Food and Travel, April 2003
Feeding Firenze
 ...Finding
a good trattoria in Florence runs on the same Machiavellian lines - as
tough as picking a museum or a bottle of oil. A mamma, a papa and a nonna
may be toiling in the engine room of the trattoria, but can they cook?
The first step is to burn the trusty Michelin or Veronelli. They don't
help much. Next, look at a map. Between the Duomo and the Ponte Vecchio
is a high-risk zone, a Quattrocento equivalent to Piccadilly Circus and
Leicester Square. The other side of the River Arno, prices dip. Dinner,
sitting on a wooden bench at Al Tranvai in the Piazza Torquato Tasso,
where the couple at the next table has to stand up for you to go to the
servizi, may cost less than the coffee and cake you bought earlier in
the Piazza della Repubblica. The food is homely, the service friendly
(with little spoken English) and the Montspertoli table wine satisfying.
Adventure outside the city's medieval perimeter and you've left the
tourist belt. Le Tre Soldi takes its name from The Threepenny Opera.
Its owner,
Massimo Romano, looks like the tenor Andrea Bocelli, but watches over
the two rooms like a mother hen. Cooking is more than granny-style
Tuscan. A braised knuckle of pork and chestnuts, seasoned with star anise
and
Szechuan pepper, comes garnish-free on a wooden trencher. It's good,
as is a bottle of Parrina Sangiovese for less than a tenner. Better
still is the atmosphere of thirtysomething Florentines who eat on a first-come,
first-served basis. Here style And substance come together...
All of the restaurants mentioned in this article were recommended
by Bellini Travel.
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