Alle Murate
Via Ghibellina, 52r
Tel.: 011-39-055-24-06-18
Closed: Monday
Price: High moderate
Credit cards: All major
Food: 85 Wine: 84 Service: 87 Ambience: 90 Rating:
86
You know wine is important here as soon you walk
in the door and look down. Visible undernearth the
plastic glass floor of the bar-cum-entryway are
botteles of wine nestled in earth. As you arrive at
your tabel, owner Umberto Montano fills everyone's
glass with white wine or spumante, on the house, so
there's something nice to sip while contemplating
the menu. Montano admits he opened his restaurant as
an excuse to collect more wines. He invites
wine-savvy diners to rummage around in his crowded
cellar for something to drink with dinner.
The menu is short but creative. Montano
insists that everything be made at the restaurant,
so there are no salami, prosciutto or smoked fish
appetizers. You might start with a bowl of Tuscan
white bean soup garnished with shelled shrimp. A
house specialty, tortelli filled with eggplant,
makes a terrific pasta course, dressed simply with
melted butter, fresh thyme leaves and a light
dusting of Parmesan. The menu is heavy on roasted
and braised dishes that can sit, so the tiny kitchen
can concentrate on cooking pasta to order. There is
no grill.
Chocolate lovers should not miss the dense,
bittersweet chocolate torta.
Each course offers four or five choices, all
priced the same. There is also a tasting menu for
70,000 lire ($43), and if you see something on the
main menu you want, Montano will include it.
Wine prices are fair. The choices are strongest by
far in Tuscany, especially among the super-Tuscan
reds. We drank Querciagrande 1990 from Podere
Capaccia, 30,000 lire on the list ($18), a
barrique-aged Sangiovese that went down smoothly.
The house wines are also special. Montano has
five wines botteled specially for his other
operation, Caffè Italiano: a Cardonnay from Friuli,
a Chianti Classico, a bulk-process sparkling wine, a
dry Malvasia and a sweet Verduzzo, all of them
agreeable wines at modest prices.
Montano teaches at the hotel school in
Florence, which accounts for the friendly
professionalism of the service. The dining rooms are
small and the decor settles for homey modern rather
than attempting to be stylish, but it all adds up to
an enjoyable experience, a case of the whole being
greater than the sum of its parts. -H.S.
