Updated on June 18th, 2021
Six years ago, on a family cruise of the western Mediterranean, Andy, my sister Amy, and I stumbled upon a tiny restaurant down an alley in Florence. We were hot, tired, but mostly hungry and this place had an open table. We were shocked by how good the food was, and this lunch quickly went to the top of my “favorite meals” list and has been in Andy’s top five. For six years this meal has loomed large in our memories, and when we decided to go back to Florence we knew we had to try and find this restaurant again. One problem, we didn’t know its name.
That’s right, I didn’t know the name of the restaurant where I had eaten my favorite meal of all time. I had tried using satellite images from google maps and thought I had a good idea but I know that if I could just retrace our steps from six years ago I could find it. Andy had doubts.
In 2013, during our first visit, I knew we had started at the Uffizi and the fake David statue. I only remembered because we had just seen the real David and I remember thinking “wow, that’s crap”. We also headed away from the Arno. I have this crazy memory, it’s not photographic or total recall but I can see whole clips of my life play out like a video. The meal was seared in my video memory. I just had to rewind far enough to figure out how to get to the restaurant. Again, Andy had doubts.
So we started at the fake David, and we started walking north. I thought it was 3 or 4 blocks north of the Piazza della Signoria but I turned only 2 blocks in after getting confused. It was ok though because I was still able to find it after backtracking! That’s right, I found it! The restaurant I had been dreaming about for six years was Hosteria da Ganino.
Was it everything I remembered? Yes, and then some! We had a wonderful cheese plate with sheep’s cheese and truffle honey and a mango jam. I had the same thing I had the last time, risotto with spinach in tomato and butter sauce and it was delicious.
Andy had a spicy pasta dish, and we shared a beef entree. The tiny restaurant was filled with sounds of locals and regulars catching up. I conducted the entire meal in Italian with our waitress. She apparently understood me enough that we got everything we asked for! It was like a dream!
I have told Andy that if we make it back to Florence in the future Hosteria da Ganino is a non-negotiable stop. In the meantime, I will just be over here trying to figure out how to recreate it at home!
Have you ever had a meal so good you’d travel halfway around the world to try it again? Comment below with your favorites!
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