Il Profeta is one of the more well known restaurants in the city of Florence. It is located near the Santa Maria Novella area. It is a small, elegant, upscale restaurant that is ideal for special occasions. The staff is very accommodating, and the owner Claudio will 100% stop at your table at some point during your meal. You can tell that they care about every single detail at Il Profeta.
When my group visited, we may have set the world record for the amount of bread eaten in one night. Even though the servers must have thought we were gluttonous, they kept serving us up more fresh bread. This showed us that they really make an effort to make their patrons happy.
We only went to Il Profeta once, and we needed to get the full experience while we were there to see if the hype was real. This meant that we ordered an array of pastas to share.
The first pasta that we got was the pear ravioli. When it was brought to the table, I was immediately blown away by the presentation (look at the picture below). You can tell this is a high end establishment just from the way the food was presented. The pear ravioli was really good. The pasta was served with a light sauce on top which didn’t override the taste of the actual pasta. There was also a thinly sliced pear on the top for presentation purposes that was tasty. The sweetness of the pear went well with the savory flavor of the cheese. Although this pasta was good, it is not the “go to” dish if you are going to come here.
The next pasta we got was the famous “John Travolta Pasta”. And yes it is named after that John Travolta, because when he comes to Florence, this is the pasta dish he gets. This was easily my favorite pasta we ordered. Even though it was a small sample-size (because we were splitting it), I still enjoyed it a lot. The pasta is rigatoni-esque, and is covered in a vodka-like sauce. The sauce was the MVP of this dish. It was so tasty, and I needed more bread so I could dip it in the sauce. I actually wouldn’t let them take my plate away until I had every last drop of that sauce.
Originally we were just going to get those two pastas, but then I noticed some amazing looking dish that a lot of other tables were ordering. As I’ve mentioned before, I am someone who loves to order cool-looking dishes. After summoning our server and asking her what that dish was, we decided to order it. It turns out it was a parmesan shell filled with noodles and a cream sauce over a yellow sauce, based from some vegetable (can’t remember). The presentation of the pasta is a show in itself, as the owner Claudio will come over and break open the parmesan shell for you and mix the pasta. The dish however was underwhelming. The cream sauce was very rich and lacked flavor. I also was not a huge fan of the yellow sauce under the parmesan shell. I am happy we tried it as the “show” of the chef cutting the shell at our table was pretty cool, and I would’ve been upset if I never got to taste it.
We weren’t going to get dessert, but the owner Claudio kept hyping up the tiramisu, and ended up giving us a piece for free. Another reason Il Profeta is special; such amazing service and passion for their food. The tiramisu itself was ok, nothing crazy. We were just super appreciative that we got it on the house, so we polished it off.
Takeaways: Il Profeta is one of the more well known restaurants in the city. It is definitely a tourist-friendly restaurant, but a special experience. The service is amazing, and they will take great care of you as soon as you walk in the door. It is an upscale restaurant, so be prepared to spend a decent amount of money here. The food was good, but it was not memorable. Although the pear and John Travolta pastas were very good, I could list tons of other pasta recommendations in the city that are not as pricey.
Score: 7.6/10
a dude eats abroad 