Il Gatto e la Volpe | Florence — Restaurant in Florence

Dining Should Be an Experience — This One Fell Short In my view, dining out should be an experience, shaped by three main elements: the environment, the food, and the service — with food and service carrying the most weight. Here's how this particular visit measured up: Environment: The setting was cozy and pleasant. There weren't too many tables, and they were spaced out decently, which allowed for a comfortable atmosphere. Food: The food was just okay — nothing remarkable. We tried one starter, two mains and a dessert, and none of the dishes stood out. Given that this was an Italian restaurant, I expected a bit more, especially from the tiramisu, which was underwhelming. On the bright side, the prices were fair, especially considering the location near the city center, where overpricing is often the norm. Service: Unfortunately, this was the most disappointing part of the evening. There appeared to be three waiters, and honestly, two of them gave the impression they’d been pulled off the street an hour before and handed aprons. There were only four tables in our section, serving around ten people in total. My wife and I ordered one starter, two mains, and a bottle of wine. The wine was forgotten entirely until I reminded the staff. What followed was a scene — one waiter visibly searching for the bottle, then loudly arguing with another, presumably about the mistake. When the wine finally arrived, the waiter poured for me first, then my wife, without offering a taste or showing any basic knowledge of wine service etiquette. The courses were not timed properly either. My wife’s main arrived well before mine, which should never happen in a coordinated service. At the table next to ours, orders were mixed up, and their starter and main arrived simultaneously. When that table ordered a Chardonnay, the waiter simply replied, “We don’t have it,” and when asked for a recommendation, shrugged and said, “I don’t drink, so I can’t help.” To make matters worse, the staff seemed unaware of the wines on their own list. By chance, I noticed they charged the same price for a 2019 Chianti Gran Riserva as they did for a 2022 — a great deal for me, but a clear sign they lack even basic wine knowledge. In a country like Italy, the world’s top wine producer, that’s...

This restaurant was recommended to us by our Airbnb host, so we were looking forward to dining here. This was my second time eating Florentine steak and my boyfriend’s first.

We were able to walk in on a Saturday evening without a reservation. I was unsure if we were able to walk in since I heard a lot of restaurants in Florence get booked out for dinner due to advance reservations, especially on the weekends!

We ordered the steak tartare as an appetizer, the Florentine steak (1.3 kg minimum), and a side of potatoes.

Overall, the flavors were good, but we had a bit of an odd experience with the steak.

We ordered the Florentine steak medium rare. It looked and smelled delicious when the server brought it out. It also looked already medium rare. After she cut it up at the table, however, she put the steak on a sizzling hot plate!!! We were appalled since the steak was going to be cooked more and was not going to be medium rare any more! I don’t recall that happening my first time eating Florentine steak at another restaurant. The flavor of the steak was great, but unfortunately, it was just too overcooked for us since it was cooked longer on the hot plate.

Steak tartare and potatoes were good. No issues there.

Ambiance was decent.

Service was alright as well, although now in retrospect, I’m wondering if the server who took our order perhaps made an error when she entered our steak order? I say that because when the server asked us how we wanted our steak cooked, we said medium rare but she repeated back medium. Then it didn’t seem like she fully comprehended the term medium rare when we tried to correct her. It seemed like it was a language issue. She eventually did confirm we wanted our steak medium rare though, so I’m unsure if our order was actually placed correctly.

In summary, our food was good minus our star entree being overcooked. If it had been a side that was overcooked, I wouldn’t have minded as much, but it was the Florentine steak, which was the most expensive item we ordered and one of the reasons we chose this restaurant. I’d like to give this restaurant another go, but honestly, if they’re going to overcook our steak again, then it’s not worth it. A...

Woooof this was a bad one folks. I haven’t ever left a negative review on google, so here goes my first:

-we made a reservation, confirmed via multiple what’s app texts, and they had no idea who we were when we showed up -we were sat in a back area that was very bright, and after asking to be moved to the much nicer dining room were told ‘no’ because it was for reservations. We also asked to dim the lights but weren’t acknowledged. -this is minor but annoying - they hadn’t upgraded Spotify so we were listening to ads the whole time we were there -service started out very slow; think: 30 mins to simply get wine and bread. We asked multiple times before it arrived too -we waited forever to order mains as well, and tried to flag down the servers multiple times but were ignored -when we went to order mains, we were told they were out of pici; we’d specially chosen this place because so much of their menu is pici and we were excited for our final dinner in Tuscany to be pici as it’s a typical food there. Also, we were the first seating of the night so being out felt a bit whack -after we ordered food, we waited close to an hour for mains to arrive. In that time, no one came by to offer us more wine (we had clearly finished ours long before), or to just let us know there would be a delay -when the food did arrive, of the 3 dishes we ordered: 1 was missing, 1 was incorrect (an Alfredo instead of a red sauce), and 1 was actually what we had ordered

By the end of all of this we decided to go get pizza elsewhere - I sadly can’t have Alfredo because of a dairy intolerance so I wasn’t able to eat the incorrect dish.

They did end up removing the 2 pastas from our bill, which was appreciated. That’s the one bonus point I...