Enoteca Pinchiorri - Florence
Old-school dining room with “modern” light fixtures
Rating: 17/20
Where: Florence, Italy
When: Dinner for 2 on 20 September 2022
Cost: Tasting menu 250-290 Euro, Wine Pairing 200-6000 Euro
Accolades: 3 Michelin Stars
Why: Mostly traditional Italian cuisine, very well executed; extensive and expensive wine list
Enoteca Pinchiorri is located in downtown Florence, only a short walk from the city's iconic Duomo. The restaurant's building is shared with a hotel, which might explain the Escher-esque layout of the place. An infinitude of staircases leads to multiple dining rooms. It might be a good idea to leave a trail of breadcrumbs when visiting the bathroom, lest one gets lost on the way back. Our dining room had six tables with two people each, an old-school decor with classical paintings on the wall, and modern (well, modern in the 1990s) light fixtures on the ceiling.
We were offered a choice between two tasting menus, one of them vegetarian, and an a la carte menu. We opted for the non-vegetarian tasting menu, but it was a tough choice - both looked great. Next, we had to navigate a water menu, for your H2O needs if Acqua Panna just won’t do. Maybe there is an audience to this kind of gimmick, but I’m not in it.
Selecting a wine can be adventurous at this restaurant. Supposedly there are over 100,000 bottles in the cellar, and selections for famous labels go back almost 100 years - with astronomical prices to match. Several wine pairings were offered as well, differentiated by their price and numbers of glasses served. The cheapest (but by no means cheap) wine pairing started at 200 Euro for three glasses of wine, the most expensive one cost around 1000 Euro per glass with up to six glasses. In addition, at least two people have to partake in any wine pairing, so receiving a substantial wine bill is almost a given. My dining companion (aka my mother) was not drinking that night, so the sommelier generously made an exception, and I ordered the aforementioned "cheapest" wine pairing. The wines were actually pretty good and went well with the food, but the price still seemed a bit steep for what I got.
On to the food. A simple cracker with black pepper and olive oil was served with our aperitif. Mostly harmless, to quote Douglas Adams 14.
Three amuse bouches followed (no pictures). A tartlet with beetroot mousse had some nice acidity (probably vinegar), but it was a bit too sweet and the tartlet felt both too thick and not entirely fresh 14. A piece of nougat - some salted nuts between wafers - was nicely smoky, but otherwise just ok 14. Finally, a jelly of kiwis and cucumbers was served with capers on top. Very light, it tasted mostly of cucumber with a bit of texture from the herbs that were also present 14. A decent, but not too auspicious beginning to our meal.
A single breadstick with a lovely crunch 17, and an uninspiring white bread 13 were served before the first course. No butter or oil in sight, so we used the bread only to sop up sauces, for which it was indeed perfect. Later, we were also served a "brown" bread (that looked pretty white to me still) 14 and a lovely foccaccia 14. All of the breads were served cold.
Our first course was raw cuttlefish in a parmesan sauce topped with fermented lemon powder. The squid was excellent - soft, not chewy at all -, and I loved the milky, creamy sauce. The flavors here were not very intense, but the combination of cheese and squid worked surprisingly well. After a few false starts over the past days (here and here), it was nice to eat a "normal" dish again 17 (my mom would have rated this an 18).
A roasted ravioli filled with escarole came next. It was surrounded by a herring foam and topped with a powder of bottarga. Similar in texture to a potsticker, this was an excellent dish with a creamy, fishy sauce, and no bitterness at all from the escarole 18.
Next we received a dish of juniper scented lobster on top of a lobster sauce made with bergamot, almonds and olive oil. Also present was a piece of pink pickled eggplant. The lobster was perfectly cooked and seasoned, the pickle providing a nice contrast in acidity, and the sauce was excellent as well. The highlight of the dinner for me 18+.
The second pasta dish of the evening was pappardelle with a saffron cream, silver fir extract, oyster pesto and fish liver. Probably the latter made this dish a bit bitter and quite fishy. For me, the pasta could have been cooked a tad more al dente 17 (19 from my mom).
Snails were served with herbs, snow peas, coconut milk and a slightly spicy avocado. This dish was very nicely flavored, but still could have used a bit more oomph (in hindsight, I should have added some salt) - serving it warmer than lukewarm would have been nice as well. I was a bit apprehensive about the coconut milk in this dish, but it was integrated perfectly, if I hadn't know it was there, I probably wouldn't even have noticed 17 (another 19 from the other side of the table).
The final savory course: suckling pig cooked on a spit, served with an eel sauce, and topped by a leaf of purple cabbage and a single peppercorn. Underneath these were a juice of rocket salad and a beet extract. The piglet was cooked perfectly, with crackling skin and tender meat. I also loved the pepper and pickled cabbage on top. The eel sauce made the dish seem a bit like a vitello tonnato - overall I liked it a lot but didn't love it 17.
An interesting transition to the sweet part of the menu followed: a sauce of chicken, rabbit and deer garnished with dollops of other sauces - apricot and rocket salad among them. The dish was served with a warm and slightly sweet bread bread containing apricots, plums and cacao. A savory, umami-full, but thankfully not gamy dish - for me personally it was a bit too earthy and flavor-muddled 14, but it would have received at 17 from my dining companion.
The first dessert was a "meringue" with rosemary and sitting on a jelly of rose tea. We detected some raspberry as well. In reality, this dish was actually more similar to an ice cream than a meringue. This ice cream was good, but I didn't care much for the rose jelly (rose not exactly being my favorite ingredient), but admittedly the dish grew on me over the course of the course (so to speak) 15.
The next dish featured some real meringue. A tartlet was made from a biscuit, lemon sherbet and an Italian meringue. The taste here was classical, just as in a really good patisserie. Then again, also not better or different from what said patisserie would create 16 (19 from my dining companion).
Some petit fours followed: a knotted passion fruit marshmallow was lovely 18, a carrot cake nicely nutty 17 (20 from my dining companion - I admit that I'm not a big fan of carrot cake), a chocolate praline with a liquid nut filling had less nut flavor than I expected or hoped for 15. And a few nice enough chocolates were served with coffee 17.
We really enjoyed this meal. Going into the dinner, I was worried about the Tripadvisor reviews that rated this restaurant either one or five stars with hardly anything inbetween. In particular the wine program was considered a ripoff, but inedible food was mentioned as well. After a few more avant-garde dinners on the preceding nights, I was actually happy to encounter relatively "normal" food. All dishes were very well executed and delicious. Is this three stars? Maybe not, since nothing stood out as truly exceptional. But it was a great dinner nonetheless.
The service was also very good, the sommelier topping off wines and seeming interested in serving wines that were enjoyable and matched the food. But the best single service experience was our server who deliberated slowed down his recitations of the dishes’ ingredients so that I could take accurate notes - he essentially dictated them to me. In all my time of taking notes on dishes, this was the first time that anyone actually helped me in that regard (without asking, he just noticed that I had trouble keeping up).
Overall: A very good, classic Italian dinner with some nice wines and excellent service. No kitchen wizardry here, just straight-forward good cooking. Unfortunately, there were no real standout, three-star level dishes, but I'll take solid, dependable cooking over “trying too hard” any day 17.
