All'Antico Vinaio — Restaurant in Florence

I will start by mentioning that I have been eating at All'antico Vinaio for a long time before the places in Florence became famous and the food was always great, it is the same at the place that they have at Santa Maria Novella Train Station in Florence but this is where the similarities end, every single time I went to any of their other places, the one in Milan included, the service was always impeccable, people were smiling and were very nice. There is one exception, the place at SMN Train Station in Florence, there is a guy there, presumably the Security guy, slimy hair, walks with his chest up as if he owned the place, and this guy allows people to skip the line, and believe me there is quite the line, when I asked him why is he doing this he replied that those people were working and that is the rule ( I was also working and during my lunch break but did not skip the line). As if this was not enough he also said that if I don't like it I can go and eat somewhere else (maybe he really owns the place and does not care about losing money) when people heard these things 3 of them actually left the line as he was very rude. Due to my line of work I get to give advice to tourists and I have always suggested All'antico Vinaio but I would avoid this particular location. I hope that Marco the owner will be able to give some training to the staff...

Such a shame to write this as I have been a fan and semi-regular customer at Antico Vinaio for years, mostly in Via dei Neri but also near San Marco (and both are still good, if incredibly busy). Unfortunately the AV in SMN just further proves the maxim that standards drop the larger a company becomes.

Food: I got a schiacciata (which was still good quality as always) with mortadella, stracciatella and crema di pistacchio. It was pretty bland, and there was almost no flavour of pistacchio at all. Very disappointing considering how good we all know AV usually is.

Service: The young girl at the counter was really nice, but there were 2/3 guys that even after the order came through to make a couple of schiacciate just stood there chatting, making no effort to actually do anything and clearly didn’t care about the impression they gave, so they left it all to one guy to sort out. I even heard several of the other customers mention this, so I clearly wasn’t the only one to think this.

Ambience: It’s alright, but you’re in a train station at the end of the day.

I will surely visit any of the other AV, but not come back here. Standards have dropped, the brand’s reputation is being damaged and intervention is...

We just had the WORST experience at this location. We couldn’t even order the sandwich, and we had to leave because of the “security” guy (a big guy, probably in his 60s). I just entered the store and went to look at the menu before ordering, and he started yelling at me in a very aggressive way and treating me like a criminal. We tried to understand why we couldn’t look at the menu, and he started yelling in Italian and getting closer and closer to us to try to intimidate us. The worst experience we have had since arriving in Italy. I will never eat at this place again in any of their locations. After reading the reviews, it looks like many people had the same experience with this guy. I don’t understand how he still works there…...