Where to Eat in Florence: My 11 Favorite Restaurants, From Someone Who Lived There (Twice)
I fell in love with Florence, Italy the moment I first arrived as a study-abroad student. I lived at Viale Giovanni Milton, 41 with 50 of my Pepperdine University peers and we spent the summer of 2011 turning Florence into our second home. I also lived in Florence with my wife (then girlfriend) in 2015, and I've gone back almost every year since — it's the one city in the world I could navigate blindfolded. Which means I've eaten there a lot.
So let me start with the most important thing I can tell you about eating in Florence: you could eat at a new restaurant every single day and never have a bad meal. This is not an exaggeration. There are dozens — honestly, hundreds — of remarkable places in this city, some I've eaten at countless times, and others sitting in my saved list on Google Maps that I genuinely can't wait to try. Be wary of anyone handing you "the definitive list" of Florence’s best restaurants.
This is not that list. These are simply my ten current favorites — the places I return to, the ones I build into client itineraries, and the ones I'd take you to if you flew in tomorrow. The list evolves every trip. Today, it looks like this.
1. Vini e Vecchi Sapori
A few steps from Piazza della Signoria sits a dining room the size of a generous closet, with a handwritten paper menu that changes with the season/market and a congenial owner named Tommaso running it exactly the way he’s wanted to since his family opened VVS in 2005. This is, pound for pound, one of my top 2 favorite trattorie in Florence: zero pretense, deeply Florentine cooking, and the kind of warm and fun hospitality that tells you you're somewhere real. Book well ahead — the secret is long out — and order whatever pasta they've scrawled on the menu that day.
My favorites are the safron and zucchini flower paccheri and the duck ragu pappardelle, followed by the filet.
2. Buca Lapi
Florence's "buche" are cellar restaurants (essentially underground holes), and Buca Lapi — operating since 1880 in the vaulted basement of Palazzo Antinori, its ceiling papered with vintage travel posters — is the granddaddy of them all. You come here for one thing: bistecca alla fiorentina, done at the highest level in the city. Thick-cut, charred outside, properly rare inside, priced by the etto and worth every cent. This is the special-occasion steak dinner, and it has been for 140+ years.
This was the first restaurant in the city, and somehow Florence got it right on the first try.
Order the ravioli, cannelloni, bistecca, and homemade desserts.
3. Trattoria da Tito dal 1913
If Buca Lapi is church, Tito is the party. North of the center on Via San Gallo, running since 1913, with signs on the wall warning (correctly) that they will not cook your bistecca any way other than the way it is meant to be cooked - rare. The food is serious — proper Tuscan classics, great meat — but the atmosphere is the draw: loud, joyful, wine flowing, staff who treat regulars and first-timers with the same affectionate irreverence. It's the most fun dinner in Florence.
“No other tourist bullshits” might be the best thing I’ve ever read on a restaurant sign.
Order the pappa al pomodorro, fresh pasta, and bistecca.
4. La Braceria di Scandicci
Here's the deep cut on this list — and the one that signals you've gone past the guidebooks. Out in Scandicci, just beyond Florence’s center, is a modern temple of meat: prime cuts from around the world — Chianina, Black Angus, Rubia Gallega, even Wagyu — dry-aged, expertly grilled, and paired with a serious wine list. There are no Renaissance frescoes here; there are Florentines who drove out specifically for the beef. Sometimes the most authentic move in Tuscany is following the locals out of the postcard.
Take the 10 minute taxi for some of the best meat you’ll ever have. Let the server guide you to the best steak option they have on menu.
5. Il Santo Bevitore
The Oltrarno's modern classic. On Via di Santo Spirito, candlelit and effortlessly stylish, Il Santo Bevitore takes Tuscan tradition and refines it without fussing it up — and the wine list is one of the best in the city (the name means "the holy drinker," and they mean it). This is where I send couples for the romantic dinner that still feels like Florence rather than a hotel restaurant.
Order the bone marrow, Tuscan crostini, ravioli, fresh pasta, and whatever meat or fish is on the menu.
