You can learn a lot about a town's eating habits by browsing its markets. You won't find much fish in Florence's Mercato Centrale, but stall after stall presents wonderful displays of meat: pork, beef, veal, chicken, guinea fowl, turkey, tiny milk fed lamb, suckling pig, rabbit, hare. There are trays of quivering offal: tripe, hearts, lungs, liver and other nondescript innards snuggle up alongside calves feet, nervetti and pale soft calves muzzles, peeled off as cleanly as if by a plastic surgeon. I'm not quite sure how you eat a calve's muzzle, or why. But it all goes to show that the Florentines like things meaty, and so it's not surprising that the city, a hundred miles or more from the sea, isn't exactly awash with fish restaurants.
We were a bit surprised then to find this little restaurant near the Ponte Rosso, and discover that the menu is almost exclusively fishy. It makes more sense when you get to know that the owners are from Liguria, and therefore accustomed to the abundance of the Ligurian coastline.
Outside is what you might call discreet. Inside is what you would definitely call small: we counted 18 covers, but that was only because a party of 12 was happy to share a communal table. It's a family affair, with mother in the kitchen and son front of house, and none the worse for that: a wordless intuition seemed to be at work to ensure seamless continuity between restaurant orders and kitchen output. Without asking, we began with breadsticks and slices of toast dunked in a little pot of anchovy mayonnaise. We ventured a little off the seafood track, but things maritime are undoubtedly this place's strong point. So the show was stolen from the various crostini of liver and tomatoes and mushrooms by the mixed seafood antipasti: a platter of fresh sardines and cheese, stuffed mussels, prawns, eel and pickled vegetables and unidentified (but delicious) little fishy tartlets. The trofie with pesto was bettered by the seafood lasagne. (No, I'd never had seafood lasagne before either, but I'd have it again here.) A bottle of Greco wine was a fitting accompaniment.
Service was careful, almost over-delicate, but efficient. The doors to the kitchen were thrown open throughout the evening, so the other, exclusively Italian, diners would have spotted, like me, the occasional use of a microwave to finish the food before serving. They didn't seem to mind, so neither did I.
I don't have a picture of Pane e Olio I'm afraid, so here's just a nice reflection in the Arno.
Pane e Olio, Via Faentina 2R, Ponte Rosso, 50133 Firenze
Tel 055 488 381
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