The Salted Caramel ice cream from bi-rite creamery. Words… cannot… describe… You know on the Simpsons when Homer just starts drooling? Yeah, that’s pretty much this ice cream. It’s just… gah… I don’t know how… what… blargh. You just have to try it yourself. Bi-rite, I’m happy you’re far away.

Yum… a big old giant bottle of beer that’s the cost of like a case of beer… Look at it, it has a date bottle and they only made 600 cases… and it’s aged in oak barrels…

J kept on going on and on about this cabbage slaw from bi-rite, the market part. I can see why he likes it so much. The crunch, the zest, the technicolor beauty. It’s awesome. When it was nearly gone, there was still dressing left so we threw in some raw shredded cabbage in there to extend its life.

Before my flight out to SFO, I hung out in the US Airways lounge. You can’t bring outside food in, so I had to buy something or otherwise starve. I got the tuna salad. Oh the whole thing was just bad. The cucumbers were old, the tuna fish was blah, the croutons were old, and the greens were wilted. But the dressing was good! But overall, terrible and overpriced. I was very disappointed. The food on the airplanes is a thousand times better.
And here is some evidence of the food on the flights that I actually enjoy. My flight home was horrifically delayed. They did not even offer us a free cocktail or anything. But I had to eat so I got the cheese and fruit snack pack. I really like this thing. The grapes were sweet and fresh, and so were the strawberries. There were three different types of cheese cut into cubes and a few crackers. Plus, there were some juicy dried apricots. All in all, it’s not a bad deal!

I arrived in Florence on friday night and there was still a little bit of daylight left so I started roaming. Whenever I go to new places, that’s just what I do. I’m a roamer. I didn’t even have any real maps. But I just started walking. I quickly realized how small Florence actually is and how amazingly walkable it is. Maps make it look big, but in reality, it’s quite small. You can walk everywhere and see everything. It’s hard to get lost because eventually, any street you walk down will end up somewhere familiar, like the train station, the river and any of its bridges, the duomo, this piazza or that piazza, so it’s hard to actually not know where you are, relatively.

I didn’t exactly know where I was going, but I had a couple of snippets of maps to get me to some major spots. I actually had a place picked out for dinner, but once I found it, it turned out to only be a lunch spot. Drat. So I had to just wing it as far as where to have dinner. This is how I ended up at Giannino. When you walk around in Florence, especially considering how touristy it is, all the restaurants have menus outside and sometimes, there are people who try to get you to come into their restaurant. I ended up here because really, it was a toss-up to me, and they didn’t have anyone out front.

When you first go in, the place isn’t that big. Or so you think. But then when you’re sitting, you see giant groups coming in. And you realize there’s a whole other dining room on the first floor, as well as seemingly giant rooms on the second floor. It turns out, this place is huge. Many of the restaurants have special menus that are a set number of euros and you get a few courses of specific dishes. The prices are quite reasonable too. I decided to just go a la carte. It’s a pretty big menu.

As opposed to where I was earlier this week, in Florence, they give you olive oil with your bread. I think this is fairly typical bread of Florence, but it was really bland. I didn’t care for its lack of flavor or its dry crumbly texture. And the olive oil, well it certainly looks green, and it tastes even greener than it is. It didn’t do it for me.

I went real italian and decided to get two dishes, a pasta and a meat. So for my pasta, the parpadelle with meat in a chianti sauce. I know it was friday, and it’s supposed to be fish on friday, but I ain’t catholic, so who cares. I picked it because on their menu, they have certain dishes marked as traditional florentine dishes. I wanted to try traditional, so I picked this one. This was super good! The pasta was nice and firm and the meat and sauce were highly flavorful and full of fresh herbs. Big thumbs up on this. And it was a really good sized portion. I was pretty much full.

Then came my chicken dish – chicken el diavlo (or something like that). It was the devil style chicken, devil, because it was supposed to be spicy. This was another dish that was traditional florentine. This chicken was cooked extremely well, tender, and juicy. But it was boring. So so so boring. It was just plain cooked chicken, and the skin had been brushed with some chili oil. There was nothing wrong with it, it was just too boring for me, and since I was fairly full, it wasn’t a big deal. I loved that it came with fries though, how traditional! But I ate them up because I really wanted a vegetable, even though I’m not sure how much a potato counts as a vegetable. I had some italian ketchup too, and it’s different than heinz or hunts, but I can’t exactly explain how it tastes different. It just does.

You’re in Florence, so all of the wait staff speaks english. So you don’t really have to worry. They’ll bring you an english menu by default. Service was quite fine. And the prices were reasonable too.

After dinner, I roamed around some more, and then ended my evening with some gelato. I mean, you can’t help yourself, because gelato spots are everywhere. There are multiple shops on every block. It’s like a requirement. I got some mixed berry and lemon, and it was a perfect way to end the night.

I love any party that has shrimp cocktail, don’t you? I had the honor of attending another party by the ever gracious R, and this party had a theme. It was a holiday pollyanna, but the opposite of “healthy and clean”. I’ll let you all figure that out on your own. Shrimp cocktail. I could eat this all day. Grapes… and a lovely salad that A brought.
This bean dish was definitely the appetizer hit of the evening. A mix of pinto, black-eyeds, pimentos, white corn, onions, vinegar, sugar, etc… it was the perfect topping to the chips below. I could have eaten this whole thing. In fact, I probably did eat most of it. Sorry!

A variety of cheese and crackers, as usual, along with some other tapenade type stuff. Did I mention how many chips I ate?

This is where I always go wrong… I stuff my face with appetizers so that I’m already practically full when the main course comes around.  Here we have some roasted tomato and fennel soup (seriously, who makes this kind of stuff?) and a three meat lasagna. Both were excellent, as always with R’s gourmet cooking. He puts the rest of us to shame!

In keeping with the theme of this little party, E created a special dessert. Let’s just use our imaginations to figure out what this dessert is shaped like. It is banana wrapped in bacon (yes, this dessert had bacon in it!) with two scoops of ice cream. :-) And this whole thing was flambéed! Using cognac, we lit these puppies on fire to burn off the alcohol. The fire looks fake in this photo, but it is totally real! I saw it! I felt it! It was so fun! And even though the dessert sounds odd, it was delicious! Thanks for another great party!