1. The Hunger
It was early afternoon on our last day in Florence. We had postponed lunch, and now I could feel the hunger rising.
“I just need a sandwich,” I mumbled as we walked down the narrow Via de Neri.
At that moment, I noticed people on the other side of the street sitting on the curb eating… sandwiches. But the fair and industrious Trudy would not be distracted.
“It must be down further…” she said, studying her map and guidebook, periodically looking up to orient herself.
As we walked, the crowd of sandwich-eating-people grew. Now they were in the street and on the sidewalk beside us. All of them were eating sandwiches from the same place, All’antico Vinaio. And now I saw this place on the other side of the street.
“Let’s go there,” I said, with a (not so subtle) hint of desperation.
2. Lampredotto
“We’re almost there,” Trudy said. Then she stopped. “Here it is!”
Club del Gusto was a small place with one or two tables on the sidewalk in front of a small window that said, Trippa e Lampredotto. We walked thru the door past a narrow kitchen where two guys were cooking while a single customer ordered a late lunch. We sat at a broad wooden table in the back, and just a few moments later the owner, Paolo, walked up and began speaking in English.
He apologized for the menu being exclusively in Italian and proceeded to explain each dish with loving detail. And he gave us a gift of lampredotto to try before we ordered.
They brought the lampredotto to our table on a small, wooden board. It was served hot on crispy bread, and seeing as Trudy took a pass, I ate it all myself. When Paolo came back, I pointed to the empty board and said, “It’s good!”
Paolo’s eyes widened.
“Ah,” he said, “well now we know!” And he laughed. Then he reached down with his left hand and slid the board to the far end of the table. Now we know, he said, as if I had told him something he didn’t know.
An old man was sitting nearby finishing his pasta lunch and had been watching us. As the board came to a stop, he laughed.
3. About that Sandwich Place
After we had finished our (delicious) lunch, Paolo came back to talk. The rush was over, and he had two capable guys running the kitchen.
I explained to him how I had barely made it past the gauntlet of sandwiches just up the street but how Trudy had known what she was looking for.
We could see the look of frustration in his eyes at the mention of the sandwich place. And he told us how TripAdvisor has thousands of reviews for the place and as a result, as people come walking down the street they stop to have a sandwich there before ever making it as far as his place.
Now, admittedly, if it’s a sandwich you’re looking for, then stopping up the street is the right thing to do. Even in retrospect, I admit that those paninnis looked really tasty.
Paolo continued, “I know these are hard economic times. I know that quantity is good, but…” And here he paused momentarily, “but, quality is important, also.”
And that, my friends, is what Trudy had been looking for in the first place. And that is what we got. And it is a lucky thing, because (well, let’s be honest) I can have a pretty good sandwich just down the street from here, but lampredotto and Paolo’s pasta, that’s another matter entirely!
