Cheap Eats: Sandwich roundup across Central Italy
Spanish food is wonderful, but something that I dearly miss is a good option for eating well under €10. There's a huge gap between empanadillas (my favorite being the spinach variety) at €1 or 2, and the high value menús del día starting at €10. In between these price points is a gulf filled with Burger King value meals, industrially produced pizza, and kebab (though I don't mind a good one of the latter every now and then!).
Our neighbor Italy doesn't suffer from this problem! One of their delicious solutions is the humble sandwich, elevated to a higher level by being freshly prepared with a high quality ingredients.
In Pisa at Panineria L'Ostellino, I had this prosciutto crudotoscano (Tuscan cured ham), pecorino, melanzane (eggplant), and salsa verde sandwich on fresh baguette. Each ingredient would have been tasty on its own, but together they were a wonderful mix of flavors. This was €5.
Florence is well known for its meat products, so I had to pay a visit to Da'vinattieri to get this schiacciata (Tuscan bread) with lampredotto, made from the fourth and final stomach of a cow! It was basically like tasty braised meat, very tender. €4
Still in Florence, I paid a visit to All'antico Vinaio, which is amazingly ranked #1 in TripAdvisor. The fame is well-deserved: the sandwich is made with bread being constantly brought into the store from the bakery across the street, you can customize the sandwich however you'd like (except they will laugh at you if you ask for pesto or make caprese sandwiches), and a generous serving for only €5. Here I asked for a sandwich with porchetta, and asked for the sandwich maker to make the rest as he saw fit. What resulted was basically 2 lunches worth of pork, arugula, peppers, eggplant, and tomato spread between two halves of a flatbread.
Next up in Florence was Mariano, where I had a sandwich on the other side of the size spectrum from All'antico Vinaio. Here was a restrained serving of arugula and a few thin slices of pollo in galatina. The Florentine bread itself turned out to be quite bland.
Another modest sandwich in Florence was found at 'Ino, where it seems some hipster guys decided to set up shop in an old button store. They made a sandwich for me, using local bread and local meat, but when they said the local cheese was like gorgonzola, I asked for another type. I really liked the spirit in this place - very personal! Again, the local Florentine bread is quite bland.
Finally, during my stop in Bologna I had the good fortune to come across a Slow Food market and food fair! When I spied these round breads in one of the stalls, I knew I had to try it. I learned in my food tour from the morning that these Crescentine were kind of a lost food from the Bologna region, but were having a revival now. I ordered one with ragú inside (the other choice was cheese). Crunchy on the outside having been toasted on the griddle, the inside was lush and savory.
So there you have it - how delicious it can be to eat across Central Italy with these cheap, portable tastes of the region!
