La Buchetta Food & Wine Restaurant — Restaurant in Florence

TLDR; Dictionary Definition of Tourist Trap: overpay for mediocre, if not BAD (and not authentic) food.

So much is obviously wrong that you can only know after going. open all day (for tourists). Before visiting Florence we learned on two separate food tours that Italians eat dinner at 8 or later. Played stereotypical Italian songs “we no speak americano” and others. Not even an extensive playlist either, during our meal we noticed it restart in the same order we initially heard the songs Menu descriptions only in English (except for the authentic Italian dish titles of course) Waiter spoke perfect English, much more so than any waiter we’ve ever had. He then tried to upsell us on getting the two most expensive steaks or just splitting one, and advised we don’t get any appetizer at all and at most split one pasta. They had little notes from past eaters detailing all the walls, and all of them were in english. We looked around and every single table was full of Americans (or people that spoke American English very well) The prices were very crazy. The night before we ate at a good Trattoria with items half the price. Parmesan wheel pasta. Except it was clearly cooked elsewhere in the kitchen as it sat unnaturally in the tiniest Parmesan wheel I’ve ever seen (with a lid?!). They then sprinkled truffle on top and playfully swirled it around a few times before plopping it in your dish, effectively losing truffle flakes in the wheel and melting no cheese into your pasta.

About our the food: for our primi our waiter insisted on getting either the parm wheel pasta, the gnocchi, or the blue cheese ravioli; we got the latter two. I can’t comment on the blue cheese ravioli honestly because I hate blue cheese. But the gnocchi tasted familiar… my partner and I actually stopped eating to think about what the sauce tasted like. After a few frustrating minutes we came to a very definitive conclusion that it tasted like pizza flavored goldfish… no joke whatsoever.

Overall, if you’re looking for a good meal that you can only get in Florence, go...

This restaurant blew our minds and was easily the best meal we had in Florence, which is saying a lot because we ate like royals. We booked a lunch reservation ahead of time for when they opened up. Be sure to book ahead as it quickly filled up (and on a week day too!) Everything looked amazing but our lovely waiter helped us come up with some of our food options and helped with pairing wines to our meals. We started with the mozzarella cheese tasting with cherry tomatoes. This was our first REAL cheese tasting. It was wonderful to try all of the different cheeses, each were fresh and distinct from the others. We then both ordered the gnocchi with pork cheek. Normally we both agree to NEVER order the same entree but after seeing another table eating it we could not say no. The gnocchi was so flavourful and unlike any other gnocchi we'd had before. It was definitely the best gnocchi either of us had ever tasted - we will definitely be going back in the future for this dish alone. It is a MUST TRY. We then had the Florentine steak. Please listen to the waiters when they say to have it rare. We asked for medium rare and it was UNREAL, HOWEVER; our favourite bits were the pieces that were more rare. It was so juicy and tender. Truly a life changing moment (again - would totally go back for this portion alone as well!) It is worth every euro spent! Finally, we had the homemade cheesecake with berries. It was a cheesecake we had never experienced before. It was fluffy and light. Funnily enough we were going to say no to the dessert as we were stuffed but we agreed we'd order it just to have a bite - the cheesecake stood no chance. It too, is a MUST order. After our lovely meal we were given free espressos and free limoncello. We plan to go back as it was one of the best meals of our lives. It is clean, spacious and the waitstaff are all lovely. Definitely recommend going here for a meal or you will have surely missed out on a...

It’s hard to live up to expectations let alone exceed them and La Buchetta just does that. Opened 7 years ago with an extremely friendly and knowledgeable staff you feel both comfort and luxury within this intimate “little hallway” which is what “la buchetta” means in Italian and their origin story. We went for two separate lunches as we had to come back to experience the remained of the menu. There literally wasn’t a si for bad dish. We went for the mozzarella tasting where you taste 4 different types of: mozzarella classic, mozzarella di buffalo, burrata and straciatella it was simply incredible.. Then we moved to the pasta dishes where we went for the gnocchi which our highest expectation and please see in the picture for yourself it was to die for. Next we also ordered the pici special which is a side table prepared pasta in a wheel of peccorino cheese with freshly rasped truffle on top of it. Amazing experience and taste. Lastly pasta wise we had the blue cheese ravioli which was rich but delicious. We unfortunately had no more room for dessert. That was for our first lunch.

Second lunch we ordered the same mozzarella tasting but only with the mozzarella di buffala and the burrata which were our two favorites and they more than met our expectations again. After that my girfriend had the lemon shrimp risotto which was very refreshing and I had the ribeye steak 🥩 (not the bistecca fiorentina because this is a minimum of 1.2kg) which was cooked fiorentina style rare with grand of salt it was to die for really. Around 700 grams for 38 EUR is really a steal. That’s it we loved la buchetta so much and i must acknowledge it was the best restaurant we...