Florence - eating out

One of the best solutions to eat well without spending too much money anywhere in Italy is takeaway pizza. You will see smaller shops with a big oven and a variation on the following on the sign: "Pizza per asporto", "Pizza da asporto", "Pizza per esportazione" (not all of them correct Italian, by the way). Here you can buy pizza in a cardboard box, and eat it anywhere you like. Don’t forget to have it cut in triangles for you, and to throw the cardboard in the proper bin (usually the "carta" recycling container).

Another great options are local festivals, called "sagra" or "festa"; usually they are a smaller city’s or a district’s festival, or a festival devoted to some speciality ("sagra del cinghiale" means boar festival, just to make an example). Here you can eat well spending much less than in a restaurant, and you might come to like the informal atmosphere: plastic dishes, loads of wine, everyone tipsy, and usually there’s an orchestra playing waltzes and old stuff with lots of elderly people dancing. This is a good way of getting in contact with the local "people", and even though these kinds of festivals usually attract adults or older people, they’re getting more popular with young people lately, due to the aforementioned advantages. Beware that some festivals might try to become upscale things, so if the atmosphere looks too refined check the price list if you’re on a tight budget.

Florence, just like every city and region in Italy, has its own number of specialities which are unique and worth tasting. One of the things you really have to try in Florence is the Fiorentina steak, which is a thick steak with bone, served well-done on the outside and almost raw on the inside. The meat comes from a special race of cows, so it’s unique to the region. You will find it very often in menus in other places in Italy, but Tuscany is the place where they make it best. Tuscany, due to its vast regions of uncontaminated nature, is also a great place for tasting wildfowl and boar meat. Another interesting thing to eat is the panzanella, which is a dish made with bread, raw onions, capers, olives and fresh tomatoes. The bread is dipped in water, then squashed and mixed with the other ingredients. Although it used to be a dish for the poor, made with left-over bread, it has now been accepted amongst the traditional dishes worth being included in a restaurant’s menu. It deserves it, since it’s really good.

Another traditional dish is the ribollita, a soup made with black cabbage, white beans and bread. Its name, which means re-boiled, derives from the fact that it used to be cooked by leaving it upon the stove for long hours. Again, a dish for the poor that has now acquired a reputation.

Wine is also a must-taste in Tuscany: from the Brunello di Montalcino, which demands respectable sums per bottle to the better known (and more accessible) Chianti, which is to be found everywhere in the world now, but tends to be much better in Tuscany, probably because the locals tend to keep the best for themselves, and for the lucky visitors. There are several other types of wines worth mentioning, but the list is definitely too long to make here; you can make it your own mission to discover their names and unique taste. You can drink wine in restaurants, or buy it in shops, but try to find reputable ones, because in Tuscany, especially in areas with a very high tourist density, there are some people who specialize in selling average wine for high prices.