And so a great time I had. For in Firenze, you can hardly find any restaurant not serving at least a few Primo and Secondo dishes using mushroom-based sauces. Going with traditional Tuscan dishes, I indulged in a good number of porcini and tartufo (truffles) courses.
This was an incredible white truffle sauce, served at Osteria Flexo across from Mercato Centrale in downtown Florence. The chicken breast was a little dry and passable, but the sauce was way out of this price range. You could actually taste the white truffle chunks in the sauce, and the flavor of the sauce was just unbelievable. The portion of sauce was so generous I think I used it for the chicken breast, as a salad dressing, and as a dip for the frites. And for merely €12! Certainly I'd never had the extravagance of having white truffles as a dipping sauce for French fries.
Ravioli in a truffle sauce. This was at Osteria All'Antico Mercato, just a few blocks east of the San Lorenzo. The sauce was unremarkable - I could barely taste any truffle in this dish.
More mushrooms and porcini, this time in a risotto. This was also at Osteria All'Antico Mercato. This was better than the ravioli above.
Ravioli in a porcini sauce, at a little Ristorante called Semidivino, just a couple blocks from the Duomo. Hmm...I'm falling in love with the woody flavor of porcini.
Even more ravioli in porcini sauce! This was at Trattoria Mamma Gina, on the other side of the River Arno. Not as good as the dish at Semidivino.
On my last day in Firenze I went to the Mercato Centrale to bring home some dried porcini and black truffles (tartufo nero, as I learned from the shopkeepers). Summer black truffles cost about €13 for a 40 gram jar, and dried porcini cost €5 per 100 grams. I must have spent €70 or so just on truffles and porcini for myself, my parents and parents-in-law.
Wonderful porcini and truffles. I'm so looking forward to them.
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