After Uffizi, Thursday lunchtime, I took a stroll to the Florence Central Market and stopped at Nerbone.
Nerbone, I’d heard a lot about it for a long time.
In her book The Food Lover’s Guide to Florence: With Culinary Excursions in Tuscany, American writer Emily Wise Miller wrote, “Nerbone is more than a sandwich vendor, it’s a contact vendor.”
While the arm-to-arm jam-packedness in a contact sport was nowhere to be seen here in February, I didn’t mind missing it at all. It took just a few minutes in the queue before I was served. Yey!
My friend, who had been to Nerbone the day before, warned me that the bread of the sandwich was hard. “You better order the dish, not the sandwich, and dip the complimentary bread slices into the dish to soften them.” Never a fan of hard bread, I was also starving. The sandwich wouldn’t work. The dish suited me just perfectly.
Un piatto di lampredotto e un calice di rosso, per favore. (A plate of lampredotto and a glass of red wine, please.) When I became the first in the queue, I said this to the young man across the counter, whose hair puffed up into a giant pompon in ebony.
He handed me a ticket after I paid. A tray with cutlery and a glass of red wine was also quickly prepared in front of me. I picked up the tray and went ahead to the serving area, where an uncle took my ticket and asked me if I would like to add some tomato sauce to the dish. It’s delicious, he told me with a beam. So how could I say no?
Then he asked me if I wanted it spicy. This time I shook my head.
It was after my headshake when the uncle found out the lampredotto had finished. He then went inside and took out on a stick a large, steaming bag-shaped object, put it on the chopping board, sliced it off with a knife, laid the pieces and bits on a white ceramic plate and poured a ladle of tomato sauce over.
Lampredotto is a dish of the cow’s fourth stomach, abomaso (stress on the bo syllable), abomasum in English. The surface of an abomasum is not smooth but full of creases, creating an unique mouthfeel. The Tuscan way of cooking and eating abomasum is to braise it in the stock for a long time until it gets tender, then cut it into small pieces, served in tomato sauce with bread, and never without a jug or a glass of Chianti.
I got to the seating area, placing my tray on an empty corner of a table. Once seated, I took a sip of the wine and the gentleman sitting diagonally across from me picked up his glass and made a toast to me.
This, is what I love the most about Italy.
Lampredotto was quite greasy so the acidity in the tomato sauce acted aptly as a palate cleanser. The bread slices, I used them for carrying the abomasum pieces and dipping into the tomato sauce. Both ways were fine. But in fact, had more tomato sauce been put into the plate and its temperature been higher, it could’ve been had as a delicious, heart-warming soup.
A plate of lampredotto with a glass of Chianti, according to the Tuscans, is a food-wine match made in heaven.
At my last few bites, the man sitting next to me had already finished his food and was about to leave. Every seat in the seating area was so close to each other. There were also people sitting behind me and him, which means he couldn’t leave without me getting up from my aisle seat. Yet, he didn’t ask me to let him pass, but just sat there quietly. Maybe he and his friends just wanted to take their time, or maybe he was shy. When Italians see an exotic face, they tend to avoid conversations because speaking English really scares them. I have lived in Italy for long enough, with much evidence in hand, to say this to be true. But anyway in no time I’d finished my food too. I got up, took my tray and was about to leave. Before I left, I said goodbye to them. We talked a little and they were surprised that I could speak Italian. I explained why, and we said goodbye again.
As I stepped out of the Central Market, I was greeted by the dome of sunshine glamorous as the Renaissance in its heyday, and felt unconditionally blessed.
