San Martino 26 Ristorante — Restaurant in San Gimignano

In the beautiful but touristic town of San Gimignano you can find three high level restaurants within 75 meters: Cum Quibus, San Martino 26 and LINFA. This time we chose San Martino. The setting is authentic: the dining takes place under an archaic vault, in an original house with a deep cellar. The atmosphere is somewhat disturbed by low-fi music, played at a rather loud level. Sounds like an old transistor radio. But this is not where we came for. We had the five course menu, with wine accompaniment. The dinner is opened with not less than five amuses, all inspired by traditional Tuscan dishes, but, of course, shrunk to one-bite treats. A very good start, and setting the signature of the kitchen: creativity. In the mean time, we are presented by no less than four very different types of bread. I must say, the denominator 'bread' is much too small to encompass the diversity. The five courses follow each other, I will only point out the highs and lows. Highs were the first course based on lettuce (!), and the last one, with hidden peanuts: again, signs of a creative kitchen. Also memorable were all the very different amuses, including the pre-dessert. We were less pleased with the wines. The first and second courses were accompanied by a sparkling wine and then a complex white, which we found very special. But the rosé in contrast lacked depth and, in general, 'specialty'. The red wine was ok, but again not very special, and we found it rather disappointing to be presented with sauternes with the last course, a rather standard solution while Tuscany has so many high quality vini santi (spelling?). Furthermore, we found the quantity of the wine served at the lower side: 15 sips we will not remember longer than two days for € 50 is not what you would call generous. What we really did like was the personal attention we got from the personnel. The waitress did her best to explain the dishes in English, and no less than three cooks appeared at our table during the evening to see if everything was fine. All in all, the kitchen deserves congratulations for the very creative dishes we savoured. Some of them will be remembered! To get to a still higher level: try to connect the courses and tell us a story with your cuisine. The kitchen deserves a higher level wine pairing, and we think that is possible without getting more expensive. And as a personal note: please upgrade your music...

This is a bit of a tough one to review, as quite honestly the first 2 courses were sublime, the 3rd and 4th were excellent, and somehow the dessert was awful. This was pacing for perhaps our best meal in Italy, up until that dessert.

First off, the service throughout was very nice. Attentive, helpful and with great descriptions of the dishes. They accommodated the kids quite nicely as well, even cooking up some steak per our request.

On to the courses. The amuse bouche included 5 tastes, each quite excellent. I won’t even attempt to describe them, but each was unique and the tasting order was complimentary. The Negroni cocktail ball was spot on and very interesting. I have no idea how they made it, especially being non-alcoholic.

The first course was the lettuce. This was amazing. I always love a chef that can take some simple ingredient and turn it into something so different, you can’t believe what you are eating. Very nice.

Second was a mushroom soup that was again outstanding. So flavorful and creamy, yet somehow not heavy and easy to finish. A beautiful touch.

The third was a risotto with a bit of bell pepper purée layered below to offset the richness and a very light Italian blue cheese on top. It really worked for me.

The main course was lamb cooked a few ways. And overall just perfect. Probably the best lamb dish I can recall having.

Oh, I didn’t mention the significant bread course. Too much to eat but all excellent. What really stood out was the butter spread. Gray in color, it definitely surprised. Made with a white wine reduction and some hay ash for the unique color; it was excellent. If they bottled this, I would buy it.

Ok, on to the problem course. First, before dessert there was a pre-dessert that was just ok. Not bad, but not quite up to the standard set by the other courses. And then the dessert came - it it was one of the worst deserts I have tasted. Perhaps not my taste, but I don’t think so. It was basically sweet banana purée that tasted like baby food topped with a leathery piece of chocolate. Not good! There were more components described, but I didn’t pick them up as the banana purée was so overpowering and sweet. Ugh.

So, in the end a fantastic meal up until that dessert. If I was the chef, I would immediately remove it from the menu. Even a traditional panna cotta would have been...

I have been struggling on how to review this restaurant. The first part of our evening (we took the tasting menu) was absolutely amazing. The staff was friendly and attentive and the food was perfect and creative. We asked for a little break though because the food came quickly. The pasta dish we received afterwards was unfortunately cold (not even lukewarm), it would have been magnificent if it was served warm. The main course after that was delicious but one tiny slice of beef was a bit of a disappointment, although again flavour wise it was amazing. After our break the staff also seemed overly preoccupied with one of the other tables and we felt like they had forgotten us a little bit. When we received our 'petits fours' they did not even explain to us what we were eating. When the bill came we were also surprised to see that they charged 8 euros for a cappuccino and 12 euros for a limoncello, which seemed a bit outrageous in our opinion. I must say that we did enjoy a 25% reduction on our menus, because we are under 35 (we mentioned it when booking the table because we saw it on their website), which of course was nice and we truly appreciated that. They are justifiably proud of what they do and the cook is clearly passionate and talented but all in all the second part of our evening left us feeling a bit cheated and unhappy. That feeling was hard to shake. I truly believe and hope that they will be able to step up and tackle these issues the coming years because this place has so...