Buca Lapi

There are restaurants you visit and restaurants you return to. Buca Lapi is, after one quiet Sunday in Florence, very much the second kind.

The room is exactly what you want it to be: vaulted brick cellar under Palazzo Antinori. We were seated near the back, given menus we hardly needed, and brought a small bowl of olives without being asked.

We started with grilled provoleta with chimichurri, which set the tone — generous, unfussy, and confident enough not to crowd what was coming. With it we ordered a Napa cabernet old enough to drink itself, and were glad of both.

Then the main event: bistecca fiorentina, the dish that puts Buca Lapi on every short list. Cut through it and you found that deep, beefy, almost iron-tasting interior that only comes from time and dry air. The signature touch — the oldest cantina in Florence, since 1880 — is not a gimmick; it is the reason to come.

For sides we asked for wild mushrooms in butter and hash browns the size of a hubcap. Both arrived hot, both arrived early, both were exactly large enough to overdo it. We overdid it.

Dessert was the bread pudding with bourbon sauce, mostly because the waiter raised an eyebrow when we hesitated. He was right to.

I paid the bill, walked out into the Florence evening, and put the address back into the notebook with a star next to it.