A Gastronomic Guide To Florence: Exploring The Renaissance City Between Restaurants And New Hotspots

In Florence, a city of art and culture — a conclave of Renaissance events and stories with an epic flair — you'll find one of the liveliest gastronomic scenes in Italy. Still, it's easy to fall into oversimplified clichés. Florence, after all, is more than just Fiorentina steak and lampredotto. There's so much more. Here, the local cuisine has a distinctly rustic, homemade feel, overflowing with rich soups, plenty of vegetables, and simple, seasonal ingredients. Exploring the gastronomic universe of the city, ruling out the many tourist traps, you'll find a resilient underground of high-quality restaurants. Not only traditional joints, serving up ribbolite and stracotto, but also offerings that elevate the rich array of Florentine recipes to the altar of fine dining.

One of the best trattorias in Florence is Burde, founded in 1901 as a grocery store and later transformed into a trattoria where local workers could meet. At Burde's, under the management of the latest generation consisting of brothers Paolo and Andrea Gori, old and obsolete Florentine recipes are revived, dusted off and brought back to life. Today, they're presented in a lighter version using contemporary tools, though never changing in substance. Meanwhile, at the Antico Ristoro di Cambi, a traditional restaurant established in 1950, tripe, ribollita, tomato soup and local wines are a daily mantra that has been repeated with care and dedication for over 70 years. The ambiance is that of a typical Tuscan trattoria: wooden tables, placemats and large wine racks, where nothing is overly posh or rarefied.

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There are also those in Florence who focus on innovative, new-generation formats, which you'll find in the more contemporary “osterie”. First among them are the professionals at Il Santo Bevitore, who for the past 20 years have created a small gastronomic hub in the Santo Spirito neighbourhood, developing a deli, a bakery and, of course, a restaurant. The latter, like no one before in Florence, has taken the Florentine tradition and reworked it in a modern key. The dishes are simple, straightforward, and made with quality ingredients sourced from local producers. Also worth mentioning is the history of Cibreo, a historic restaurant in Sant'Ambrogio and now a restaurant group based in Florence, led first by Fabio Picchi and now by his son Giulio. It's a nucleus of restaurants, each with its own spirit: there's the legendary café opened in 1986, then Cibreino opened inside the historic Sole theatre, and finally Cibleo, which is a fusion restaurant between Tuscany and China.

Florence is also the city of the legendary Negroni cocktail. It was right here, at Caffè Giacosa, that Count Negroni asked bartender Fosco Scarselli to fortify his Americano cocktail with gin rather than soda: the result is history. Today, you can still order a Negroni at this 200-year-old café, recently renovated by architects Paolo Becagli and Alessandro Interlando. When it comes to mixology, in fact, Florence boasts a vast variety of venues. First and foremost, we have Locale, located inside Palazzo Concini, which is one of the best cocktail bars in the world according to the World's 50 Best Bars, not to mention a gourmet restaurant. Here you can eat among tapestries, cast-iron stoves and ancient symbols of power: one of the most beautiful venues in Florence, whose basement hides tunnels from the 1200s that were once used to store wine produced by the owners.

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Read the original article in ELLE ITALY.