Insight Guides Tuscany

Insight Guides

• Verlag: Insight
• ISBN:
  9781780055435
• Auflage: 6
• Thema: Crescita personale
• Thema: Viaggi

Insight Guides: Inspiring your next adventure

Insight Guide Tuscany offers you a uniquely comprehensive approach to getting the most out of your trip to one of the most popular destinations in the world. Engaging chapters consider the region's fascinating history as birthplace of the Renaissance, putting into context the many artistic and architectural wonders on show.

Inside Insight Guide Tuscany:

Tips for exploring the breathtaking landscape and for tucking into the world-famous Tuscan cuisine and wine ensure that you don't miss a thing. The great cities of Tuscany, including Florence, Siena, Lucca and Pisa, are covered in addition to the off-the-beaten-track Tuscan towns, such as San Gimignano and Montepulciano.
Full-colour photographs throughout give you a true flavour of life in the region today.
Detailed maps plot all the major sights you'll want to see.
Travel Tips sections offer selective advice on where to eat and the activities available.

About Insight Guides: Insight Guides has over 40 years' experience of publishing high-quality, visual travel guides. We produce around 400 full-color print guide books and maps as well as picture-packed eBooks to meet different travelers' needs. Insight Guides' unique combination of beautiful travel photography and focus on history and culture together create a unique visual reference and planning tool to inspire your next adventure.

'Insight Guides has spawned many imitators but is still the best of its type.' - Wanderlust Magazine

Eating Out

Price Categories

Prices for a three-course meal per person with a half-bottle of house wine:

€ = under €30

€€ = €30–45

€€€ = €45–65

€€€€ = over €65

Tuscan cuisine is highly revered throughout food-focused Italy. In general, the food is rustic and simple, relying heavily upon fresh vegetables, legumes (pulses), meat and game.

Where to Eat

Italy has three traditional types of place to eat: a trattoria, a ristorante or an osteria. At first they may appear to be similar, and this is increasingly true, but to Italians they signify different types of dining experiences. A trattoria is more casual, serving basic regional dishes in an informal setting. Trattorie are often family-owned and have no frills. A ristorante implies somewhat fancier décor, more formal service, and more elaborate and expensive food. To make things more confusing, the osteria is historically a tavern-like wine shop where you can buy a glass of wine and perhaps a hunk of cheese, but the word is now used almost interchangeably with ristorante or trattoria.

Yet another type of eating establishment is the tavola calda or rosticceria, both of which are cafeteria-style places where several selections of hot dishes are prepared daily and served from a counter. You generally pay in advance and show the receipt to someone working behind the counter, who prepares a plate for you.

Although pizza has become a national dish, it is not one for which Tuscany is particularly famous. Eating in a pizzeria costs considerably less than in a ristorante or trattoria, and they generally serve only pizza and appetisers.

In general, a ristorante or trattoria serves both lunch and dinner. Lunch is generally from 12.30 to 3pm, and dinner from 7.30 to 11pm. Most establishments close one day a week and occasionally for lunch or dinner immediately preceding or following that day. Most Italian eating establishments close for holidays (ferie) once or even twice a year. Many restaurants close for at least two weeks around 15 August and sometimes another week or two in the winter.

What to Eat

You will notice that just about all menus are divided into more or less the same categories: antipasti (appetisers), primi (first courses), secondi (second courses), contorni (side dishes) and dolci (desserts).

Antipasto means ‘before the meal’, and these selections are usually served in small portions. Many restaurants offer an antipasto misto (mixed appetiser) that is often served buffet-style from a table laden with such dishes as melone con prosciutto (ham and melon) or grilled vegetables, and insalata caprese (mozzarella, tomatoes and fresh basil). Typical Tuscan antipasti are crostini, tomatoes or liver pâté on toasted bread; prosciutto di cinghiale, ham from wild boar; finocchiona, pork sausage laced with fennel.

Il primo is the first course, and in Tuscany that generally means hearty soup or pasta (increasingly you will also find risotto). Typical Tuscan primi include: acquacotta, onion soup that is a speciality of Arezzo; minestrone alla fiorentina, a vegetable soup with beans; panzanella, a bread salad often found on summer menus, whose ingredients also include tomatoes and basil; pappardelle con lepre or con cinghiale, broad noodles topped with a rich sauce made from hare or wild boar; ribollita, a rich vegetable soup with bread mixed into it; cacciuco, a rich fish soup that is reason in itself to travel to Livorno.

Il secondo is the main dish of meat or fish, usu...