Tag: vegetarian restaurant

Postcard from Florence, Italy: Restaurant musings from month of meals

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An Italian postage stamp featuring a painting of various types of bread, including loaves and rolls, displayed on a white cloth.

Above: Osteria Vini e Vecchi Sapori

We hate both jet lag and the expense of flying to Europe, so when we go, we stay. When we hit Florence this past fall, we already had been in Italy for a month. This means our restaurant quests vary greatly from someone who only has a few nights in Florence. Don’t expect a listing of the top 10 restaurants according to Michelin or TripAdvisor on this blog. This is a personalized list of places we found. Hopefully, the photos will help you decide if any fit your palate.

First, following the so-called healthy Mediterranean diet in Florence would present challenges. That’s not what Florentine cooking is about. Florentines like meat from head to tail, and many restaurants possess a butter-is-better attitude. Market stalls overflow with gorgeous produce, yet locating restaurants reflecting that bounty requires major excavation. With an absurd number of visitors, restaurants tend to cater to their demands to the point that menu after menu almost identical offerings. Here are our finds, mentioned alphabetically.

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Postcard from Oaxaca: Spots to savor and maybe crunch a few bugs

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Above: El Amu created a fresh-from-the-farm atmosphere in town.

Spotlighting restaurants in alphabetical order sometimes launches into non-native cuisines; Boulenc is an example of this.

The French-style bakery never fails to impress, and it’s a go-to spot to snag a jar of just-peanuts crunchy mantequilla de cacahuete. Salads are sharable, and the fired-up pizza oven turns out pies we crave after a week of more traditional dishes. Plus, a nice affogato – gelato drowned in espresso – for dessert. The restaurant also has a cafe in the Jalatlaco neighborhood, Becino, that we did not visit.

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Postcard from Siracusa, Sicily: Where Plato tested and failed tyrant-taming

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Above: Caves created by ancient Greek quarries, including the notorious Ear of Dionysius, line a bluff in the Archaeological Park of Neapolis

Long ago, Siracusa became an important outpost of the Grecian Empire. For strategic reasons, the ancient city first developed on the small island of Ortigia.

A major vestige of this are the ruins of the Temple of Apollo in the heart of the city adjacent to the island’s bustling outdoor market. Forty-two monolithic columns once framed the sixth-century-BC Doric temple dedicated to the sun god. These remnants of the temple incorporated into several private homes and 16th-century military barracks occupying the site were “rediscovered” in the 1890s.

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