Possibly the best restaurant in the world.

There is a street in Florence where there is, possibly, the best restaurant in the world. Although this street is within a dong and a clang of the Duomo’s Campanile it is not one down which tourists saunter, licking gelati in gormless hoards. On this street live two hookers, one at each end. One is a retired army officer, a transvestite until recently, but now a transsexual. She has started wearing tighter trousers since her operation we’re told by a local. The other has been doing the same job since the end of the war. She must be into her seventies and judging by the amount of time she spends sat on her doorstep greeting the neighbours with “buon giorno” and “buona sera”, one might imagine that regular trade (amongst other things) dried up some time ago.

This is a street that doesn’t get much sleep. The windows of the tenement blocks are permanently open at this time of year and the ups and downs of life go on around the clock. There is a Somalian immigration office half way down the road, and next to it a twenty-four hour Egyptian sandwich shop. And opposite is, possibly, the best restaurant in the world. We are sent there by a local man, an ex-pat but after thirty years in the city, more Florentine than Bostonian. If it weren’t for him perhaps we’d have never been, despite staying only two doors down. This place, a trattoria, is not in the guidebooks, and even the internet gives it up grudgingly.

The greatest restaurants are great in a way that is hard to describe. Professional critics write column after column, week after week, and still struggle to say what it is that truly makes a restaurant great. So I shan’t really attempt it here (after all, I’m no professional critic). This trattoria, on this street in Florence just does it. So well. Perhaps it is that it has been here for nearly 150 years and has barely changed the formula. Maybe if it were in a more affluent neighbourhood and in all the guidebooks then it wouldn’t be such a thrill to score a table for two there on a Friday night. I just don’t know. But the things that they can do with a couple of eggs and some artichokes for a primi, and the magic they turn with a piece of chicken and some butter as a secondi, are simply beyond my wildest gastronomic dreams. Their ingredients are of such quality that they are happy to serve a large raw tomato as a single course, and a bowl of unadorned tiny wild strawberries as a dolce. The interior is utterly stunning in a way that modern restaurateurs could only dream of recreating.


An aside:

There is a disease in the UK that started in London, and possibly some of the more ridiculous Cotswold gastropubs, but is now spreading with more vigour than swine flu: Restaurants that are ‘ingredient-lead’ and advertise as much on their press-releases / menus / waiters’ polo shirts. Is this not quite the most daft and horrific indictment of all that is wrong with eating out in Britain? What on earth else should ‘lead’ a restaurant? Intricately folded napkins? Pretty waitresses? Sweet-smelling bogs? For pity’s sake. What is a decent eatery if its kitchen does not start with good ingredients? Why have we in this country got to the point where chefs have to advertise the fact that they actually care about food? Admittedly there are a few restaurants over here that can achieve great things seemingly effortlessly, but not enough.

14th May, is a good day.

I suppose we’re still in the last throes of the “hungry gap”, but today’s farmers’ market gives me a joyous sniff of the great things to come. Wood pigeon fattened on early rape; the creamiest lemony young goat’s curd – a happy by-product of lush, wet April grass; purple-green asparagus, in the rudest of health picked this morning form the sandy soil of Evesham; local new potatoes that give the now much overrated Jersey Royal a run for its (vast sums of) money. There’s a lady selling bunches of sweet peas too. Summer cannot be too far away now. With eggs and tiny leaves from the garden we have the makings of a supper to match no other.

A lot of chefs now talk about their menus being ‘ingredient lead’, which whilst it may be faddish whimsy, in my opinion can only be a good thing, so long as these chefs know what they’re doing with their ingredients.

I shall happily salute a huge Fuck Off to cooks who persist with unnecessary smears, foams, jus, and all that bollocks. Plates look good with food on them. Pictures look good with smears and jus. We’re at the start of the worst economic wobble in living memory. Why should we be paying for air and smugness?


Asparagus with goat’s curd

I think the worst thing that can be done to asparagus is under-cooking. Cooking it brings out the sugars and general asparagusiness. Give fat stalks at least five minutes in rapidly boiling water.

Drain the asparagus, dollop curd, or young goat’s cheese over it, season, and shuffle all around in the pan.


Pigeon, bacon and potato salad.

In a big, beautiful, flattish white plate throw some small, sexy salad leaves. It matters not what. My choice would be a mix of chard, little gem and mizuna.

Get the tiniest spuds, not much bigger than a thumbnail and boil until tender. Keep them nice and warm. Slice some good smoked bacon into small pieces and fry in a little oil until crispy and brown. Keep that nice and warm too.

In the bacon fat fry as many pigeon breasts as you need (two per person should do it as a main course) for three minutes on each side. Keep them warm also.

At this point, poach one egg per person.

With the heat still gently on beneath your pigeon pan, whisk in the smallest slosh of good olive oil, a little French mustard and a gesture of white wine vinegar or lemon juice.

Chuck spuds, bacon and pigeon (slice it up first) on top of the leaves, add your warm dressing and stir around vigorously. Put on pretty plates and plonk a poacher on top. You will not often get a finer supper.

I’ve not been a blogger before. I’ve never kept a diary, or Twittered. I think my friends have become bored of Facebook updates, so I shall blog. No-one has to read this and perhaps no-one will. I suppose the nice thing about this is that is doesn’t really matter.

I shall use this blog as a place to write about some of the things that interest me, don’t interest me, annoy me, make me happy. I shall use this place to write about some of the things that happen in Ludlow, or anywhere.


Ludlow is one of the things that interests me. It is a place that I love and sometimes hate and it is nestled quietly in a small corner of south Shropshire. Ludlow is a few miles off the beaten track. It is not near a motorway and not near any big city, but ten thousand or so people live here. If you care to, you can do your own research into the history and geography and what-not of Ludlow. That’s your job, if you feel so inclined.