Florence Food and Travel Guide: What to Eat and Where

Florence rewards travelers who come hungry. Tuscan cooking is rustic and confident, built on bread, beans, olive oil and well-raised beef rather than fussy sauces. Here is how to eat like you know the city.

Dishes to Order

• Bistecca alla fiorentina — a thick T-bone from Chianina cattle, grilled rare over coals. It is sold al etto (by 100 grams), so a single steak easily feeds two or three people.
• Ribollita — a thick "reboiled" soup of black cabbage, cannellini beans and stale bread, more stew than soup.
• Pappa al pomodoro — a warm, almost porridge-like tomato and bread dish, peak summer comfort food.
• Lampredotto — Florence's signature street food: slow-cooked cow's fourth stomach, chopped into a juicy roll with salsa verde. Far better than it sounds.
• Schiacciata — flat, dimpled, olive-oiled bread, sold plain or split for sandwiches.
• Cantucci & vin santo — crunchy almond biscuits dunked in sweet amber wine, the classic finish.
• Gelato — seek out small gelaterie with muted, natural colors rather than fluffy neon mountains.

Where to Eat

Mercato Centrale in San Lorenzo has a buzzing upstairs food hall and a ground-floor market of butchers, cheesemongers and produce stalls. For something more local, cross the river to Oltrarno and Santo Spirito, where artisan workshops sit beside honest trattorie and aperitivo bars on the piazza. The Sant'Ambrogio market to the east is where Florentines actually shop, with a beloved no-frills lunch counter inside.

Practical Tips

Order steak by total weight and share it; a half-kilo is plenty for two. Lunch is the smart traveler's meal — family-run trattorie offer set midday menus far cheaper than dinner. Watch for buchette del vino, the small arched "wine windows" once used to sell wine straight from palazzo cellars; a few again pour drinks through the hatch.

Many trattorie post Italian-only menus with no pictures, so quietly photographing the menu to translate it makes ordering confident lampredotto far less of a gamble. Pair what you learn with a willingness to point and ask, and you will eat very well in Florence.