Are you curious to see what locals eat? Food and wine are holy matters in Italy! Join me as we discover my neighborhood, San Lorenzo, where I’ve been living since I moved to Florence. It’s a very lively area with a lot of smaller shops and local restaurants.
We’ll go to Ivana’s bakery where I buy fresh bread every day and we’ll taste some delicious local snacks and cookies. I also want to show you how wine once was sold in Florence and how it’s nowadays sold. During the Renaissance many leading families owned a palace in town and a farm outside Florence where they grew what they needed.
The wine produced was too much for the family consumption so a large part was sold to locals in town through what we call “buchette” or “wine windows”. These buchette are still visible here and there and are unique for just Florence. The tradition of buying bulk wine is even today very common in Florence if you don’t want to spend money at a more sophisticated “enoteca”.
Feel the Pulse of the Mercato Centrale
We’ll obviously visit the biggest food market in Florence, the Mercato Centrale, which was built in the San Lorenzo area in the late 18-hundreds. This is where I come not only to buy seasonal vegetables and fruit, but also fresh pasta, meats and much much more. The market was recently upgraded and now features a vast variety of restaurants on the top floor.
After our tour inside the Mercato Centrale we’ll end our morning tasting some typical cold cuts and cheeses from Tuscany and sipping some wine. In Florence it’s definitely more popular to drink red wine, basically because it goes better with the local kitchen, than white or rosé. The Tuscan red wines like Chianti, Chianti Classico, Bolgheri, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and Brunello di Montalcino are today world famous. Nevertheless the first wine in Italy obtaining the DOC certification was the white Vernaccia di San Gimignano.
