I recently spent a glorious five days in Florence, Italy, and experienced some of the best food I’ve ever had. From Michelin-star restaurants, including Luca’s at Hotel La Gemma, a hotel I can highly recommend, to several family trattorias, it was a culinary experience unlike any other. As you can well imagine, pasta was a huge part of each meal, whether it was as an appetizer or a main dish. One of the best was the carbonara at La Bucchetta, an amazing restaurant in the heart of the city.
Our reservation was for 6 p.m., an hour very typical of dinner in the United States, but not so for Italy, where the dinner hour is much later. So, the restaurant was not crowded and getting a reservation at that time was easy. Plus, making it even nicer, we had the full attention of our waiter. Sweet.
There’s just something about the way Italian cooks prepare pasta that’s so perfectly al dente. So many times, the pasta I’ve had at Olive Garden — only when I’m desperate — or any other so-called Italian restaurant in America, the pasta often lacks that al dente bite it has in Italy.
We began the meal with the carbonara and watched with mouths watering as our server whirled pici pasta around in a wheel of Pecorino Romano, which he said was more flavorful than Parmesan. I agree.
Pici is a thicker pasta than regular spaghetti, hand-rolled and much loved by the people in the country that created it. Don’t know how they make such beautiful pastas, but leave it to the masters of pasta to figure that out.