Porcavacca — Restaurant in Arezzo

1 Australian and 1 Frenchie, you can imagine we are from different worlds and we both agree this place is AWESOME. This restaurant was recommended to us by our host, Fabio of Sweet Tuscany accommodation, GRAZIE! If you're a tourist you'll never find it. It's not in the touristy area of Arezzo, it's tucked away in a local area, however has a gorgeous large terrace beautifully decorated and I recommend if you're a film maker this is a great backdrop for a scene set in Italy. The food, we ate everything from pasta to 1,2kg of meat (we chose it over the 1,7kg), but go for it, get the largest piece, the meat quality is excellent and very easy to chew and digest. It's like butter. And tasty, very tasty. And the using of olive oil over the meat after grilling and slicing, WOW excellent idea! We have come back to France and we're adopting the olive oil method (no more Bearnaise sauce!). We are so coming back to your restaurant. I am prepared to go...

We came here very excited to try the famed fiorentina. Unfortunately, man in the picture is extremely anti-American. He told me the steak would cost 500 euros. We attempted to clarify several times, even using Google Translate, because it said 50 euro/kg on the menu and we were not asking for a 10kg steak. He insisted that the fillet was the right amount of meat for my table.

In total, we ordered a bottle of wine, the Tuscan sampler antipasto, the duck ragu, and the fillet. The wine and the sampler came right away, but 90 minutes later literally every table around us was eating fiorentina (some tables had 2 or 3 of them) and we still didn’t have even the pasta. We ended up closing our tab early and leaving.

This place has a great reputation and it looked like you would get wonderful service if you are anything other...

When we walked up to the empty restaurant and asked the waitress if they had a table for 4, she said "I'll go ask" but then wandered off to set tables and polish wine glasses without asking anyone anything. This kind of set the tone for the evening. Eventually an older man saw us just standing there and gave us a table. The food (schlepped to the outside area from the actual restaurant by a man with a giant very heavy looking tray) was very average. My daughter had tortelli with truffles and they were just tortelli with a bunch of cream dumped on top and some truffle shavings. I had baby back ribs that were extremely salty and too dry. My husband's hamburger was ok but the bun was slightly stale. Service was purfunctory, prices relatively high and music kind...