Buca Mario

Florence

We knew we had to do bistecca alla Fiorentina while in Florence, so went to Buca Mario, which has been open since 1886. The servers have been there for 40 years. They’ve been serving the same type of food for 140 years, which is pretty amazing. Everyone you talk to in the city says this is the place to get great steak. We got a big 1.1kg porterhouse of that local beef. It looked like it had no marbling at all — it looked completely lean. But you taste it and it has this kind of palate coating flavour that I still don’t really fully understand where it comes from. I thought it would be tough and dry. It was quite the opposite.