We are in Northern Tuscany for a holiday. Before we came here I bought a book called The Food Lover's Guide to Florence by Emily Wise Miller. I diligently marked all the pages that feature restaurants I wish to try in this book with post-it indexes, colour coding purple for 'must try' and green for 'good to try'.
Osteria de' Benci (http://www.osteriadeibenci.it/index_en.htm) on Via dei Benci 13r, near Piazza Santa Croce, walking toward Ponte alle Grazie is the restaurant with my purple index 'must try' place.
We went to look for this restaurant for the whole purpose of trying out their signature dish, the spaghetti dell'ubriacone or drunken spaghetti, boiled in wine so that it turns a bright burgundy and then tossed with garlic, olive oil, red pepper flakes and parsley. You can taste the red wine and hint of garlic ... it was tasty but a touch salty for me however we both enjoyed this dish, and it was worth a visit. Definitely blog-worthy, ha ha ha.
 |
| Drunken Spaghetti - tasty but very interesting! |
I was checking for the recipe online and found it by someone who has actually eaten there so please visit: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2009/04/seriously-italian-spaghetti-all-ubriaco-recipe.html if you are interested to make one yourself.
When we got to the table, they brought us a basket of nice bread, sprinkled with rock salt. There is a big bottle of olive oil on the table. We pour this into a dish and dipped the bread into it whilst waiting for bruschetta that my husband ordered for a starter. The bruschetta was lovely, with lots of sweet and flavoursome tomatoes.
After the bruschetta, we both had the drunken spaghetti, followed by cafe macchiato in glasses.
Anyway, if you are interested to try this restaurant, here is their business card. It is not a big restaurant but there are some tables outside too. As it is a little bit off the main tourist area, we did not have any problem to get a table right away without a booking despite it is not too far to walk from Uffizi Gallery. That said it was Monday after all so that might have helped.
We did not have any dessert as we had another place with 'green' index to go to for gelato. Emily Wise Miller's book also informed me of Caffe' dell Carrozze, the gelateria near Ponte Vecchio in piazza del peace 3-5 and their excellent pistachio gelato.
Considering it is meant to be the best gelateria in this area, the place is rather unassuing looking, without much elaborate displays of heaps of ice cream in different varieties that you see at other places. Perhaps they don't need such elaboration as people know where to go for excellent gelato.
I have thing about pistachio ice cream so I tried theirs and it was indeed delicious, full of nutty pistachio flavour!!
I was now happy, full of lovely food in my stomach and some shopping bags in my hand. It was a lovely day out to Florence.
That's all forks!
1 comment:
Ah, I miss Florence and the good times we had there!
Post a Comment