With a big glass of a bold Tuscan Cab poured generously, I have intentionally taken the evening off of a very long day. I had a nail appointment, a phone conference with my Program Mentor, a job interview, and visited 4 potential clinical sites to pimp myself as a poor Practitioner Student who REALLY needs a Preceptor!!! The groveling is real. It felt weird having scrubs on again after almost a year off of work while I focused on classes. Okay, let’s keep exploring Italy, shall we?
Legs still quivering worse than Grannie’s Thanksgiving Carrot Jello Salad, I wandered out to where the others were waiting and we rendezvoused for lunch. We didn’t know where we’d end up so started sorta wandering. Italy is very “wanderable”. Very.
However, wandering is much better suited to some personalities and hunger tolerances than to others. If you’ve read this TR for long enough, you already know to whom I am referring. My dad was “at that point”. He’d have been happy with KFC. The rest of us…were not. However, Florence is full enough of wonderful little Osterias, Tavernas, and Trattorias to satiate everyone’s palate and budget. And we struck gold.
The bad news is that I just spent 20 minutes trying to edit and enlarge one of these photos in order to read the menu in sleuthing what restaurant it was. Sorry, that’s my max effort. It’s Ristorante Something-or-other in Florence which narrows it down to approximately 3500 restaurants that it could have been. Well, okay, let’s say it was within a 10-minute walking distance from the Cathedral, so it was definitely one of probably 300. It doesn’t matter really though, because the chances of any of the 3 readers I have left of going to Florence and wanting to eat at THAT restaurant are about as good as Comer going to prison for using the FBI in taxpayer fraud.
Anyway, we all thought the menu looked great and we chose to eat outside at a lovely little area set up with about 10 or so tables, some big, some small. Sadly, while I’d have loved for this to be a really high-quality Dining Review of a fantastic restaurant in Florence’s City Center, it’s not going to be. Not only can’t I even tell you what the place was, I can’t show you a menu either. So, my food descriptions will have to rely on memory (which sucks worse than gallbladder surgery) and luck. Feel free to dispute anything I say here.
It is a bona fide sin for bread to not be delivered to a table. Yes, there was balsamic. Yes, there was olive oil. For those to be missing on an Italian table is also a sin. It’s true; I saw tables without them on the dome ceiling paintings that depicted Hell. But one bread isn’t enough, so we ordered a trio of bruschetta as well to start with our wine, cokes, etc… One was something yellow-ish, one was a pate that was VERY good, and the 3rd a tasty classic bruschetta mix of tomato and herbs.
Each of us ordered a main course as well and holy smokes were they great!! Everyone super enjoyed what they got and not much was leftover. Here’s what I remember of the dishes:
I was in the mood for some authentic linguine and clams. It was perfection. Not complicated, not overly messed up with fussy herbs and stuff… just olive oil, butter, white wine, salt and pepper. It wasn’t dry, so I’m guessing a bit of clam broth as well. I had no problem eating it all and used my scarpetta to finish it off.
The girls shared the green pasta with ricotta and hazelnuts. They raved, and it too met a timely demise. That’s all I can say; they didn’t share so I have no idea if they were lying or not.
Dad is a tough nut with food. He ended up with the most pedestrian of the dishes- a plain grilled chicken cutlet and oven-roasted potatoes. Booooooring.
Mom’s, on the hand, was exquisite! Hers was truly the best at the table, and it made me, for a minute or two, regret my clams and linguine. But only for a minute because she let me share a bit of hers, so I got to enjoy both. Hers was a butternut squash and sage ravioli with a luscious leek-cream sauce. Gosh dang, that was good!
More than satisfied and satiated, it was time for heading to the Uffizi, which makes me quite pleased with myself that it starts with ‘U’- how serendipitous that that worked out so well without even trying. The stars do align now and then.
Now for some drama… Just as we were paying the bill and getting ready to leave, we started to smell smoke. It wasn’t, you know, like smoke from a Traeger. And there were certainly no campfires in the alleyway nearby. This was that nasty gag-reflex-inducing acrid stuff made of wires and other stuff that probably shouldn’t be burning. Soon, we saw smoke too. It was coming from the doorway of the business? Shop? Residence? Across the alley from where we were sitting. Then, this guy comes out coughing a bit, but really not all that concerned appearing. We lingered a bit, because hey, who doesn’t enjoy a bit of 911 action. I mean, maybe we were about to see the historic district of Florence turn into an apocalyptic once-in-a-thousand-year event started by some guy who fell asleep with his bong. Pretty soon the fire department showed up and the captain started to interview this guy who, from what we could tell by the overdone Italian hand motioning, told him it was all okay, nothing to see here, it’s all under control, etc..
Honestly, we all agreed that it appeared he had been doing something that he shouldn’t have been doing, was about to get busted for it, and was trying so very hard to deflect. We didn’t stick around to find out as time was marching on and we had a lot more to see, but we did enjoy the post-lunch show and made our way to the vast and wonderful halls of Uffizi.