Around San Lorenzo market

By Filippo Bartolotta on 21 May 2010 in Gourmet with No Comments

Florence starts getting chaotic at around nine in the morning, but if you take the narrow little streets that lead to the San Lorenzo market all the sounds, colors and noises acquire meaning and charm.

From the outside the food market is just a big (and rather dull) building, but inside it’s alive and throbbing with delights.

Wandering through the market and getting “lost” is one of the nicest things that can and will happen to you: just as you are heading over to buy some Tuscan bread – the unsalted, sourdough kind baked in a wood-burning oven – you can’t help but notice the produce stall with the green and purple artichokes, oranges of all kinds and gigantic tomatoes.…

Then, on your way to the cheese counter with those amazing golden red and brown wheels you stop and look at the fresh meats. Extraordinary cuts of “strange” meats are arranged like coral reefs: you find tripe, pig’s head, offal and organ meats that are true delicacies.

When you have finished your food shopping you can stop for lunch in one of the city’s most historic trattorias where students, office workers, bricklayers and tourists sit elbow-to-elbow: Marione in Via della Spada 27R – FLORENCE Tel. (+39) 055 214756-

Or, if it’s not quite lunch time, there is the Casa del Vino, a old wine shop with original nineteenth century furnishings in Via dell’Ariento  (www.casadelvino.it).. And since, as they say, “the appetite grows with what it feeds on”, at the Casa del Vino you can enjoy classic Tuscan crostini with chicken liver pâté, or others with sausage and stracchino cheese, or butter and anchovies…and then keep building your appetite with wild boar sausages, tripe salad or marinated anchovies.

And here’s what to drink with these midmorning delights:

La Vernaccia di Sangimignano is Tuscany’s most important white produced with the indigenous vernaccia grape; it  has a zesty citrus fruit aroma and a green tea-like freshness.

This is the web site of the Consortium of producers: www.vernaccia.it

And here you can check out some of my favorites:

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