The best way to eat well in Italy is to ask an Italian. Ask the hotel clerk, stop someone on the street, ask a bus or taxi driver. (You may not want to ask a tour guide as they are possibly getting paid a “commission” for referrals.) Unlike many of our undiscriminating diners who are content to grab the fastest and cheapest food for lunch most Italians are much fussier about their cuisine, and those workers who are not privileged enough to be able to eat at home for lunch tend to know where to get cooking almost as good as Mamma’s. Once on a road trip from Florence to Rome we were looking for somewhere to eat and my husband, while stopped for gas, asked a truck driver for his recommendation. The rest of us in the car, all Americans, were politely silent but had little faith when we pulled up to Le Capannine, in Barberino di Mugello (near Florence). It turned out to be one of the most memorable meals I’ve ever had in Italy (okay, there’ve been more than a few), so much so that I included it in my blog of favorite restaurants, and if you are ever on the A1 autostrada between Florence and Rome, I highly recommend you plan your trip around it.
Moving on…
- Pizza: I have to act like an Italian and be a regionalist about this; even Northerners will admit that the best pizza is in Naples. My humble opinion is that as you move farther north, the pizza depreciates in value. Rome has a great thin-crusted pizza, and in Tuscany I prefer their focaccia to the pizza, which is still decent, but I got a hold of some pretty bad pizza in Milan. Sorry, Milan, but pizza is not your thing.
