One of our favorite things to do when we travel is do a food tour, so it was one of the first things we booked for our recent trip to Florence. A food tour is such a great way to learn about the city you are in from a guide and learn some history. Best of all though, a food tour lets you try some local food that Florence is known for! Food is such a big part of the culture, and so experiencing the local cuisine is such a great way to immerse yourself and really get a taste for Florence. Florence is a huge culinary destination and has some AMAZING food that you will not want to miss. Doing a food tour gives you more of an opportunity to try as much as you can!
We did a guided walking Florence food tour that we booked through Viator. We loved it and highly recommend it. Plus it was under $40 a person (not including tip!) to go and includes all of your food. Going with a guide is the best way to do it, especially because they are often locals and can give you history and answer questions you may have. BUT if booking a guided tour isn’t something you are able to do– have no fear, I’m sharing all the places we visited on our tour and what to try!
Stop 1: Cantucci at il Cantuccio di San Lorenzo
Cantucci is similar to an almond biscotti but it is a little bit softer than a biscotti (sometimes I feel like I am going to break a tooth on biscotti). Traditionally you want to have it with vin santo which is a white Italian dessert wine. You are supposed to dip it in the wine. It’s a pretty standard dessert in Florence and you will often see it on the dessert menus there!
Stop 2: Coccoli Fritti at Forno Canapa Di Bruschi Ivana
This little bakery serves coccoli which is a mini fried pizza dough sandwich with prosciutto and stracciatella cheese inside. What our guide told us it that shops used to give coccoli out for free almost like a sample to encourage people to come to their store or visit Florence. Not the case now, but they are pretty inexpensive nonetheless! We enjoyed coccoli so much on the food tour that we came back the next day to get it again. It’s salty, oily, and just so delicious. It’s one of our favorite things we ate on our entire Italy trip!
Stop 3: Sampling Truffle Products at the Florence Central Market
Right next to the bakery where you will enjoy coccoli is the central market of Florence. Now you could do your own food tour just in the central market. They have pasta stands, sandwich stands, delis, cheeses, wines, everything you could think of.
Our guide took us to this stand in the central market where the owner taught us everything we could ever want to know about Italian truffles (a type of expensive mushroom). We sampled probably 4 different truffle products and 3 different types of aged Italian balsamic vinegar. The truffle products are AMAZING. Italy is known for the black and white truffles, so this is definitely something to try while you are here. We bought some black truffle cream to take home, but we also really loved the white truffle infused olive oil! White truffles have a stronger smell, but a milder taste, while black truffles have a delicate yet intense, sweet flavor.
You don’t have to be on a food tour to check this place out, try some samples, and ask to learn more about their products.
Stop 4: Resting and Indulging at Trattoria Da Guido
Here we sat down and had a penne with a meat ragu sauce and a soup called pappa al pomodoro which is a very thick tomato soup that is thickened with bread. It was served family style and was a nice opportunity to rest our legs and drink some water.
We also had fresh bread with our meal where we learned that they do not add salt to their bread in Florence. We were wondering why the bread tasted so bland at dinner the night before and this explained why!
Stop 5: Schiacciate Farcite Sandwich at Da’ Vinattieri
Schiacciata is a tuscan bread really similar to foccacia. A schiacciate farcite sandwich basically just means a schiacciata stuffed sandwich! The one we tried had finocchiona in it which is a type of salami typical of the Florence, Tuscany area. It had a raddichio spread in it and it was really tasty!
Stop 6: Gelato at Rivareno
Before we went to Italy, I told Garrett that I planned to eat gelato every day while we were in Italy. You have to! I don’t make the rules!
This was one of the best gelato places we visited in Italy (although my very favorite was in Rome– I’ll talk about that in a later post!). I tried to cremino rivareno flavor (white chocolate, hazelnut ganache, and gianduja [aka Nutella] swirl) and the contessa flavor (almond cream, crushed amaretti, and caramelized almonds). Both were perfection and I highly recommend.
Our guide taught us something that when you are looking for gelato, make sure you don’t get sucked into buying gelato from a place that has the massive mounds of gelato in the window. They look enticing and so pretty, but that is not the proper way to store gelato. Instead you want to find a place that stores their gelato covered in a freezer like Rivareno does– you can probably see in the photo how there are metal cylinders where they store their gelato!
Our very first day, we bought gelato at one of the places that has them in the giant piles in the window and after she told us, we only sought out places that stored it properly. And they were all 10x better than the gelato at the first place!
Bonus Stop: Wine Windows
While we didn’t actually stop for a glass of wine at a wine window on our Florence food tour, our guide did take us by one and told us some of the history behind it! Wine windows were created so that the wealthy vineyard owners could sell glasses of wine to customers right from their home. During the times of the Black Plague, they thrived because it was like the original (near) contactless transaction. The wine windows had their resurgence during the COVID-19 pandemic because tourists and locals could get a glass of wine contactless.
There are over 100 wine windows in Florence, but some are non-operational. To find the list of active windows where you can purchase a glass of wine, visit: bdv.one.
Florence Food Tour Final Thoughts
We REALLY enjoyed the Florence food tour and it was probably one of our favorite activities we did on our entire trip. I loved that it specifically highlighted dishes and things specific to Florence and the region rather than just Italy in general. It taught me a lot more about Florence specifically that I never would have learned on my own.
It was a small group size (probably under 15 people) and our guide was so great and knowledgeable. Plus all of that food for under $40 a person is well worth it! Like I mentioned earlier, here is the exact tour that we booked and went on, but Viator has some great other options including ones that include wine tasting which I bet would be lots of fun!
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[…] ate, and did in Florence in a later post, but The Basilica di Santa Croce, the Florence Duomo, and the food tour of Florence that we did were definitely our favorite […]