Tastes of Tuscany

Both nights that we ate out in Florence, we ate at the sidewalk restaurant, Za Za. It is perched on a corner of the square which houses the huge glass-roofed food market. This market, in turn, is surrounded by the umbrella-ed stalls of merchants of every description. Firenza must be the leather capital of the world. There were more booths selling leather than booths selling T-shirts, scarves, jewellery, trinkets, etc. put together!

The restaurant was busy (a good sign). The street was busy. The market was chaotic and the atmosphere electric!! Za Za has an extensive menu of meat and seafood. One of the specialties of the area is very large thick steaks from certain cattle in the region. We inquired about the dish. You had to order a minimum of 800g and the price was €38.00. I couldn't begin to imagine eating almost two pounds of steak, even if it is served ultra rare!!

I opted for the smaller entrecôte with roasted rosemary potatoes and spinach. What was totally amazing though was my appetizer. I ordered the Antipasto for one at €10.00 and this is what I got.

Mushroom & tomato toasts.

There were also two deep fried veal "balls" on the plate, but they were devoured before I could even find my camera.

Cold Meat & Fried Eggplant

I shared every plate even though all of us had starters.

Small Omelette Starter

This I cut into four wedges!

Two Pates

One of the pates was liver and the other was mushroom. Everyone dipped in.

Marinated Artchoke

Actually my husband and I were planning to split the two appetizers that we ordered. Mine was so massive that we all had some, but I still made room for my share of the plate of artichokes. No wonder I gained five pounds!!

It was a wonderful trip!!  We're home now. I'm just catching up on the missed posts because of the lack of wifi. I'll do an overall summary tomorrow and then it's back to reality.