Girls Day in Florence

It has been another whirlwind weekend for us in Italy.

Saturday morning Morgan. Sarah and I went to Florence, getting on the train late morning. We are heading there for a girls day of shopping and lunch. We arrived and after a short walk through Florence got to our lunch destination, Cibreo. Sarah has taken most of the interns here since she arrived, and there is no doubt why. From the first sip of Prosecco to the last little bit of dessert  we scraped off the plate we loved it.  Then it was some shopping… which it was so nice to have only 3 women trying to shop rather then having our whole household, sorry guys but it’s true.  

Before leaving Florence we had one more stop to make, once again Sarah does her best to introduce the interns to the World's Greatest Hot Chocolate. We stopped briefly at Rivoire, each of us got one and without a doubt the richest, darkest hot chocolate I have ever had!!! Then we grabbed the train back home, after which we had a bit of a disappointing dining experience which I don’t want to get into….

Let's move on to Sunday!

Susan had made us reservations at Dario’s Steak House for 1pm, none of us had been to his Steak house yet, including Sarah. I have talked about his restaurant where we have burgers, but this was a communal table dining experience where we would have four courses of his beef. This is one of his signatures, the same beef cuts he served at the Outstanding the Fields event.  The table is the middle in the room, and then in the middle on one side of the room they have two large wood burning grills. Then in the center of the table they place all of the MEP for the meal, a large wood board of BEEF! You watch them work, grilling, slicing the beef, and then walk around the table and serve it right on your plate. It also comes with bread, vegetables, tuscan beans, baked potato and Dario’s delicious house wine.

Something struck me about this meal, as first off Dario came up to talk and cut the Bistecca Fiorentina our last steak, the highlighting steak of the meal. Afterwards I noticed he was walking around looking at the room, making sure the guest are happy, his staff were doing what they were suppose to be doing, like most chefs do. The thing was he looked as happy as anyone sitting at the table - genuinely happy and so proud watching the success of another service, seeing the happiness of everyone sitting at the table chatting, visiting, eating.  I am sure he has done this meal a hundred times, yet still walks through the room glowingly happy!

We are doing a Culinary week at Petraia and Susan has organized a week of classes, dinners and lunches. So we will have guests staying with us all week enjoying each and every event. When you get to stay somewhere for a week, you meet the people who are with you in the classes and get to know all of the staff in the kitchen, and experience everything Petraia has to offer it makes it so much more enjoyable.  It will be a busy week for everyone at Petraia but it will be fun!!! Will keep you posted…

At Rivoire enjoying the unbelievable hot chocolate

It's all about the beef at Dario's

The kitchen team at Dario's