A TAVOLA: Cities That Know How to Eat & Drink - Firenze
Where Even the Wine Has Its Own Window
Florence is famous for Michelangelo, the Duomo, Renaissance art and some of the most beautiful architecture in Italy.
But we're considerably more interested in what happens between the buildings.
The smell of meat simmering in broth. Fresh bread rubbed with garlic. Olive oil so green and peppery it almost bites back. A glass of Chianti poured beside a plate of something that probably hasn't changed much in three hundred years.
And, of course, a Negroni.
Because Florence didn't just help change the w
ay the world looks at art.
It also helped change the way the world drinks.
1. The City That Sold Wine Through Its Walls
Imagine walking through Florence in the 1600s, approaching a grand Renaissance palace and knocking on a tiny wooden door built directly into its stone wall.
A hand appears.
You pass over a few coins.
A flask of wine comes back.
No dining room. No waiter. No reservation.
Just wine, straight through the wall.
These little openings, called buchette del vino, became popular from the 16th century onward, allowing wealthy Florentine families to sell wine from their country estates directly to customers.
During the plague of the 1630s, they also offered a way to conduct transactions with less physical contact.
Some of these remarkable little windows still exist, and a number have returned to serving wine today. Florence City Guide
Four hundred years later, we're still trying to make buying a glass of wine more convenient.
Florence had already figured it out.
2. Lampredotto
Now, let's talk about something you probably won't find on the average tourist's list of Italian comfort foods.
Lampredotto.
It's made from the fourth stomach of a cow.
Still with us?
Good.
Because this is one of Florence's great culinary treasures.
Lampredotto is slowly simmered in a fragrant broth with vegetables and herbs until it becomes wonderfully tender.
The meat is chopped, piled into a crusty bread roll and generously dressed with salsa verde — a sharp, vibrant sauce of parsley, garlic and other seasonings.
A little chilli oil, perhaps.
Then comes the important question from the person making your sandwich:
“Bagnato?”
Do you want the bread dipped in the cooking broth?
The answer should probably be yes.
The result is a gloriously messy sandwich. Soft, savoury meat. Bright, garlicky salsa verde. Bread soaked in rich broth, with just enough crust left to hold everything together.
Florentines have been eating lampredotto from street stalls for generations. It's working-class food, built around using every part of the animal. Visit Tuscany
And it's delicious.
Just don't wear a white shirt.
3. Ribollita
If lampredotto represents Florence's love of hearty street food, ribollita tells another story.
The story of a family kitchen where absolutely nothing goes to waste.
Ribollita means reboiled, and that's essentially the secret.
A thick vegetable soup made with cannellini beans, cavolo nero, cabbage, carrots, onions and other seasonal vegetables is combined with stale Tuscan bread.
Then it's left to rest and reheated.
The bread absorbs the broth, the beans become creamy, and the vegetables soften into something closer to a rustic stew than a soup.
A generous drizzle of good Tuscan olive oil finishes everything.
The first spoonful is earthy, rich and deeply comforting.
The cavolo nero brings a pleasant bitterness. The beans give it body. The bread makes it substantial.
And the olive oil?
That's what brings the whole thing to life.
Traditionally, ribollita was part of cucina povera — the resourceful cooking of rural families who understood that yesterday's leftovers could become tomorrow's best meal. Visit Tuscany
Leave it to the Italians to make stale bread something worth getting excited about.
4. Chianti Colli Fiorentini & the Negroni
We could spend the entire afternoon discussing Tuscan wine.
Actually, that sounds like a fairly reasonable plan.
But let's start with something particularly close to Florence.
Chianti Colli Fiorentini.
Produced in the hills surrounding the city, this Sangiovese-based red is often lively with cherry, red fruit, gentle spice and the refreshing acidity that makes Tuscan wines so good alongside food.
It's the kind of wine that belongs beside a plate of pasta, grilled meat or a generous selection of salumi.
Nothing overly complicated.
Just good wine doing exactly what good wine should do. Chianti Colli Fiorentini
But Florence's other great contribution to drinking culture is considerably closer to our hearts at Bar Corso.
The Negroni.
According to the famous story, around 1919 a gentleman named Camillo Negroni walked into Florence's Caffè Casoni and asked bartender Fosco Scarselli to make his usual Americano a little stronger.
Instead of soda water, he wanted gin.
The result?
Gin. Campari. Sweet vermouth.
Equal parts.
A slice of orange.
And one of the greatest cocktails ever created. Visit Tuscany
A hundred years later, bartenders are still experimenting with it.
Different gins. Different vermouths. Different bitters.
But the original remains almost impossible to improve upon.
Three ingredients. One very good idea.
We have a particular appreciation for that kind of genius.
5. Why Bar Corso Loves Firenze
Florence understands something that sits right at the heart of Bar Corso.
Great food and drink don't need to be complicated. They need to be done properly.
A sandwich made from an inexpensive cut of meat becomes extraordinary when it's cooked with patience.
Yesterday's bread becomes a beautiful meal when it's combined with seasonal vegetables and good olive oil.
A few carefully chosen ingredients become one of the world's most celebrated cocktails.
That's the kind of Italian cooking and drinking culture we love.
But Florence also understands something else.
Food and drink belong to everyday life.
Wine sold through a tiny window.
A sandwich eaten standing beside a market.
A bowl of soup shared around the family table.
A Negroni before dinner.
None of these things needs to be an elaborate occasion.
And that's very much how we see things at Corso.
You don't need to arrive with a plan for a three-course dinner.
Come in for a Negroni.
Order a few cicchetti.
Share some pasta.
Discover a wine you haven't tried before.
Stay for another glass.
And if someone suggests an amaro after dinner, well, it would be rude to refuse.
Florence gave the world extraordinary art, beautiful architecture and one of our favourite cocktails.
But perhaps its greatest lesson is much simpler.
Life is better when you make time for the good things.
Especially when those good things come in a glass.
