Tums for Breakfast, Bicycles at Lunch, and Robert: My New Admirer

12 October, 11pm.
One glass vino rosso. One glass vin santo. One glass limoncello. One glass moscato.
These describe the contents of my place setting at the end of dinner Friday night. None were ordered, none were paid for, all were consumed. Correction - this was actually the 2nd glass of vin santo and, as I had trouble stomaching the first, the vin santo glass remained full, but it’s two plates of accompanying biscotti easily found a home.

Welcome to dinner at Il Latini. A tourist trap meets old school Florentine hang out. A pig adorns the bar upon entrance and prosciutto hams hang from the ceiling. A vegetarian’s paradise. And one of the most memorable dinners I have ever experienced.

The evening played out something like this:
Arrive by 7:30pm to wait with the masses outside the closed doors of the restaurant. At precisely 7:30pm, the waiters begin to call in the amusing mix of diners. You must have a reservation, and once they call your party, you are escorted to your table – all communal style seating.

One of the waiters recognizes my friend Alexandra from her previous dining experience this past summer. (Alexandra is one of the tallest, skinniest, blondest woman I know, complete with a killer British accent.) We are seated with two other Americans; a mother/daughter couple from Boston who are touring Tuscany, celebrating the mother’s 87th birthday.

Menus do exist at Il Latini, but it’s much easier and much more fun to be served the traditional set meal, with bottomless, and I mean bottomless, vino.

Upon being seated, we are brought plates of sliced prosciutto, mozzarella and tomato, bruschetta, salami, pate, and a basket of sickly delicious bread. There is a quart of Chianti on the table that goes down easier than water. Within 10 minutes of our arrival, we make a pact to close the place down and to stay until we were chummy enough with the wait staff to make for an even more festive return visit.

Our waiter asks if we next want zuppa or pasta. I go for zuppa, Alexandra for the pasta. He comes back with two bowls for each of us. That would be two different zuppa’s and two different pastas. A ravioli dish, a rigatoni dish, a spinach & bean based soup, and a tomato based soup. Everything is simple and delicious. And somehow, four more bowls return to kitchen already cleaned.

This is when the cow enters the picture….

I had been craving my first authentic bistecca alla fiorentina. Since the Binazzi dinners, I hadn’t actually had much in the way of a full meal. I had been doing a lot of panini grabbing and counting free bar snacks as dinner. And so, I was ready. I was also completely and totally full by the time we reach this portion of the evening…

We ask for one bistecca and say we’ll share. We also ask for some vegetables. And quite wisely, I think, nix the potatoes. Most of the fun at this point is to see what is coming out to all the other tables. It’s the most random variation of mass quantities of deliciousness. Veal chops, chicken, meats, pork, and bowl and bowls of pasta. Everyone seems utterly happy.

The waiter arrives with two bistecca’s. Two! In other words, A Cow. And it tastes so obscenely good. He also brings spinach, roasted peppers, zucchini, and folks at a table a few down from us pass along some of their white beans. We are making excellent progress on the gallon of Chianti, but we are not breathing all that well. We have the remaining bistecca wrapped to go, and are brought vin santo and biscotti. We have successfully turned down the full array of desserts, though another neighboring table pass us some of theirs. We are now nearing the three hour mark on dinner, and are the only folks left in our grouping of tables. An Italian family of 10 arrive, so we are asked to move to another table. This is when we are brought an entire bottle of moscato, another glass of vin santo, a glass of limoncello, and more wine. Then the waiter asks if we want coffee. Ha! All I need is a stomach pump and a wagon to roll myself back to New York in.

There is a head mama and a head papa at Il Latini. The head mama does not look like one to be messed with. There are no other women working in the restaurant and I get the feeling none of the men second guess her demands. The head papa has a bit more of a jolly demeanor. He also comes to each table and delivers the bill. We kindly request a “small bill.” In true Saturday Night Live skit fashion, the head papa and our waiter meet at our table to discuss the contents of our meal. Then the head papa scribbles some numbers directly onto our tablecloth, scratches some more of them out, and wa-la, delivers a price. Grazie mille! We pay a fraction of what we decide we should have.

Nearly successful in our goal to close the restaurant, we head outside while chatting up some of the waiters. They take a break, offering us cigarettes, leaning against their vespas. Is this for real? When I tell them I live in Manhattan, they ask me all about Babbo. And they love when I tell them that Mario Battali walks around the neighborhood wearing orange crocs. We have plans to return next week, and are offered a post- Il Latini drink or discoteca night out. Then they bring us the Il Latini labeled bottle of wine (I saw all the tourists leaving with these…) with personalized hand written notes all over the label.

I giggle myself all the way home. Then take advil and tums, and a second dose when I wake up Saturday morning.

13 October 10:57am – Firenze train station.
I walk to Track 1 to board the train to Lucca. This is not the correct train. I have bought the ticket for the wrong train, and the train I actually want to board will leave from Track 5 at 11:37. I get to cause a whole fun scene with the conductors at Track 5, asking them (in very broken Italian) if I can use the ticket I have already bought for the train I actually need to take. I even get to go in the back, to the fancy conductor’s office, to sort out the situation. The 11:37 manages to leave on time, and I’m en route to Lucca...taking a solo excursion to explore the city for the day.

I love Lucca. It reminds me of why I wanted to come to Italy, and why I can’t wait to get to Siena to explore all of the small towns in Tuscany. Lucca is enclosed by 16th and 17th century walls and entered by one of six gates. I rent a bike for the day – as the Lucchesi prefer bikes to cars as their means of transport. I cycle the four kilometers along the top of the city walls, and then wind myself through all of the little streets and piazzas. I am riding the bike similarly to how an NYC taxi drive drives. It’s kind of a fun game to attempt sightseeing on tiny narrow streets, while simultaneously dodging cars, bikes, and the very wandering window shopper.

As I turn down a beautiful, quiet, peaceful street, a clothespin almost lands on my head. A woman is leaning out of her window, hanging laundry to dry, and accidently drops the clothespin. It misses me by about a foot, and all I can I think is that this is my very favorite moment of the whole day. Shouldn’t we all have a Saturday where a clothespin almost lands on our head?

October 14, 6pm
Il Rifrullo – Via San Niccolo
I am finishing a glass of Prosecco that has been bought for me my Robert. Robert is somewhere in his 60’s or 70’s, and has lived in Florence, in the house cattycorner from this bar, all of his life. Robert still thinks very fondly of Americans because of all of the work they did to help restore the damaged art and homes after the flood of 1966. By the end of this drink, I’m thinking Robert is thinking a little too fondly of me.

I discover this bar through my hours of wandering. It is off the beaten path and has a good all around feel. Turns out this is Robert’s second home. He is like the mayor of this intersection of streets. Robert is asking me questions in English that I am answering in Italian, but I am trying to make the point that his speaking English is not helping me, as English is the one language I seem to have mastered. Robert is a slight hoot. He wants me to meet him at this bar any night from 9pm on so that he can help me learn Italian. I tell him I am in Italy writing about all of the characters that I meet so he be better be careful what he says. Robert is not actually skeevy. He has quite a good sense of humor, and I’m getting a kick out of his attempts to get me to commit to plans with him. He tells me he is very fond of the name Katie and that “I should never gamble for love”. Huh? What? Alas, I have enrolled the British gals to go there with me tomorrow night…