3) The old allure of Dolceforte
“Journeying is the food of the mind”: I don’t know if I invented this phrase, or whether it was coined by someone more clever and ...
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GUIDE TO ITALIAN LIVING
The Prince, the Ghost, and the Cook
The Bardi castle stands tall and proud on a ridge of the Apennines, to the south of Parma. It’s a paradise for view-seeking motorcyclists, ...
Bizzarria
The fruit known as the Bizzaria has a truly extraordinary story, and it’s worth taking the time to tell it. Among the rarest of...
Don’t be a boar!
Can the wild boar be considered one of the cornerstones of Tuscan cuisine?[Stefano P. Frassineti, 2021] To misquote the great Tuscan comic Carlo...
Il Ranavuottolo
When Giacomo Leopardi and his friend Antonio Ranieri (whom he had met in Florence) arrived in Naples in 1833, Leopardi was a prematurely-aged, 35-year...
Rivers of wine: a dream that comes true
It’s an image beloved of the sots and the dipsos, a story of being able to drink unlimited quantities of wine to your heart’s content. It&...
The Return of the Fireflies
We were having dinner with friends the other evening. In Florence, a beautiful house with a garden. A summer storm forced us to eat inside. But the h...
The Little Fish
Summer, according to the calendar, is with us. Scientists are broadly behind the decree that no longer requires us to wear masks outside. The commerci...
Coffee Concert, a type of art
Even in the theatre, somehow, the French Revolution marked a watershed. By “revolutionary” decree, the monopoly on the theatres was abolis...
Pellegrino’s Pilgrimage
It was back in 2011 that I received a phone call from my friend Leonardo Romanelli. It went more or less like this: - Have you ever heard ...
Sammezzano Castle
It’s no overstatement to say that if the Sammezzano Castle stood somewhere other than in Italy, it would attract visitors from far and wide. ...
The Etruscans: beauty and mystery
There is hardly a corner of southern Tuscany or northern Lazio that doesn’t speak in some way of an old civilization – the Etruscans, who ...
The unbelievable history of Consonno
For a thousand years, Consonno slumbered on the slope above Olginate, near Lecco, as did its 250 inhabitants. The Second World War reduced that number...
Luca Cesari: the story of pasta in ten dishes
We can’t tell you which ten dishes Luca Cesari discusses in his book. And we’re not going to tell you why "everything you know – or ...
Edible spring
È primavera svegliatevi bambine…. sang the great Alberto Rabagliati in the mid-twentieth century. Spring: the season of reawakening. Aft...
Iris, the flower of Florence
The morning air is full of scents, and the pollen is dancing through it. I rub my eyes and start sneezing. Good to see that my allergy has arrived ri...
Triora: witches and stones
A sense of expectation hangs in the air, a mysterious – or maybe mystical – feeling that something is about to happen. Your steps ring dry...
The Legend of the Black Rooster
June 1988. The green Volkswagen Beetle winds through the Chianti with deliberate slowness, on the legendary route 222. My parents in front, me in the ...
The Picnic Mythology
Anyone who thinks that Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe represents the first picnic in history is much mistaken. In actual fact, the origi...
Cultured vulgarity
We often smile when we hear certain expressions from the old peasant dialect, usually colorful and brutal in some way. We think of ourselves as proud ...
Timballo, and epic hunger
The late 1990s saw the Americans express their love for Italians by releasing a film about them; in particular, it expressed their love – obsess...
Casentino: a hidden gem
Legend has it that in building Florence’s Palazzo della Signoria, now the iconic Palazzo Vecchio, the architect Arnolfo da Cambio was aiming for...
Arcimboldo: when food is an art form
We are living a historic moment and food is the unrivalled protagonist. Cooking has become a spectacle, brought to our TVs by celebrity chefs who intr...
Pruning: rest and rebirth
It’s winter, and the vines are enjoying some well-deserved respite after the harvest. The leaves have fallen to the ground and the bare branches...
Pici. But you can call them Pinci
Pici, pinci, appicciare...what are you talking about? That would have been the response of any number of Florentines, had they been asked if they kne...
If wine can be melodramatic
Versa vino, eccellente Marzemino! The wine that is sung more than any other is Marzemino, thanks to its mention in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Accord...
Parmigiana di Melanzane: a mystery
The "mela insana" (crazy apple) was brought to Italy by Arab merchants at the turn of the fifteenth century. The eggplant began to appear in Sicilian ...
Home delivery: something old, something new
There’s nothing new about the idea of having food delivered to your door, just like there’s nothing new about takeaway: food on the go is ...
Happy Birthday Le Tre Rane!
It’s hard to believe, but Locanda Le Tre Rane – Ruffino will be celebrating its first birthday on Friday 23 October! The desire to open a...
A taste of the Renaissance
The winding road that leads to Chianti from Bagno a Ripoli abruptly unfurls with a view on the left that’s only interrupted by the verticality o...
Le Tre Rane - Ruffino
Legend has it that Le Tre Rane was an inn that a young Leonardo da Vinci opened on Florence’s Ponte Vecchio, with an inspiring vision that food ...
It’s a good story, the story of Ruffino
Like the straw around a flask, Ruffino’s history is a story woven from truth and legend, the certifiable and the cinematic. During the First Wor...
Monteriggioni, the non-existent Inferno
Out of the hundreds and thousands of jewels set in Italy’s crown, Monteriggioni holds a special place. Despite the myriad magical walled towns t...
Caterina’s taste
It is well known that the Italian language has its roots in the fourteenth-century Florentine that was spun so sublimely by Dante, Petrarch and Boccac...
Sunday Lunch
I still remember those noisy lunches at grandma’s. The house was small, but the dining room, which was used only once a week and was otherwise k...
Le Tre Rane Estate
It’s been over a month since Poggio Casciano returned to some kind of normality, and again we’re welcoming plenty of food and wine enthusi...
The city that invented the skyline
There’s probably nothing that hasn’t been said before about San Gimignano and its history, its golden century - its golden age - when it b...
Vinum, the Etruscan legacy
Few ancient peoples elicit charm and mystery in equal measure: the legacy of the Etruscans became sedimented in the country’s past, fully comple...
Le Tre Rane to your door
The long lockdown severely limited our restaurant activity, but it didn’t stop us from thinking and planning. In fact, we used the time to laun...
Firenze Jazz Festival
It’s still very hot for September. The sun presses down with its sheen of milky humidity and the constant cicada chorus blends with the voices o...
History of a successful flask
2020 is a significant year for one of Ruffino's most significant wines. The Ruffino flask is back holding the local red, Chianti Rufina DOCG: a proud ...
Discovering lost citrus
Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s reputation far exceeds the breadth, and perhaps also the depth, of his artistic output. The artist from Lombardy is one of...
When breakfast matters
Waking up, that sudden reconnection with the harsh everyday reality and a way of turning it into something special: breakfast. The frescoed ...