6. Il Guscio
Family-run, tucked into San Frediano — the neighborhood where Florence still lives like itself — Il Guscio is the polished neighborhood gem: refined plates, a wine cellar that massively overdelivers, and regulars at half the tables. It's the restaurant I recommend when someone says "somewhere nice, but where Florentines actually go."
Just a 15 min walk out of the center, you’ll enter a world mostly void of tourists.
Order the fresh pasta, lamb, tuna, and bistecca.
7. Parione
Classic, warm, reliable Tuscan cooking near the Arno on Via del Parione. Parione exactly Tuscan food exactly like you hoped it would taste: ribollita, fresh pasta, one of the best bistecca alla fiorentina in the city, attentive service that remembers you the second time. Not every great restaurant needs an angle. Some just need to be excellent every single night.
Get the truffle gnocchi and bistecca!
8. O'Munaciello
Controversial entry: my favorite pizza in Florence is Neapolitan. O'Munaciello, in San Frediano, is a riot of a pizzeria — named for the mischievous spirit of Neapolitan folklore, with a wood-fired oven turning out proper puffy-cornicione Naples pies. When you've had three straight days of bistecca and ragù, this is the reset button. (And yes, even Florentines concede that pizza belongs to Naples.)
You have to have the traditional margherita (the benchmark) and then order a specialty pizza to your preference.
9. I' Girone De' Ghiotti
You will see a line of 200 people outside a certain famous panini shop near Piazza della Signoria. I love it, but walk past it. A couple of minutes away, I' Girone De' Ghiotti is making schiacciata sandwiches at the same level or better — warm, crackling bread stuffed with serious Tuscan salumi, pecorino, truffle cream, whatever combination you dream up — with a fraction of the wait. Florence's best lunch under €10, and a Dante pun in the name as a bonus.
Try the Suicida and Invidiosa.
10. Sergio Pollini Lampredotto
And we end where Florentine food culture truly lives: a street cart. Lampredotto — the fourth stomach of the cow, simmered for hours, piled into a roll dipped in broth, hit with salsa verde — is the working-class soul of this city, and Sergio Pollini's stand near Sant'Ambrogio is where to have it. Eat it standing on the sidewalk with a plastic cup of cheap red wine, surrounded by tradesmen on their lunch break. It costs a few euros and it tells you more about Florence than any museum ticket.
Order the panino with the salsa to your preference!
11. Antico Bottaio
Antico Bottaio is a warm, rustic trattoria on Via dell'Agnolo in Santa Croce, named for the barrel-makers who once worked this stretch of the city. The kitchen does traditional Tuscan cooking with locally sourced ingredients — bistecca alla fiorentina, wild boar pappardelle, truffle ravioli — served by a staff known for steering you toward what the kitchen does best.
My favorites are the pici with white ragu and the lamb!
A few recommendations for eating well in Florence
Book ahead. The small rooms on this list (Vini e Vecchi Sapori, Buca Lapi, and others) book weeks out, particularly in high season.
Eat on Italian time. Lunch 13:00–14:30, dinner from 20:00. A restaurant serving dinner at 17:00 - 18:00 is serving tourists - most restaurants in Florence open at 19:00 or 19:30. (Unless, of course, you’re like us and traveling with a young kid - then go as soon as they open haha)
Order the bistecca properly. It comes rare. It is priced by weight (all'etto) and meant for sharing. Asking for it well-done is the one mistake Florence will not forgive — Tito has the signs to prove it.
And remember the real secret: this list is a snapshot, not a canon. The joy of Florence is that the eleventh, twentieth, and fiftieth-best meals are all still wonderful.
When I design Florence itineraries for Fatto a Mano Travel clients, restaurants aren't an afterthought — they're the main attraction. The right table, booked at the right time, in the right neighborhood for that evening's walk. If you want a Florence trip built around eating the way the city actually eats — from the buca to the lampredotto cart — we’d love to design it for you.
Author bio: Michael Gallagher is the founder of Fatto a Mano Travel. He has been traveling through Italy for 15 years, twice lived in Florence, speaks Italian, and returns every year.
