Totò - Happy New Year!

Happy New Year (22 days late)! After a long break, which was spent in lots and lots of restaurants acquiring new information for my blog, hence eating, I have the pleasure of writing this post. I hope I will accomplish my goal of awing everyone with this new post. Not because of my writing skills, which haven’t changed much, but by the food I have to present. This meal, ladies and gentlemen, was epic.

First, I must say I come from a culture where every single type of food can be sold in “all you can eat” style. In Brazil, we have the famous churrascarias, where meat is served to your table during the entire length of your meal – I know, amazing! This concept evolved through different kinds of cuisine, so now we have “all-you-can-eat” style sushi, pizza, pasta, and even beer! How crazy is that? You pay a certain amount and you sit at the bar and they keep the beers coming. Again: I know, amazing!

I recounted this to demonstrate that I am used to eating a lot. I love eating (big news), and I also like to get my money’s worth, so I would always dive in – who are we kidding? I still dive in!  So it was surprising that I – my extremely glutton self – would be impressed (and a little scared) of the Italian-style meals.

Me and my handsome "baby" brother

My dear family and I reunited on Christmas’ Eve in Rome, to start a trip of a lifetime through the beautiful country that is Italia. After Rome, we went to Venice and then to Florence for New Years. Our most pressing problem when we got to Florence was to find a good restaurant (we had an extensive recommended list) to have our celebratory capodanno meal on the night of the 31st. After seeing a lot of crazy-priced deals, we bumped into this little place called Totò which had a long list of plates and wine and champagne included in the 65€ per person fee. I know it seems like a lot, but the prices were not going any lower than that in the other restaurants. The place looked very Italian and smelled amazing when we walked in at 4 in the afternoon to make our reservation, so my parents decided to go with it. The menu was at follows:

·      A cart of antipasto

·      Gnocchi with truffle sauce and porcini mushrooms

·      Potato tortellini

·      Bistecca à la Fiorentina (T-Bone steak their style)

·      Florentine sausage

·      Deep-fried artichokes

·      House salad

·      House dessert

·      Wine

·      Champagne glass

·      Coffee

Let’s begin: the cart of antipasto was actually a cart! In the middle of the restaurant! With dozens of choices of antipasto! There was shrimp cocktail, octopus ceviche, prosciutto rolled in a breadstick, deep-fried olive-stuffed olive (!!!!!!!), chicken salad, roasted eggplant slices, boiled shrimp… and many other things that I couldn’t even try because I knew there was more food coming. And it did.

Genius!

The second part of the meal, also called “first course” in Italy, is almost always pasta. Amazingly enough, in the menu they had two different pastas listed – from which I assumed we would pick one, but no! Both came. Happiness… I have to say, the Potato-filled Tortellini (one of Tuscany region traditional plates) was delicious, but I am a sucker for mushrooms, especially when they are in a truffle sauce. Seriously, what can compete with that?! Mushrooms AND truffles. On colorful gnocchi. Beautiful! 

The third part of the meal, called “second course”, is generally a type of protein of some sort, such as beef, lamb, rabbit, sometimes fish. In our fortunate case, we got half of a T-bone steak grilled in Florentine fashion – a.k.a. wonderfully – and a Florentine sausage. The beef was very tender and cooked to perfection, still very red on the inside (they way it’s supposed to be) but almost crispy on the outside. It wasn’t the best we ate, but it was pretty good. The sausage was very different to me, used to the American southern usually over-processed sausages, because you could kind of feel the meaty texture in it. It was also divine. To accompany our outrageous meat selection we got fried artichokes and salad, which I obviously didn’t even touch – I was in too deep to care.

For meat lovers only

Artichokes

By the end of this, we were all on the verge of a food coma. Imagine pairing all of this with some bread and wine… two whole bottles of wine for three people (my mom barely drinks). But there was still dessert! The house dessert of choice was profiteroles. And then the glass of champagne came. I couldn’t drink all of it. Swear to God. I just couldn’t. There was too much in my system.

After this eating marathon, we had to walk somewhere, just to make this settle a little. The city was packed and there were free concerts going on in six different squares in the city for the 3809834723 tourists that were there (approximate number). We found a nice little spot in the Republic’s square, where there was a band playing bossa nova and then a jazz band came up. Dancing in the below freezing temperature of that Florentine night, we celebrated the coming of a new year, happy to be together.

Restaurant: Totò

City: Florence, Italy

Food: Great

Service: Good

Price: OK