As you walk past the Piazza di San Lorenzo down Borgo San Lorenzo, you will notice what looks like a tiny, little restaurant front called Il Nutino on the right. However, as you walk in and head upstairs, you soon find that the restaurant seems endless.
As someone who usually orders appetizers, it was a little out of character for me not to get one, but I was planning on ordering my first Florentine steak, so I needed to save room for that. I just snacked on the bread, which in Florence isn’t typically good because it is unsalted and bland. BUT the bread they provided was the best bread I had tasted in Florence (really f-ing good). Then they brought my steak and potatoes dish. The steak was rare, as I learned that’s how it is usually prepared here, and was simply seasoned with salt. It was fantastic. It was a very tender and the outside had a really nice char. What made it even better was dipping it in a little olive oil. And then there were the potatoes on the side! They were crispy and flavorful with a salt and rosemary seasoning.
The second time at Il Nutino, we headed upstairs and it felt like we went through a ¼ mile maze to get to our table. By the time we sat down we were almost out of breath and very ready to eat. Thankfully, we had a really good meal in store for us.
Il Nutino makes homemade pasta every day, and you can tell the love that they put into their pasta as soon as it hits your mouth. I ordered a Florentine staple: the pappardelle with wild boar ragu. I thoroughly enjoyed this pasta. The pappardelle noodles were soft and fresh, and the ragu was a great partner to the pasta. The boar had some real good flavor to it, and you could tell the tomato in the ragu was fresh and juicy.
Takeaway: Come hungry if you order the amazing Florentine steak. Hysterically, our waiter wouldn’t let “the big Americans” leave until we finished every last bite of that steak. It is a lot of food, but it is all delicious. The pastas are also all homemade and are also not to be missed.
Score: 8.7/10
a dude eats abroad 