la buchetta
florence, italy
we had been looking for a place to experience the infamous “bistecca all Fiorentina”, and stumbled upon la buchetta after having already made reservations elsewhere. but the almost comically huge steaks in the front window that let us know this place took Florentine steak very seriously (either that or it was a huge tourist trap).
after placing our order for Florentine steak, our very jovial waiter brought out the raw meat and a scale and weighed it at our table in order to let us verify it truly met the 1.5-2lb standard weight for a Florentine steak (I didn’t really have trouble believing this).
while our steak cooked, we were brought our tagliatelle al cinghiale and our tomato and onion “salad”. we had pretty low expectations for the pasta, since this was obviously a place that sold STEAK (not ‘steak’, STEAK).
this pasta was so, so good. again, nailed the “globs-of-sauce-clinging-to-each-pasta-noodle” test.
and then...the steak came out.
they carved it at our table for us, and sprinkled a healthy helping of coarse salt.
it was so interesting--not “fatty” and “well-marbled” like intuition says a good steak should be, but it had this beefy flavor that was intensified by the lack of fat, and really brought out by the hits of salt
the meal ended with complimentary limoncello (yum!)