A REALLY GOOD LUNCH: TRATTORIA SOSTANZA
A good lunch is a blessing. A good lunch is essential. At least once a month it’s worth removing yourself from the rhythms of the world and taking time to sit down properly and enjoy the midday meal. Dinner is not the same, restaurants at night are a little more full and a little more fraught. To get to know a restaurant go in the day. The sun comes in, the service is more relaxed—it’s more natural, it doesn’t have its makeup on. A good lunch feels exciting the way doing something slightly illicit feels exciting.
This good lunch can be an annual affair. Our family has our best lunch of the year each January at Le Grand Vèfour in Paris (which I’ve written about before). Walking across the Palais Royal to that meal is one of the great feelings, like having the lights go down before your favorite opera. And like the opera that lunch can require three hours and even require an intermission to stretch the legs.
But lunch doesn’t have to be that long, it can be tidy and still welcome. Which brings us to Sostanza, the wonderful trattoria in Florence. It’s no secret, it’s often full. It’s just about the perfect restaurant. A clean room with white-tiled walls, terrazzo floors, long tables and a concise menu. You might share a table with another group. There are incredible, makeshift collages framed on the wall, with old postcards, notes from patrons, photos of bicyclists, all overlapping each other. It’s the best modern art in Florence.
The menu is straight-ahead. If it’s artichoke season you’ll definitely want the artichoke omelet, though it’s more open faced than that sounds. (It’s a dish that’s nicely recreated at Via Carota in New York, though not a match for the original.) Order one per person as there have been raised eyebrows between loved ones struggling to share. There’s the famous buttered chicken, which arrives in a skillet. The butter is no lie, it’s right there to see and will impair any afternoon plans. Or you can step in the deep end with a Florentine steak, which is prepared on a small grate over a little wood fire in the spartan kitchen in back. There may be a wine list, but I’ve only ever seen people get the house red or white, which arrives in carafes. Dessert is wild strawberries with meringue.
The chefs start to file out of the kitchen around 2pm, while you’re finishing up. They carry their helps as they get on Vespas and ride off for a few hours before dinner. Then it’s time to go. Coffee isn’t offered. The bill is settled with cash. Did you get all that? Sostanza hasn’t changed because it can’t be improved upon. It remains one of the great equations anywhere. You step out into Florence and decide where to get a coffee, and the world feels a little more civilized, at least for a little while.
The small kitchen, clean after lunch. The square openings are used as grills. All photos: David Coggins