What to eat in Florence

Florence is an Italian city located in the center of the Tuscany region, famous for its excellent gastronomy and Tuscan wines that are considered among the best ones in the world.
Florence with its artistic beauty is visited annually by millions of tourists who stop in town for shorter or longer period of time and this continuous flow of tourists has helped to make qualitative traditional Florentine and Tuscan cuisine famous worldwide.

The variety of dishes is very rich, both because of the large number of tourists and the quantity of foods that you can choose,

so this Italian town offers both in gastronomy - the variety and quality that is incomparable with other regions of Italy.

Obviously, there are many restaurants in other parts of the world inspired by Tuscan dishes and Florentine traditional recipes, including one of the most popular dish known all over the world - the Florentine steak.
The Florentine steak is a dish of beef that is derived from one rich Tuscany cuisine type which in the past was only consumed by the upper classes.
To cook a real Florentine steak you have to use only Tuscan beef and it must be cut very thick and also contain the bone of beef as when cooking it gives special flavor.
Cooking this dish has very specific rules that distinguish it from other meat dishes, keeping the skin of the steak soft and tasty, meat is cooked only externally and internally left raw.

In addition to the Florentine steak there are many other typical meat dishes in Tuscan area, other types of meat, such as white meat, are often used.

The culinary tradition regarding white meat has very ancient tradition with characteristics of meat that were developed in the past in farms of Tuscany, where farmers used to breed many species of animals such as chickens, turkeys and rabbits.
In Tuscany and Florence in addition to breeding meat there is an old tradition in dishes of wild meat, traditions of the hunt in this area of Italy has many enthusiasts.

Hunting in Tuscany has ancient origins as members of important Florentine families, like the Medici, used to practice this kind of activity and organize large-scale hunting events with great enthusiasm.

The choice is not limited to the meat dishes for what to eat in Florence, interestingly, culinary traditions of this Italian city have kept many recipes for first courses with both the Italian pasta or dishes with typical Tuscan bread.

Among the first of typical bread dishes of traditional Tuscan cuisine we can list: famous Tuscan soup with bread and vegetables - ribollita, soup with Italian sausage - la minestra di pane, tomato soup - la pappa al Pomodoro, and Tuscan salad of bread and tomatoes - panzanella, for example, is first course dish from bread and is eaten cold, which is perfect during the hot season.

We must also mention desserts, that are made in the restaurants and bakeries, traditional Tuscan sweets are:

traditional Florentine cake, pie with the grapes, the gingerbread, the biscuits of Prato and many others.

Florence since ancient times is a city of international importance in the confectionery traditions, but city has also incorporated many recipes from other European countries, for example: tiramisu, meringue, the profiterole and mille-foglie.

We recommend that you take a look at our tour on Tuscan flavors: https://www.madeoftuscany.it/tuscan-food-tour/