Italian food is famous all over the world, but what most people don't know is that each region has its specialty.

Florence, located in the Tuscany region, has a medieval history that influences the foundations of traditional Florentine and Tuscan cuisine. Another factor affects the fact that the cuisine boasts of local ingredients such as tomatoes, rosemary, mushrooms and porcini mushrooms, truffles, olives, aubergines, oregano, basil, and some varieties of meat, cheese, and bread.

Anyway, Tuscany (but above all Florence) is known for the Florentine steak, Crostini, Lampredottoand more!

Read this guide and you will learn what to eat in Florence!

Of course, this list begins with Florence's most famous dish: the Florentine steak. It is a large bone-in cut weighing two to eight pounds (1–4 kg), mostly grilled on the surface, flame-fired, but cooked until pink and bloody inside, seasoned with salt, pepper, and lemon. Whatever you do, don't ask the chef to cook the steak with other cooking because, traditionally, the Florentine steak is done only in one way: rare, cooked well on the outside, and flavored with coarse salt.

The true Florentine says the following: “If the steak is less than 4 fingers high, it is considered carpaccio“. A common way in this town of saying steak should be cut high.

Make sure you share it with a friend because it's huge. Its price is per kilo, which is indicated on the menu, and it is customary for the waiter to bring the raw meat to the table before the chef cooks it so that both of you can admire and approve of your meal.

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This is one of those popular and historic dishes from the medieval period of Florence. Florentines seem to be divided when it comes to this street food dish.

It is a sandwich made with thinly sliced ​​tripe, a bovine intestine, which has been boiled in broth and then seasoned and served on a plate or inside a sandwich. You can order it with hot red sauce, green sauce, or even dipped in broth and gravy from open-air markets or street vendors around town. The true Florentine who loves Lampredotto eats it only with salt and without any other type of seasoning.

If you want to enjoy a tasty Sandwich with Lampredotto, with Star Florence you can take part in an exclusive tour in the city center!

Pappardelle is a long, wide, flat pasta that is usually paired with a sauce such as Ragù toscano. Pappardelle is similar to tagliatelle (a kind of pasta which we will discuss later) but be careful not to get confused! This dish has some variations concerning the type of meat in the Ragù. Wild boar is traditionally wild but in recent times free-range farm boars are used. As already mentioned, the sauce can also be made with a wild hare, duck, or rabbit. Boar meat is surprisingly delicious with a rich flavor and texture that creates a luxurious ragout.

Florence also boasts of having the best ice cream in Italy. The city offers gelati with interesting combinations of strictly handmade flavors.

The best Gelato in Florence can be found on the streets of the city center in places that Star Florence is happy to bring you: bright colors, strong but not too sweet flavors, crunchy cones, and other delights will frame a unique taste experience type.

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This dish can be found almost everywhere in Florence as it contains two delicious local ingredients: porcini mushrooms and truffles. Thetagliatellethey simply mean “cuts” as the pasta is thin, long, and flatter than fettucine and can be of different sizes. The pasta is tossed in a mushroom sauce made up of fragrant mushrooms that make the dish incredibly tasty and, at the same time, simple.

If you want to know more about mushrooms and truffles, with Star Florence you can participate in an exclusive tour where you can find and cook them!

This is pure tradition: a plate of appetizers with different types of crostini which are small pieces of Tuscan bread topped with different vegetable dips, purées, or dips. One of the more traditional antipasti toscani consists of a chicken liver pâté on top of a piece of crusty Tuscan bread. Another kind of crostini are traditional is the one with the lardo di Colonnata or the simple bruschetta with fresh tomato called, in jargon, “la fett’unta”.

Translated as "heated", this traditional Tuscan dish is a soup made that has stale bread, beans (usually cannellini beans), and kale as the main ingredients.

It is a typical poor dish, of peasant origin, whose name derives from the fact that once the peasant women cooked a large quantity of it (especially on Fridays, being a lean dish) and therefore it was “ribollito” in the pan in the following days, from which it takes its name ribollita, because real soup heats up twice, otherwise it would be a very ordinary bread and vegetable soup.

There Pappa al Pomodoro is another dish that uses ingredients such as tomato and is similar to Spanish Gazpacho but less liquid. What started as common peasant dishes from the medieval period, using whatever people had at home, are now some of the friendliest food in Florence.

You may notice that the bread served to your table, as you wait for your meal in Florence, is nothing special and is a bit bland. It's normal. Florentine bread is dense with a hard, crunchy crust. This is because it is traditionally made without salt. It is said that in the Medici period, there was a feud between Pisa, a large port city in Tuscany, and the Medici family-owned area of ​​Florence. Because of this feud, Pisa cut off its salt supply to all the lands owned by the Medici as revenge and a demonstration of power, forcing the common population to thus produce the typical bread of Florence. Today they still use the recipe without salt. Italians love their traditions!

If you want to know more about Pisa, the city that blocked the salt trade in Florence, with Star Florence you can participate in an exclusive one-day tour!

Contrary to Florentine bread's dearth of salt, this salty loaf has a rich flavor. Tuscans prepare schiacciata, which means "smashed," differently from the way most people make focaccia by adding more salt and oil to the thin bread. Schiacciata is similar to what most people know as focaccia. This bread is consumed as a savory afternoon snack, as well as in sandwiches and on its own before dinner.

Additionally, it can be cooked with olives, onions, tomatoes, or even grapes to create the schiacciata con l'uva, a traditional autumnal dessert. It can also be seasoned with flavorful herbs. Another sweet that is only consumed during Carnival is the schiacciata alla Fiorentina, which is made of sponge cake and topped with bitter cocoa and the coat of arms of Florence.

We cannot forget to mention the famous plate filled with meat and cheese found in Florence; The Tagliere Toscano is excellent as an appetizer, a light meal in the summer, or even just as a snack to taste different types of cold cuts and cheeses with a friend during an aperitif. Ham, salami, and the Finocchiona (salami made with pieces of fennel for a different flavor and texture than traditional salami) come with different types of pecorino (goat cheese).

Larger plates have grilled vegetables, slices of Tuscan bread, and sometimes fig jam or honey.

Speaking of classic desserts in Florence, I Cantuccini are known all over the world simply as biscuits but in Italian, it is another pillar of the Tuscan gastronomic tradition. These little almond cookies can be found everywhere and even have modern variations including being made with hazelnuts or pistachios instead of almonds. As a dessert, classic almond biscuits are served with a kind of amber wine called Vin Santo. Dip the biscuits in wine to soften them just enough to hear them crunch!

We can't talk about Florence and Tuscany without mentioning wine, of course. Bold reds and a couple of mean whites come from Tuscany. The Chianti region produces the best-known and highest quality red wine in Italy and the world and has an invaluable value in terms of flavor. The Brunello di Montalcino is a great red wine produced in Montalcino, a small Tuscan hilltop town, and comes with a hefty price tag, usually, because it's made with 100% Sangiovese grapes.

If you don't know much about wine, don't worry, you can't go wrong ordering a local wine in Florence. If you prefer a white wine in Florence, a great local white is Vernace di San Gimignano, a lovely historic medieval city still well preserved within its stone walls. If you're not much of a wine connoisseur, the house wine will do, or ask your waiter for recommendations.

If you love wine, you can also do a mini wine tasting in the heart of Chianti with Star Florence: book a wine-tasting tour now and let yourself be enchanted by the incredible beauty of Tuscany!