Cucina Toscana

by Susan Holland

In the second of her delightful series of a Restaurateur's Report from France and Italy, Baltimore's Custom House chef Susan Holland writes about three very different restaurants, including one where authentic cucina Toscana is cooked by an English woman.

This winter we spent some time in Tuscany and found three very different restaurants.

Arnolfo's is a 2-star Michelin restaurant in which I was fortunate to work. Among other menus and a la carte the brothers do a regional creative menu at 110,000 lire (about IR£50): Terrine of saddle of rabbit with pistachio & Winter-leaf salad; Pecorino ravioli with pumpkin cream perfumed with orange; fillet of organic beef with red wine sauce, potato rosette; selection of cheeses; crème brulee; hazelnut nougat cake with sabayon of muscat. You get the lot. No choice there but you could go a la carte. Arnolfo's is a beautiful restaurant which does only 30 covers. On summer evenings one eats on the terrace with a wonderful view. Colle is a picture-postcard hilltop renaissance village, but in the darkness of the winter evenings the chauffeured limousines from as far away as Rome brought people whose only interest in coming to Colle was to eat at Arnolfo's.

A very different style of restaurant and vastly less expensive was l'Osteria del Caffe Casolani, which specializes in 'cucina povera Toscana' - peasant-style Tuscan cooking. There's a bar and a wine shop at the front and the restaurant at the back, with tables outside in the summer. As is traditional there is no choice at all: (you couldn't improve on the effortless match and flow of the dishes in any case). There is a shorter lunch menu at 15,000 lire (about IR£7), and the dinner menu costs 29,000 lire (about IR£14). The evening that we went we started with a Tuscan soup of cannelini beans with grilled garlic toast, then spaghetti with buffalo mozzarella and Parmesan and broccoli sauce, then two different meats - deep-fried rabbit pieces in breadcrumbs and organic beef with stewed red onions and red wine sauce - and a perfect salad of winter leaves and good crusty bread. All courses are delivered to the table on platters and one serves (and re-serves) oneself according to appetite and inclination. After this a simple pine-nut and almond cake. Great wines, also available from the shop. A simple, perfect meal. The owner/chef Chrissy Romley is English and has lived in Italy for 20 years. She delights in offering authentic Tuscan food almost more pure than a Tuscan could do it.

Then in Florence, while visiting diverse Renaissance glories, with three friends and two teenage daughters wer ate lunch at Trattoria Gozzi, near Mercato Centrale. It's a busy spot, bright and airy with crisp linen and a spoken menu supplemented by sign language. Ribollito to start with, rabbit, beef, pork, squid among the mains that we tried, all first class. Good house wine, good coffee and a very reasonable bill.

Ristorante Arnolfo, Colle di Val d'Elsa (10 kms from Siena), Via XX Settembre
Tel:0577-920549

Osteria del Caffe Casolani, Casole d'Elsa (same area)
Tel: 0577-948733

Trattoria Gozzi da Sergio, Piazza San Lorenzo 8r, Florence.