Il Santo Bevitore, Via Santo Spirito, Florence

This place (Via Santo Spirito 66R, Florence, tel : +39 055 211264) had been one of the recommended places that we had kept out of mind for some reason. We stumbled upon it by chance one afternoon. It was already getting late and we had found ourselves then at the Oltrarno side of River Arnos, about half the distance between two bridges away from Via Santo Spirito. And we managed to get ourselves a seat shortly before the kitchen closed for after lunch hours.

The service here was excellent with their polite staff doing their best to be attentive in a bustling crowd with poor acoustics. They also seemed very knowledgeable with what the restaurant was serving.

Their pasta were very well done. Like their fresh made maccheroncetti served with a ragout of rabbit. The al dente pasta had an excellent springy texture that was doused in a umami rich broth from the rabbit stew, accompanied by generous portions of minced rabbit. All in all, professionally accented by rosemary. I said professionally because, they made work where most people generally failed at using rosemary by not knowing when was too much.

A lunch special pasta of the week was a paccheri with some ragout of baby octopus. Less heavy in flavour than the rabbit pasta, but with identifiable seafood accent from the fresh tasting cephalopod that was both tender and still had sufficient bite. The thick columns of pasta were also nicely timed in the pot.

The off sequence item was their cold cut platter. The order was processed later as the wait staff was trying to rush the pasta orders to the kitchen before they were ready to close up. This wound up being the last to get processed and was served after the pasta were. No big deal really. The selection of cheese that they had, included some nice Percorino al tartufo and a crumbly salty cheese from Sardinia that tasted very similarly to Parmigiano Reggiano accompanied by a fruit & mustard jam.

We liked it so much that we made a reservation for a dinner the next day!