Beyond Bistecca, BBQ alla fiorentina
Big photo, big bbq. Yes, bbq. We’ll let the photo speak for itself and make it short but sweet. Perhaps savory is a more appropriate way to put it. It’s really quite simple, two Florentine brothers, fascinated with the sizzle that American summers and picnics are made of, crave a restaurant that serves bbq in their home town. And given that transcontinental culinary exports usually trigger the translation process of how to express a foreign concept on one’s home turf, an idea flares through the siblings’ mind like the flame of a gas burner. Americans are good grillers, but Italians are the masters of cottura a legna – think puffy, blistering Neapolitan pizzas or peposo, the pepper-laced beef stew from Impruneta – so why not do bbq in a wooden hearth in the heart of Florence? No, not by the Duomo or other fancy squares, but in San Frediano where one of the last outposts of real, lived-in Florentine neighborhoods continue to thrive. Don’t expect molasses slathered on ribs but an Italian interpretation of an American term referring to a style of meat preparation; in a sense it could confer a new dimension of appreciation for Italian-American cuisine, considering how Italians slowly adapted their native cooking to products/produce on American soil and eventually the cuisine transformed into something else. Neither better nor worse, just different. The same concept of adaptation is applied at BBQ, just the other way around. And perhaps we could add that when done right with freshness and quality, reinterpreting an international cuisine can be sustainable for its local approach and experimentation with foreign ideas. Now that’s some food for thought.
BBQ: Piazza Torquato Tasso 9/10r Firenze. Tel 055.5120376