Our visit to Florence coming to an end and it’s time to talk about food. For our first meal in Florence, we wanted to eat a local specialty and we had the idea to go for a ride to the markets named Mercato Centrale di San Lorenzo. Outside, many stand outdoors with leather goods, souvenirs and all kinds of ready-to-wear.
But the Mercato Centrale di San Lorenzo is halls dating from the nineteenth century. The building has a beautiful metal frame is not seen immediately. On the ground floor, lots of stalls of fresh produce such as meats, butchers, greengrocers, all in a very popular atmosphere.
As soon as you climb stairs giving access to the floor, the universe is very different. Still fresh product but mostly stands where you can eat baked food on site in a very bohemian atmosphere. It is on this floor you can admire the beautiful metal frame with those huge lights.
We opted for the popular side of the ground floor and as we wanted to try tripe. Unlike my friends, I used to eat tripe because there are some sometimes in Vietnamese cuisine but I’ve never eaten cooked otherwise. We feared eating this local specialty but hey, we also chose our destinations by saying that we will discover the local cuisine when we had to taste.
We stopped at the booth of Trattoria Nerbone. We were attracted by the sweet scent of cooking and the tail was 5 or 6 meters long. We ordered three sandwiches: a tripe, a pork and another I can not remember. The thing is that if staff understand and / or speak English, everything is written in Italian so we had a little trouble deciding. Front of the stand, there are some marble tables where you can sit to enjoy your meal but there were too many people so we took our lunch and ate on the steps of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence.
Going back to our subject, we ordered three sandwiches that we shared if we do not really like to tripe. And so the tripe sandwich was very good. It was cooked with leeks and a great sauce. Unfortunately it is really greasy and I could never finish the sandwich alone. The other 2 were also very good. We also took a salad of tomato and mozzarella and a large bottle of water. The whole thing cost us € 19.50.
