t have enough points, you can also buy more here.
We travel with only one bag and a backpack each. I have been using this Pathfinder bag for many years. It has a large compartment with top or bottom access, and a nylon panel can be unzipped to combine the soft upper compartment and the rigid lower. The whole bag is heavy duty, including the retractable handle and wheels, as proven by the fact that I have been using it for well over five years, it still looks new despite having been in many, many overhead luggage compartments, and Sarah just bought one because mine has served me so well for so long. What I like most about it is the pockets. I love pockets and it has many pockets both inside and out.
Where to Stay: Botticelli Hotel Florence
We enjoyed this cozy and comfortable hotel, convenient to the Duomo, San Lorenzo, Academia (David), the leather market, the central indoor market, and the train station. We particularly enjoyed wine on the second floor terrace late each night, after dinner.
The rooms and bathrooms are a bit small but we were always out and about, breakfast was good with great variety, and there were ample comfy chairs in the several rooms of the lobby for lounging with our family and friends. We would stay there again, next time we are in Firenze.
To book the Botticelli Hotel, or another Florence hotel of your choice, click here.
Salumeria enoteca Lombardi
We ducked into the Mercado Centrale looking for a quick, light lunch after arriving in Florence by train and found this bright and cheerful salumeria and enoteca. We ordered an excellent and beautiful salumi e formaggi board and some wonderful Chianti Classico and Brunello by the glass (I have provided links to comparable wines, many of which are discounted). Just what we were looking for.
Warning: the four of us ordered a board for four, which together with the meats, cheese, roasted eggplant, huge olives, sundried tomatoes, and artichokes, was way more than we could eat. Unless you haven’t eaten for a couple of days, consider a board for two or three people to feed four.
Ristorante Vincanto
Excellent al fresco meal on the Piazza di Santa Maria Novello. I loved the Tonnarrelli, which was basically housemade spaghetti carbonara.
The pasta was perfect, the carbonaraishness was rich, the crispy pork was a delightful blend of protein and fat, and the pecorino was just the right amount of creamy and salty. Check out my YouTube videos on how to make Pasta Carbonara and Pork Belly and Spinach Carbonara.
We also ordered the beef carpaccio; the truffles were very generous. I could still imagine their taste and aroma the next day. These truffles were fresh and really truffly, not like the sad excuses for this noble tuber we have in the U.S.
My brother had a beautiful salumi board.
My nephew loved the lasagna, which was served in a personal-sized cast iron pan.
Osteria Vecchio Vicolo
We were not going to stop here because we were looking for something more outside, but I’m so glad we did. The entrance room of this Osteria is fan-vaulted and open-air-to-the-street, so it is kind of outside. And the room is decorated like it is outside, with faux laundry hanging from an upper railing.
But more importantly, the food. I had one of the best dishes I have ever had in Tuscany (this my third visit), which was a reminder that local Tuscan food is world class and interesting: little pasta purses (fagotti) stuffed with cheese and pears, in Pecorino cream with Pere William, thinly sliced pears, crispy nuts, some little berries that looked like tiny tomatoes (goji berries?), and Tuscan honey. Wonderful!
Our family’s dishes, prawns with gnocchi, caprese salad, and pizza were beautiful and reportedly delicious. My brother said it was the best food so far on this trip (7th day).
A neighboring table ordered the Bistecca di Scottona alla Fiorentina, which filled the room with a wonderful aroma and blew everyone away with the presentation.
Il Latini
This was our third visit to this family-style institution.
Be sure to go hungry. The Tuscan comfort food just keeps coming and coming, and it’s all good. The final act is the Bistecca alla Fiorentina, sliced from the bone but presented intact.
We always get the house wine by the bottle, which perfectly pairs with the food. If you are only two people, you may be seated at a communal table, which we thoroughly enjoyed.
Ristorante Caffe’ Pitti – Botteghina
You might not expect a restaurant directly outside a major tourist attraction (the Pitti Palace) to be good, but the six of us thought the food at the sit-down, al fresco, shaded part of this “caffe” was excellent, as was the service.
I ordered the truffle-centric degustation menu, which included a tasty vegetable flan with creamy cheesey sauce, beef carpaccio with apples, and burrata with arugula.
All the dishes were generously garnished with thinly shaved black truffles (which really tasted and smelled like truffles), and which I accompanied with Rosso di Montalcino. My fellow diners also loved their Cacio e Pepe, smoked salmon & avo salad, and avo, smoked salmon, and burrata tower. Check out my YouTube video on making Cacio e Pepe.
Trattoria L’Oriuolo
Had a great dinner for 6 at a long, old wooden table against the far wall. Everyone loved their dishes, the server was excellent, and the wine flowed.
My wife and I shared the stuffed pumpkin blossoms wrapped in prosciutto and the cheese (pecorino?) flan as primi.
Both excellent. I ordered the sliced beef and porcini mushrooms and she ordered the pasta with wild boar ragout as secondi.
Both were excellent but I was stuffed and couldn’t finish my half of the pasta, and had to save room for gelato, of course.
Fattoria Il Colombaio
If you’re up for an excursion about an hour from Florence, try this winery and restaurant.
We had a great tour and wine tasting lunch hosted by Marco, the owner (I think). We started with a crisp dry white, Le Primule, which paired well with the bruschetta trio (sliced bread with tomato, sliced bread with a fantastic arugula sauce, and sliced bread with house-made olive oil).
The breads were baked in-house from house-grown-and-ground wheat. Next was a simple Chianti, which we enjoyed with the salumi sharing the plate with the bruschetta.
The next Chianti, the Classico Gaspero 1897, which had something to do with the King at that time, was our fave, especially with the accompanying raviolo and the tagliatelle with ragout, which, BTW, our driver/guide said is better than his mother’s (I’ll withhold his name to protect him from his mother).
The last wine was a Super Tuscan. We’re not big ST fans but we liked it and bought some, along with the first two reds.
The 4-ages-of-cheese course was accompanied by honey made by the winery’s own bees.
Marco also gave us tastes of the housemade balsamic, aged 4 or 12 years. Both very good, 12 better.
The winery’s restaurant was country chic in an old stone building and the surrounding Tuscan countryside was stunning, of course.
Antica Porchetteria Granieri 1916
Pork sliced straight from the beautifully roasted pig, great fresh bread, umami-rich sauce.
Wrap partially in the paper, walk, and eat. What more can I say? Excellent!
Agriturismo Azienda Agricola Oliviera
Even though all wine tastes good in Tuscany, we particularly enjoyed Sandro’s wines, especially the Chianti Classico and Chianti Classico Riserva.
His passion for the entire winemaking process comes through in every word, every pour, and every sip. Although the stone buildings are charming and we enjoyed the tour and now dream of all the wine in his many barrels, we opted for tasting at a picnic table outside. It was a beautiful June Tuscan day and the view from the winery was spectacular.
We particularly liked the door-to-door pricing, which had the intended effect: a shipment to the US. The winery also has a bed and breakfast. Next time.
Conclusion
There are hundreds of restaurants in Florence in different price ranges, and it’s hard to get a bad meal there. These are the budget-friendly Tastes and Toasts we enjoyed on our most recent trip. If you give them a try, I hope you enjoy them as much as we did.
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