Mamma Napoli By Cellini — Restaurant in Florence

Prepare to be booted off your table if they have a “reservation” and you paid your bill. Not only was my main rather disappointing as my Calzone Napoli was basically mozzarella and spinach in a fried base. Along with that disappointment which I was not prepared to complain about at the time due to my lack of Italian linguistic skills. We paid the bill and planned to finish our drinks before walking home. I finished mine fairly quickly….. my partner was slowly finishing his off… not 5 mins had passed from us rejecting the idea of pudding and or a limoncello and paying the bill but we were asked to move due to them having a reservation. Now I moved without complaint which was my fault. However I am astonished for these reasons:

1. We were not warned 15 mins prior to there being any form of reservation.
2. There was a table already free.
3. They had just asked and tried to convince us to have something extra mins before the booking showed up.

The reason I am giving them 2 stars instead of 1 was because my other half actually had a decent main. But my main not meeting my standard and being kicked off the table with little to no warning was unacceptable. We were barely at the restaurant an hour in total.

Not usually one to complain… nor am I usually one to pay attention to bad reviews. Not sure what they would have done had we still been eating pudding when the “reservation” showed up.

just to add been a few hours since my meal...

DON’T GET THE CHICKEN WITH LEMON. We had the potato pasta which was good and it was a nice “surprise pasta” he recommended. Wish I had got the same. I decided to get the Chicken with Lemon. It was a white, bland, and hard. Look terrible, but the service was good. The guy had a good and friendly attitude. The food however was alright at best. The bread was dry and stale. I asked about exchanging my chicken for the pasta. I had already ate it but since I was with company I didn’t wanna make a big deal about it. I said I would still pay for the chicken but since the chicken was terrible instead of taking it off the bill if I could just get the exchanged pasta for less. Since all the chicken was a thin breast that was pure white and flavorless. When I stepped to the side to ask about it he wasn’t as friendly. He kept asking why I didn’t like it even after I said my reasons, then proceeded to say he didn’t understand why I would want the pasta instead. Then he avoided me for the rest of the dinner. We ordered tiramisu it was bad. It came in a cup. Coco on top and what tastes like the bottom of a coffee pot on the bottom. Then when we were done we asked for a coffee to go and he gave us it double cupped in plastic. The plastic was melting I couldn’t even separate the cups. I really wanted to like this place but so much kept going...

Trying to get our bearings in Florence, we checked for a restaurant. Trattoria ZaZa popped up on Google Maps, so we hustled the seven blocks for our first meal in Florence. I’m sure the food is great, but the line was long and we didn’t have a reservation.

Mama Napoli by Cellini was open with no waiting and just across the market square. Everything was fantastic. The meal kicked off with a bruschetta on a crisp-on-the-outside-soft-on-the-inside slab of coarse bread. It was topped with a perfect combo of tomatoes and garlic. Crunchy. Chewy. Savory.

The entree was a mouthful in every sense. I had Capello de Pasta e Patate con Scamorza e Guanciale. It’s a noodley type pasta with scamorza cheese, a little sharper and creamier than mozzarella and plays well with the ham and the restaurant’s friend, patata: the humble and versatile potato. They make surprisingly good use of the tuber in several of their dishes.

This creamy delight is presented in a thinly rolled and baked pizza crust. It’s as scrumptious as it is creative. It’s a heavy dish, but worth the weight.

Top it off with their world class tiramisu and afterwards a digestive limoncello....