Italian wine and food is not only pasta, pizza and wine in a straw basket
There are many good restaurants in Tuscany, anything and everything from starred gourmet restaurants to the simplest taverna and wine bar. Here are a few suggestions among our favourites.
Even if most people are familiar with the round bottle in a straw basket it is mostly a myth today. The bottle, called a fiasco in Italian, is said to be the origin of the expression that something is a fiasco – a failure. If that is true or not I don’t know. But I do know that if you buy a fiasco bottle today it is quite likely that the wine inside will be a fiasco.
If you travel to Tuscany and want to find a restaurant with fiasci on its wine list you will be looking for a long time, unless you go to a very touristy place.
There are of course plenty of exciting and excellent restaurants in Tuscany both in the big cities, Florence and Siena, that attracts hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of travellers every year, or stay in one of the small towns, like for instance the charming town of Pienza, where we often stay on our wine tours.
Our first recommendation to anyone who travels in around in the Tuscan vineyards is to look for restaurants that are at leas a few hundred metres away from the biggest tourist attractions, like the Piazza del Campo in Siena or the Duomo in Florence.
Here are some of our restaurant recommendations (and wine bars) that you might find useful if you are planning a trip, be it a wine and food tour or just plain vanilla vacation, to Tuscany:
- Le Carceri, Florens
- Enoteca Italiana, Siena
- La Taverna di Cecco, Siena
- La Beppa Fioraia, Florens
- Enoteca Fuori Porta, Florens
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You can read more about all these restaurants on BKWine Magazine under Home – Reviews – Restaurants & Wine Bars – Italy Eats.
You will soon find more restaurant reviews under that menu heading. Do spend some time browsing the menus also, on BKWine Magazine that is, not in the restaurants. You will find plenty of interesting reading there.
Do you have some other suggestions for good restaurants in Tuscany? Write a comment below and tell us which are the ones that you like the best!
BKWine organises several wine tours to Chianti Classico and Tuscany this year, both on our scheduled published wine tour programs and as custom made travel. On our English scheduled program we have a wine tour to Tuscany with Chianti Classico in the autumn. In addition to numerous winery visits, this tour also includes half a day of hands on cooking where we learn how to make some of the Tuscan gastronomic specialities.
