La Capannina Bistrot — Restaurant in Florence

We spent like the year before (rome and campania) a two week holiday in Italy this time sardegna and tuscany. In sardegna we had reasonable food (excellent pizza, miramare alghero). In florence we stayed in a fine hotel a few streets from the trainstation at the mercato centrale area. There you can find plenty of tourist shops and tourist orientated restaurants. 10 meters across our hotel we spotted, la campaninna or the shed in english. It was crowded and from the window we saw a live cooking spectacle. On monday we decided to go eat...unfortunately it was closed..so because our kids were hungry We went further down the street...with ok tourist food.

On tuesday we returned, and though there was a small crowd we decided to wait....in napels we did the same with a Michelin guide mentioned restaurant and this was quite dissapointing in the end......however la capaninna...was defintely well worth the wait. With a fantastic host and a perfect Chef from Calabria. The food was excellent, made with love huge portions. I would recommend the risotto with funghi and the tagliata di manza with rucola!!!! But i could continue.....a real roman carbonara or amatriciana.....la capaninna has it....and in my opinion if, since i am an italy addict....you want the most simple dish like the spaghetti al pomodoro tickle your senses...la capaninna is the place to be!!!! The shed feels and is home made like your fictitious italian grandma or in this case grandpa would make it. The next day we returned and la capaninna showed it was not a "one trick pony", again a perfect 10. Next time florence, this will be the place to be...again

In short: Prices are honest Portions are xxl Taste is....come a casa

Thumbs up for la capaninna!

Cordiale saluti di ruud gullit, seedorf rijkaard e bryan roy...ti...

I really wanted to love this place. It's a small place, with maybe 10 tables, and I think it could easily get 5 stars, but I'm giving it 3 because they have some room to improve. First, I absolutely loved the spaghetti all'arrabbiata. It was the first properly spicy dish I ate in Italy. Nice portion sizes. That being said, what they call spaghetti alla Bolognese is absolutely not spaghetti alla Bolognese. It just a pomodoro with meat, and they're not the same. It's good, but it's not Bolognese. The second thing is, they forgot my secondi piatti chicken dish. After like 20 minutes of sitting there, the server came up and asked if we wanted coffee. We replied that no, we wanted our chicken dish. Their faces fell. They had forgotten. I can forgive all that, and they turned it out quickly, but I can't forgive the fact that when it arrived, the thickest part of the cutlet was a hair undercooked. That's not ok. The other issue was, when the cook came back from running out the trash, he went back to his pans without washing his hands. Also not ok. So, some pros and some cons. I wouldn't discourage anyone from stopping here for dinner, but be aware, there is room for...

WOW! You see many restaurants nearby with long lines and waits but don’t be fooled this is the spot you have to go to…. We came here our first night in Firenze for dinner and the service and food were so amazing I couldn’t stop talking about it the entire next day. We only stayed in Firenze for 3 nights and we had to come back for our last night as well. I have worked in restaurants for 10 years and my boyfriend is a classically French trained chef and we both can agree this has been our favorite meal since coming to Europe after traveling through both Spain and France. This is a classic family run restaurant in the heart of Firenze and an absolute can’t miss. The chef Antonio obviously takes pride in what he serves and puts his love on the plate. We had carbonara and the beef and rocket salad dish both times (we also had the bolognese the first night but were both so full that we decided on sharing only 2 dishes the second time) and I would highly recommend both of them. If you want an unpretentious mom and pop shop this is the place for you. 5...