snic

Well, right. Think of the canned and other non-perishable Italian foods that make it to the US: San Marzano tomatoes, cannelini beans in jars (not cans), tuna in olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, dried porcini. All of these generally taste better than their American counterparts - although not by a whole lot. So if you were to make a meal out of Italian processed foods and then make the same meal out of American processed foods, the Italian version would taste a bit better. Then add cheese to the equation -- good cheese in Italy is trivially easy to find and nowhere near as expensive as good cheese in the US -- and it becomes obvious why even low-end restaurants in Italy serve better food than similarly-priced places in the US.

(Although I think it's not just the ingredients. There's also a certain ethos of making things from scratch, such as the fagioli we had in a pizza joint. Especially at sit-down type chain restaurants here in the US - think Denny's, PF Chang's, Cheesecake Factory, and the like - everything is pre-made and just warmed up and prepped. It's very efficient, but tastes nowhere near as good as a from-scratch meal.)

rbAA

Well, I always live by that saying: it depends on what you like. We all have different tastes and individual likes and dislikes. So, for the three days and nights I had in Florence, I spread the feasting around as follows:

Sunday lunch: Tosca at Mercanto Centrale- grilled swordfish with veges and a salad. Was great;
Sunday dinner: Paoli- pasta with meat sauce, minestrone with rice, salad and bomba. Always a solid choice;
Monday lunch: Rotisserie at Mercanto Centrale- half a roast chicken with potatoes and side salads. Don't tell my chicken lady in Bangkok that a whole chicken sells for 20 euro. Good stuff though;
Monday Dinner: Casalinga-roast pork, grilled turkey, mixed veges, fig and walnut tort. Four others, on separate check, had the mozzarella with tomato, steak, ravioli, spaghetti with meat sauce and salad. Won't return, sorry not as good as promoted here;
Tuesday lunch: Trattoria Sostanza- Tortellini soup, tortellini with meat sauce, artichoke pie/tart. The best meal overall; and
Tuesday dinner: Paoli: grilled cod with spinach, pasta with meat sauce, minestrone, salad and bomba.

The best was Trattoria Sostanza as the artichokes were great. Next, Tosca as the swordfish was flavorful and very fresh. Their steaks were good looking, very thick, and the people sitting next to us raved about it. The steak seemed reasonably priced though I forget what price it was. Paoli has always been one of my favorites, and it didn’t disappoint me, though the meat sauce was slightly better at Sostanza. The most disappointing was Casalinga as the dishes lacked flavor and the meats, other than the steaks which were both very thin, were too dry. The meat sauce on the pasta looked weak and lacked meat, and the ravioli was just ehh. Each of the meals cost about the same, between 20 euro on the low end, to 46 (Sostanza) on the high end.

I walked by Buca dell Orafo, as the location was familiar when I looked for it on Google Maps. I had stayed at a little pensione above it, and had eaten there maybe 30 years ago. Unless they’ve gotten better with age, I remember the food being quite forgettable and never returned. Plus, their prices were quite a bit higher than the other places I ate-13 euro pasta dishes vs 10 euros elsewhere and 71 euro for the steak (1.2kg minimum.) Passed.

Of course, I had two separate “snacks” at Vesuvio. No trip would be complete without it. As an aside, a good pizza place in Rome we found was Pizza Re near Augustus’ Masolium, though it’s not better than Vesuvio’s.

PWMTrav

Glad to hear you had a nice time overall. A shame Casalinga didn't work out, that's one of my favorites. Mercato Centrale continues to be solid across the board in my experience as well.

rbAA

So was I as the recommendations from you and others were so good. Maybe just a bad night, or poor choice of dishes, though we had two of the specials, so I assumed that they would have been their best efforts. The four other people we were eating with seemed to enjoy their choices. We sampled only the ravioli they ordered, but I wasn't excited by it.

We could have eaten every meal at Mercato Centrale, as the selection was excellent and the other places there, especially the "dumpling" place, seemed very popular.

Michael El

Just back from a quick stop in Florence. One of the best pizzas I've ever had was at Dal Barone a block north of The Baptistery of St. John/Battistero di San Giovanni. Great service and free wifi.

Stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn Florence Novoli and found Osterie Di Poneta within walking distance. Not only did they squeeze us in on a busy Saturday night, our server Fabio was quite a character. We had a salad that was so fresh and delightful. The tomatoes were the best I've ever had. The wild boar stew was outstanding.

We accidentally ordered two large bottles of beer. I can't remember which one we liked better.


Fabio made sure the beer stayed cold by giving us a bucket full of ice. The locals were quite entertained by this.

Perche

I think that Italian American food is a distinct form of food, and is authentic in its own right. I'm talking about things like spaghetti and meatballs, chicken pesto penne, fettuccine alfredo, ceasar salad, garlic bread, marinara sauce, and things like that. I'm putting ravioli in that same basket.

The, "dumpling place," a raviolo means a dumpling. All that a raviolo is can be summarized as a dumpling. Italy, being only a country in name, stitched together out of many different countries, does not really have a dish called ravioli. Each of the separate countries that are stitched together to form Italy have their own type of dumpling, and they don't call it ravioli.

For example, in Torino, their style of dumpling (raviolo) is called agnolotti. You won't find ravioli on the menu, just agnolotti. A raviolo is distinguished by what is put in the dumpling. Most dim sum is ravioli, which just means dumpling, but it is Chinese food. I think that in Tuscany ravioli comes in a soup; dumplings in broth.

A raviolo means a filling wrapped in a pasta. In Genoa they are called tortelli, not ravioli, and are always filled with ricotta. Every region that you go to, the filling of the dumpling is going to be different. In Rome, a raviolo is often huge, and is called tortolloni. I don't believe I have ever seen ravioli on a menu in Venice, Naples, or anywhere else. Each region has it's own way of making a dumpling, and they have their own special name for it. The word ravioli does exist in Italy, in a sort of generic way to mean any kind of dumpling, and it is not non-existent, like spaghetti and meatballs.

For example, in the USA you might wake up and make yourself an egg omelette for breakfast, adding cheese, avocado, maybe some spinach. If you do that in Italy they will look at you strange, as if you are trying to build a rocket ship on your stove. Eggs are only eaten for dinner, and are never eaten for breakfast. It's illegal for a grocery store to store eggs in a refrigerator. Eggs and milk are only allowed to be kept at room temperature. Most people keep their milk and eggs in the oven.

I'm not a big fan of Tuscany, but I think their ravioli is called tortelli, if I'm not mistaking. I'd be hesitant about going to a generic ravioli place because I don't think there is any such thing, just variations on a dumpling, called by their regional name. I'm sure I'm not 100% correct on this, I just can't recall seeing ravioli on a menu in Italy. Every place I've ever been has its own variation on what they call a dumpling, and they call it by its own regional name.

rbAA

A dumpling by any other name is always good. I called it ravioli because Casalinga's menu translated it to that English word. Their website menu shows, in Italian:

"ravioli burro e salvia, ravioli al sugo di coniglio tortellini in brodo"

Like I said, I had higher expectations.

PWMTrav

All good - everyone's tastes are different, and for sure, every restaurant will fail to impress from time to time. The combination of the two is just the nature of things.

At least in Florence they eat lots of different styles of ravioli. It's definitely a mutable term, but the term itself isn't necessarily generic in Tuscany. I read somewhere (might have been Italian wikipedia) that the earliest mention of the term is from Boccaccio, who is from Florence.

I'll weigh back in on La Casalinga when I revisit - probably won't be until spring at this point. We're not taking a Christmas trip to Italy this year, staying closer to home due to school instead.