Alfani 149 Restaurant — Restaurant in Florence

After several days of eating Italian food, we came here to have something Chinese to rebalance our palates.

We ordered four dishes: a tomato and egg soup, stir-fried cabbage, fried Bee Hoon, and sweet and sour pork.

Of these four, we liked the stir-fried cabbage the best. Just that it was too oily. It is good to tell the serving staff to reduce the oil in all the dishes you have ordered. The soup missed the mark on taste because the taste of the tomatoes couldn’t come through in the soup. So, it is more like an egg-based soup with the tomatoes served as decorations. The fried Boon Hoon could do better without the hard fried fritters getting in the way, and the sweet and sour pork tasted more like deep fried meat drenched in A1 tomato sauce.

So food-wise, the taste needs improvement, especially when the Chef has more time to prepare the dishes for an almost empty restaurant. For these, I am giving the restaurant only 2 stars.

Service-wise, it is okay. The serving staff was responsive, but was not making any kind of recommendations; just responding to our questions and need for clarifications about the items in the menu. For this, I am giving the service we have received only 2 stars. So, on average, for taste and service, the restaurant will get 2 stars from me.

All in all, this place is a nice change go us in this trip. The staff is Chinese speaking and there are some Chinese speaking patrons dining at the restaurant, which made things homey for us. For this, I will give a bonus star.

So, it is 3 stars for the Alfani...

I had my skepticism about eating at a Chinese restaurant in Florence, I'll admit it. However, this one was run by Chinese people (they speak Mandarin as well as some English and Italian), so most of the food was pretty traditional rather than the more Westernized, takeout type of Chinese food. We ordered a West Lake beef soup, pork ribs, rice noodles, soup noodles with beef, and fish with pickled vegetables. We also ordered the green tea, which came with roses in each cup. The presentation of the foods looked pretty nice, and the taste was pretty good except most of the food was pretty oily. However, this can be the norm for Asian restaurants. The food came pretty quickly, but towards the end while we were trying to get the server's attention to get the bill or ask them where to pay, it was impossible. I would chalk it up to the fact that service was winding down and some of the servers were sitting down to their own meal, but we sat their trying to get their attention for...

Wow! Why doesn't this place get even better reviews?! We are a group of Chinese American/Korean family from NYC and we were blown away by how delicious everything was here. Totally underrated for sure. The service was also so friendly.

We ordered a bunch of dishes and honestly don't remember the name to everything but everything was so well prepared with very good portions and the price was beyond reasonable. They so offer beer and house wine here and wow! The glass of red wine had such a generous pour!

We ordered the spicy cauliflower, string beans, spicy fish fillet in hot spicy oil, and some vegetable noodles. And wow the flavors were amazingly good. A bit spicy so be careful. The only thing we didn't enjoy as much was the scallion chicken.

The owners here were all so friendly to us. We had to make it to Uffizi on time in under an hour, and they were more than happy to accommodate too.

Overall great food and great service and great price. It does not get...