Jay Rayner on restaurantsFoodReviewThere’s so much to enjoy in this most beautiful city, but little to match this glorious slab of meat
Regina Bistecca, Via Ricasoli 14r, Florence 50122, Italy (+39 055 269 3772; reginabistecca.com). Starters €8-€14, main courses €15-€29, T-bone steaks for two to share €60-€90, wines from €23
Dusk falls in Florence at the end of another oven-baked day and from dozens of apparently identical trattorias, crisp-shirted waiters step. Behind them, in chilled glass cabinets, stand the curving waves of amber-fatted beef, with muscle the colour of plum. Their job is to get you through the door. They want you to spend the big money on a steak the size of your head. But whose call should you heed?
Charcoal grilled to a thrilling shade of rust and brown, the steak is placed on the table so we can worshipFlorence, which I’ve been visiting for more than 35 years, is a city besotted by its past. I set my first novel here, and wrote most of it here, too, in a room overlooking the waters of the Arno. It made me feel like a proper writer. The book was an ambitious little number about art history and the market in expertise, which is what Florence has traded on since Vasari first published The Lives of the Artists in 1550. I spent my mornings wandering galleries, staring at masterpieces and attempting to have profound, writerly thoughts.
Being belly-led, however, I was easily distracted. I soon found Florence had other things to recommend it: the deep, peppery way with tripe, long-stewed in a tomato broth; the porchetta buns sold in the covered market, the robust loaves first dipped in vats of meaty juices to soften them up; the pasta dishes and the gelato (ice-cream doesn’t quite do it justice). And, of course, the bistecca alla Fiorentina.
For years I avoided the latter. I loved the idea of a prime T-bone from a lovingly reared animal, with which the callus-handed Tuscan farmer had been on first-name terms, but I was terrified of getting a dud. It’s exactly what happened the first time I ordered one, in some gaudy trattoria close to the Ponte Vecchio. I was in prime tourist territory; I got a tourist’s steak. It was a tough, stringy lump of neglected meat. It was a terrible waste both of cash and animal.
It’s not an unfamiliar story: where do you go for the best paella in Valencia or the best bouillabaisse in Marseille? How do we, as tourists, pile through the rip-offs and the ersatz and the come-hithers to the good stuff? Where Florence and its T-bone are concerned, let me help. I was directed to the relatively new Regina Bistecca – literally Queen Steak – and I, in turn, am directing you there. They served me one of the very best slabs of beef I have ever eaten. Others will have their favourites; this is now mine.
It occupies what was, for 140 years, the antiquarian bookseller Gonnelli, just behind the duomo. At the front, overlooking the bar, they have kept the gallery with its bookshelves now filled with wine bottles. Beyond, in an arched space, painted a cooling shade of olive green, is the main dining room. Get a table towards the back and you may be able to see the grill at work, flames gusting upwards just beyond the kitchen’s glass wall.
The menu keeps to the Florentine classics. Offal, or the “fifth quarter”, is represented by ox tongue with salsa verde, or a salad of tripe. There are bruschetta and pasta dishes. There are salamis and cheeses from nearby. A plate of Calabrian salted anchovies arrives and, with it, warm toast with curls of unsalted butter on ice. It is one of the few occasions when unsalted butter makes sense. Spread the chilled butter thickly and add the meaty anchovies. It’s bliss on toast. We also have crudités, ribbons of fennel, celery and carrot cut just so, to be dipped into balsamic vinegar and peppery olive oil.
We have ordered lightly. We intend to do justice to the main event. There are three breeds of beef here, from Scottish Black Angus at €4.90 per 100g to the local Chianina at €8.20. We are directed to the one in between, the equally local Marchigiana at €6.80. The restaurant manager, Marco, spent years in London, latterly at Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen, and returned only a few months ago. He knows how to chat up a Londoner. He tells us the Marchigiana is fattier than the more expensive cut and therefore less tough. To prove it, he brings the 1kg steaks tableside, so we can coo over the marbling like proper beef pervs.
Let me address those who are repulsed: some of us eat meat. That’s something you will have to cope with. But if you’re going to eat beef, it should be rarely and the very best you can afford, from well-cared-for animals. Those who want to lecture me are welcome to do so. Carry on. I will then sit in the corner and think very seriously about my life choices, perhaps for much of next week.
The Florentines generally ask for their steaks cooked to a rareness from which it might be possible to detect a pulse. Don’t be afraid to ask for yours a little better done. It’s your dinner. Their medium-rare is our rare. It returns, half an hour later, charcoal grilled to a thrilling shade of rust and brown. It is sliced up, seasoned with salt and pepper and olive oil and placed on a pedestal on the table between us so we can worship. Then we eat.
There is a ripe minerality to the meat, and a crispness to the fat that crunches and melts. There are frazzled bits along the bone that we shall not let escape. We cut them off with our knives in long ribbons of finely caramelised beef. There are no gristly bits to be left discreetly on the side of the plate. It is all deeply flavoured and encouraging. It’s bloody gorgeous, in both senses. The various sauces – the peppercorn, the tarragon-laced béarnaise, the butter flecked with chives – makes this feel like a Tuscan steak house which has passed through New York or London on its holidays, and to good effect. It is the steak you wish for but so rarely get. Alongside we have a simple rocket salad and a bowl of Florentine “roast potatoes”, which are the usual disappointing pallid cubes.
Don’t worry. For carbs there is an old-school dessert trolley, with profiteroles or cheesecake or a torta della nonna filled with crème pâtissière, if you can find the space. There’s some of Chianti’s finest at unthreatening prices. Most of all there is the gentle buzz of a dining room filled with people, content that they have found their way to the right place. If you’re ever in Florence, please do join them. You’ll thank me.
News bites
If you’re in Florence during the summer you’ll need to cool down, possibly three times a day, and its gelato bars are the solution. I first went to the Festival del Gelato on Via del Corso in 1982, and I keep going back. The fruity end of the counter is, for me, where the action is; there’s nothing better engineered to sort you out when it’s 40C than a €2.50 tub of properly sharp lemon sorbet. But there are dozens to choose from including vegan options.
On 28 September Leicester’s National Space Centre is partnering with the RNIB for a five-course dinner completely in the dark. The £70 ticket price, in aid of the RNIB, includes an unsighted tour of the National Space Centre, intended to investigate the impact of site loss on other senses. All waiters will be visually impaired and while dietary requirements will be catered for the menu will be a surprise (spacecentre.co.uk).
Bundobost, which partners Guajarati vegetarian food and craft beers, is to open a second branch in Manchester. The 120-cover restaurant will also have space for a large in-house brewery capable of producing over 2,5000 pints of beer a month (bundobust.com).
Jay Rayner’s book My Last Supper: One Meal, a Lifetime in the Making is published by Guardian Faber on 5 September at £16.99, buy it from the Guardian Bookshop at £11.99. The premiere of the accompanying live show, My Last Supper, in association with Guardian Live, is at Cadogan Hall, London SW1, on 9 September. For tickets and information on other dates around the UK visit jayrayner.co.uk
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
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