Oh my God, yum.  Restaurants in Florence are everywhere, and in my opinion the general rule is the more authentic the better.  On a quiet little street, just 15 minutes walking from the Duomo,  I found a restaurant that not only was reasonably priced, but also had amazing food and sold fabulous meats and cheeses to take home.  Trifecta.  Funny thing is, I had actually walked by before on a Sunday and not noticed it because they are closed on Sundays.

You enter and face the deli counter and bottle after bottle of wine, always a welcoming sight in my opinion.  Then you are led through a door into the small dining room.  There are only about 20 tables so if you have not made a reservation you must arrive early, they open at 7:00 and they were full by 8:45 on a Wednesday.  So we sit down and luck into a window table to top it off.

All settled in, and of course starting with a little wine, we warm up with the Crostini and Bruschetta appetizer—and perfect time of the year for it, the tomatoes were perfection.  A short course break and a little more wine and then it’s time to move into a shrimp and asparagus ravioli.  Virtually perfect.  For the main dishes the duck with an orange and balsamic sauce and a hazelnut crusted lamb both evoked deep mmmm’s and shut up the conversation temporarily.  Although I will eat anything with hazelnuts, the duck dish was actually my favorite, something about the flavor combination of the citrus and balsamic just did it for me.

Dessert.  Yup, strawberries are in season and they had–you guessed it–a strawberry panna cotta.  They also had Vin Santo.  They also had great coffee.  It was also under 100 euro for four courses and two bottles of wine.  They are also one of the few places I have seen that have menus in English but virtually all of the clientele was Italian, plus they serve lunch.  It really doesn’t get much better than that.

http://www.vinolio.com/menu.htm

+39.055.489.957

Open lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday