As Seen Abroad: Feasting on Memories at Alla Vecchia Bettola in Firenze

We’re on vacation! For the first time since we started this blog, we’re traveling abroad. As we journey across Asia, Europe, and America, we’ll update with some of the fun places we visit. Yay!

Yes, that’s right. Firenze. I’m doing it. You want to call it Florence, read this post through the app my wife uses to read menus in Italy. This is actually my second time in Firenze: the first was over Thanksgiving weekend in 2013. I spent several days with a group of degenerates at a local hostel, drinking cheap beers and hanging out at the greatest rock club of all time.

I also did some touristy stuff but whatever. One night, my new friends and I wandered into a restaurant down the street from our hostel. It was traditionally Italian in every sense, from the checkered tablecloths to the Italian families sitting around eating huge slabs of cured meats to the free Chianti on the table to the menu that was written only in Italian so the waiter had to patiently translate the whole thing for us. I ate rabbit pasta and it was one of the best and most memorable meals of my life.

Any time I have a friend visiting Florence looking for recommendations, I always tell them to seek this place out and they never do it because my friends are jerks. But this time around, I had Eriko with me, and I was ready to see if this restaurant, Alla Vecchia Bettola, was still there nine years later. Turns out it was, and it provided us with a fantastic date night in Italy.

The restaurant: Alla Vecchia Bettola

Still nestled into the same corner spot a few blocks south of the Arno river in Firenze, Alla Vecchia Bettola seems to have grown in popularity over the years. There’s now a lot of outside seating available, and even though we showed up right as it opened, the place was already packed. After we’d been sat at our tiny outdoor kids’ table off to the side away from everyone just how we like it, people kept showing up, waiting a long time for a spot at one of the many long tables.

Some things haven’t changed: the menu is still entirely in Italian (though this time Eriko’s app helped us read it), and Chianti is still free, though we opted for water. The wait staff consists entirely of middle-aged men who look like they haven’t been asked to wait tables in 30 years, continually flustered and handing out bread and plates at random. The charm is undeniable. We opted for three courses, along with a vegetable side after being upsold by the crafty proprietor.

Antipasti: melon and prosciutto

The bread was the only letdown of the meal, as we’d just come from Rome and Napoli, where delicious focaccia flows like some sort of flowing liquid and is vastly superior to the bread you get at restaurants in Tuscany. For an appetizer, we decided on prosciutto and melon, since Eriko had liked the prosciutto we’d had a few days before in Napoli, and the novelty of having it with melon seemed fun.

The prosciutto here was better than any we’d had on the trip thus far, and honestly better than any prosciutto I’ve ever eaten in my life. Perfectly salty, thick enough to cut but still razor thin, and paired with big honkin’ slices of soft, juicy cantelope. They matched each other perfectly, and we gobbled the entire plate iike the greedy pigs we are.

Pasta: pumpkin tortelli

I suggested pumpkin pasta to Eriko because I thought it would be a nice change of pace from the heavy pasta dishes we’d had throughout our trip. This was tortelli, which I assumed to be like big tortellini. I’ve had butternut squash ravioli before in the form of a frozen meal - would this taste like that?

You’ll never believe this, but it was much better than a frozen dinner. The four giant pieces of perfectly soft pasta were filled with a mixture of puréed pumpkin and cheese and who knows what else to deliver a knock-out punch to our taste buds. I couldn’t believe how good it was. One of the highlights of the trip for sure.

Secondi: rabbit and eggplant in marinara sauce

One of the meat options was a cute little bunny rabbit, and we are cruel awful people, so we ate that sweet little bunny and he was delicious. He came with mushrooms and was drenched in delicious rich salty juices. Only downside of eating rabbit is it’s tough to get the meat off the bone, sort of like with quail, so eventually I just picked it up and gnawed. Tastes like a cute furry chicken.

The side of eggplant in marinara sauce was basically an eggplant lasagna, with cheese and sauce covering the tender and soft eggplant. I was not excited about eating eggplant, but I could eat an entire meal of this. Very glad the server recommended we add a vegetable to our meal, and my only regret is we weren’t hungry enough to eat more.

The verdict

Alla Vecchia Bettola is still going strong and as good as ever. This meal was worth waiting nine years for, and reminded me of why traveling to new countries can be so amazing. I now have this memory with Eriko to go with one from when I was younger, reminding me of just how far I’ve come and how great life can be. Thanks to everyone at the restaurant for making the night wonderful, and I seriously cannot recommend eating here enough. Swim across the ocean if you have to. It’s worth it.

How was Firenze overall?

Unfortunately, Alla Vecchia Bettola is about the only thing in Firenze that’s remained consistent since I was last here. The city has become overrun with tourists, to the point where it’s almost uninhabitable. The locals have responded by becoming so rude I genuinely can’t wait to get to Paris.

Never in my life have I had so many people at train stations, hotels, and restaurants interrupt me, snap at me, bark orders at me like I worked there, or just turn and walk away while I was speaking to them. And that’s on top of the times people tried to bait-and-switch us on items we’d already paid for and the restaurants where we were told to leave before finishing our drinks because “someone has a reservation” (I never saw this happen to anyone else, only us).

At a certain point the pattern was clear, and it was impossible not to notice every time other tables got great service while everyone avoided my wife and I, the only interracial couple in sight, my wife the only Asian woman in sight, and us the only people in masks.

Whether it was racism, disdain for those concerned about COVID, or just plain dickishness, something is going on in Tuscany and it isn’t good. Firenze is no longer the charming and inviting city I remembered. I honestly can’t recommend it as a destination at all. Coming from Rome, where every server or store employee was kind and patient, and Napoli, where people seemed genuinely delighted to have us around to the point where my wife and I started talking about retiring there, this was an incredible disappointment. Since then, we’ve moved on to Venice, where everyone has been helpful and polite, making the experience in Firenze (and the few days we spent on the western coast near Pisa) that much more noticeable.

There were some bright spots. We ate a delicious sandwich at the Mercato Centrale and were helped by a very nice young man. At Cafe Gilli, open since 1733 (that’s older than America, you chumps), we relaxed and drank delicious cappuccino freddo and a shakerado, while the servers were super nice. I’d recommend those two places, and I’d say Alla Vecchia Bettola is worth going to Firenze to experience. Other than that, this town can kiss my - and I apologize for using this word - grits.

Nonetheless, I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to share this restaurant with Eriko and relive some fond memories. I’ll remember this place forever, so if you’re ever in Firenze, or even if you find your way to Florence, do not miss it.