Hunting For Details at Semel
In flashy Florence it’s easy to feel lost under the Duomo’s imposing shadow and the golden glitter of Ponte Vecchio. Where to go for real details, small yet significant splices of Florentine culture? How can one’s eyes drink in an entire piazza and feast on a singularity within the same moment? CiboChat’s answer naturally comes in the form of food. Amidst the bevy of food stalls, chatter, bursting colors and shapes, and throbbing food commerce that is Mercato di Sant’Ambrogio in Piazza Ghiberti, let your glance go askance. Raise your eyes above the heads of shoppers, above the husky voices of stall owners, you might glimpse a slip of storefront marked by a wild boar’s head.
Duck into Semel and you’ll find yourself surrounded by a surplus of details in this tiny space. Deer horns and hunting-themed knickknacks hang from the brick walls, ducks swim across small ceramic plates hanging from the counter, the shop’s elegant postcard with wild boar stamp is tucked into a wooden holder. The owners greet you by name, wearing crisp tailored shirts and classy ties adorned with a miniature wild boar pin. What to order? The food detail here is singular: sandwiches. But not any old sandwiches stuffed to the nines with a million different ingredients. Consult the mini-chalkboards lining the counter and you’ll find that each indicates a game meat stew or filling – hare, donkey, wild boar, deer, or salt cod and vegetable options for non meat eaters, to name a few – take your pick and it will be lovingly laid on a small white roll that used to be called “semel” thanks to an Austrian diffusion of the world during the Lorena dynasty in Tuscany. The sandwich is served on a small plate on top of a seemingly tailor-sized paper wrap stamped with the Semel logo and omnipresent wild boar’s head.
Take a small bite, not too big or else you might devour too quickly the savory moment, and you just might hear the sounds of hunting dogs and smell a woodland air in addition to the fragrant, elegantly rustic flavors of your sandwich. Albeit fully immersed in the city buzz of Florence’s historic center, Semel is a place where you can get lost within a detail, where the rabbit-hole marked by the unnamed sign outside draws you into a fascinating den of unique traits not found elsewhere. And yes, it’s probably the only place in Florence where you can try donkey meat, or ciuco, as the locals call it here.