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A glass of wine with a sandwich is happiness ”, never truer and more inflated quote but you want to put double happiness, triple quadruple happiness if in Florence, inside the sandwich, you find the lampredotto ? It is known that everything is good fried, even a ciabatta, we don’t want a cutlet; boiled instead by far less and to make a good lampredotto it takes his time and a lot of skill. But wait, what is the lampredotto ? It is the street food of Florence on which Florentines and not
have been popping up for centuries. It is a poor dish made with one of the four stomachs of the bovine, the abomasum, which to hear it like this is a little scary but to eat it is good, guaranteed. The story about the lampredotto is long, very long:
from the times of the times in the Arno river there was the lamprey , a very delicious and very expensive fish which, during the Renaissance, was consumed a lot by Florentine nobles. The Florentine people, who certainly could not afford it and who did not want to remain even with a dry mouth, found a tasty and poor alternative made with boiled meat scraps: the stomachs of the beef were chosen, in particular the last one consisting of a the lean part, called gala, made up of very tasty purple crests and a tougher part called cornbone; these two parts resembled the most delicious fish of the nobility, the lamprey , and from here comes the name of this food, the lamprey, given by the Florentines with so much irony that distinguishes them.
Lampredotto is in Florence as paella is in Valencia and Florence would be much less Florence without it.
If you have eaten it at the restaurant you cannot say that you have really tried it because in Florence the lampredotto must be eaten in one way and only one: on the street, at the lampredottaio’s stall, with the constant pigeons patrolling around you in search of your crumbs. .
In Florence, the king of street food is good everywhere and wherever you go you will fall on your feet.
At the stalls you will hear jokes of all kinds fly by. Together with the lampredotto they sell you the atmosphere and a
piece of heart, strictly purple.
Do not ask the lampredottaio for ketchup or mayonnaise because he will look at you badly: on the lampredotto there is only the green sauce, “the spicy” and a sprinkling of pepper to taste. If you ask them for a glass of wine, however, they will be happy and surely you too.
You can discover the lampredotto in our gourmet tour to discover the flavors of Florence: https://www.tuscanytourism.net/it/viaggi/tour-dei-sapori-per-le-strade-di-firenze/
