Three nights in Florence and Chianti Classico country, three lunches followed by three dinners, made me fully aware of one aspect of the restaurant business that I and many others may have overlooked.
That is that all those who work in hospitality represent the country they work and live in. What they do will make their customers feel not just about their meal but also the city and the country they are visiting.
Our recent long weekend in Tuscany began unexpectedly well. It was just past 5.30 pm, close enough to the witching hour of 6 pm, when we stumbled into In Vino Veritas on a corner site in the centre of Florence, a few minutes’ walk from the Uffizi. I am not sure what, other than thirst, lured us in but it proved a delightful stop.
This wine bar, in the truest sense of the word, also calls itself a schiacciateria, after the particular type of flat bread which, along with sandwiches made from focaccia, fill its front window. Behind the counter was a smiling barman, a Coravin and bottles from all over Italy. On offer were glasses of Tignanello, Sassicaia, Biondi-Santi, Guado al Tasso, Le Macchiole, Cepparello and many other wines. Every inch of the interior seems to be taken up with bottles at all angles, along with stools for 16 and a couple more out on the street.
The owners’ philosophy is simple: to offer the very best wines produced in Italy by the glass. But it is the extremely friendly approach of the young man and woman working there who made this half-hour so memorable.
It was not the service that made our meal at the long-established Trattoria Cammillo so disappointing, although it was a surprise to learn that our waiter was originally from Moscow. It was the quality of the cooking. There was a bland rendition of spaghetti with bottarga; an under-seasoned dish of veal brains and zucchini flowers, and the sight of a sole in so many disparate pieces that it might have been dynamited after it had been fried. Consolation came at a gelateria en route back to our hotel.
An hour’s drive and a morning at Querciabella in Greve brought us to Radda in Chianti and to Osteria Le Panzanelle (above) where I had last eaten in 2018. Little seems to have changed. The walls are still covered with wine posters; the views are still glorious; and the prices seem not to have changed in the intervening seven years. They are a fraction of restaurant prices in London, Paris and New York. And there has been no skimping on either the quality or the quantity: pappardelle with a sauce of deer meat (below) is €14, a dish of excellent tripe €13 and a serving of their patate fritte (reputedly the best in Tuscany) a mere €5. Excellent service again.
From here, it is no more than a 15-minute drive to Panzano, a hilltop village famous for its wine, Fontodi’s cattle and a couple of chefs, one better known than the other. The former is the internationally famous butcher-turned-restaurateur, Dario Cecchini, about whom I wrote in 2010 in A night in Panzano. Having opened a restaurant successfully in the Mondrian Hong Kong, he was away aiming to achieve the same réclame in the Mondrian Singapore Duxton.
While Cecchini spreads the food and cooking of Panzano around the world, over at Enoteca Baldi the world seems to come to Panzano for its wine list and personnel. The food, welcome, atmosphere and charm here are 110% Italian, and this is clearly the popular hangout for local wine producers.
Its founder is Domenico ‘Mimmo’ Baldi, a man whose smile is as broad as his hair is long. Born in Naples, he began his career in the Berkeley Hotel in London before a return to Italy and eventually filled a long stint as chef at Il Vescovino restaurant in Panzano. He then took over his present, more relaxed premises and opened fully in 2009.
What is exceptional about Baldi is his humanity, the values he has picked up over the years. He is modest but proud of his country and all the good food it produces. At a Friday night dinner for 12 he came out of the kitchen and introduced each course. I remember vividly what he said as he introduced our dessert, a pear poached in Vin Santo with a cinnamon cream. ‘Pears were enjoyed at one time as extensively as apples but today that is no longer the case and apples have become far more popular. So I have made this dessert, which I trust you will enjoy, in support of all those farmers who grow pears in the Emilia-Romagna region. Thank you.’ Affirmative action indeed.
Neither Baldi nor his beloved restaurant would be Italian if family were not involved. Of his three daughters, Chicca runs the kitchen alongside her father while Eleonora runs the front of house alongside her husband, Gian Maria Garbin, who masterminds one of the best wine lists in the country.
Eleonora met Garbin, who was born in Verona, while they were working in Australia in two of Melbourne’s best restaurants. He was heading the wine service at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal in the Crown Hotel while she was overseeing the service at Shannon Bennett’s Vue de Monde.
Garbin’s absorption into this family-run restaurant cannot have been easy but it appears to have been effortless and the talents that both accumulated on their travels have found a most successful outlet in the Enoteca’s wine list. This today encompasses over 1,500 wines: not surprisingly, the best of Tuscany and the rest of Italy but also a great selection from France, Germany, Greece and Austria, with plenty by the glass.
I had the good fortune to eat Baldi’s cooking on three occasions. The first was in his restaurant when the first two courses were entirely fish: an individual pie topped with anchovies and served with a fennel and orange salad, and an Italian version of a Russian coulibiac, with sea bass, spinach and mushrooms.
The second and third occasions were in a friend’s house nearby that was at least 500 years old and contained an enormous bread oven that was lit with vast quantities of wood and vine cuttings at about 5 pm the Saturday night. In this, Baldi was to cook a gran pezzo of beef in the evening and then, in the embers. pizzas for our lunch the following day. (Gran pezzo, distinct from bistecca fiorentina, is a large piece of beef cut from the rib-eye). I had to ask him: which meal did he enjoy cooking the most and which was the most difficult?
‘Well’, came the reply on the Saturday, ‘I am from Naples so I enjoy cooking fish and vegetables more than anything else and we get excellent fish here from Porto Santo Stefano [on the Tuscan coast]. As to which is more difficult, it has to be tonight’s meal as the first course is a risotto with Swiss chard, and you have to watch a risotto all the time.’
That from a man who can cook a risotto much better than I can and probably with his eyes firmly shut.
In Vino Veritas Via dei Cimatori 18r, Florence, Italy; tel: +39 (0)553 3896570
Osteria Le Panzanelle Località Lucarelli 29, 53017 Radda in Chianti, Italy; tel: +39 (0)577 733511
Enoteca Baldi Piazza Gastone Bucciarelli, 25, 50022 Panzano in Chianti, Italy; tel: +39 (0)558 52843
Come back next Friday and Saturday for Jancis’s report on Tuscan wines tasted over this three-day weekend.
