Sunset Dinner in Tuscany

Midweek in our Tuscan villa stay in Certaldo, we took a day off from tower climbing for some local sightseeing….

…and ended the day with a visit to another local restaurant recommended by our travel agent: Le Grotte in Fiano, just a few miles from the villa.

The small restaurant featured beautiful views of the Tuscan hillsides, so we opted for the outdoor seating, joined only by a German couple on vacation with their dachshund.

It was a lovely evening…that lingered in true Italian fashion.

I wasn’t nearly as hungry from driving around as I had been climbing towers the previous two days, so I ordered a wood oven pizza donned with a white local cheese, olives, zucchini, and mushrooms. Geoff got adventurous, ordering gnocchi with pesce (fish) and the famous Florentine steak, Bistecca alla fiorentina.

In these small, family-run restaurants, the meal is made to order from the fresh ingredients available, so a wait is to be expected, even welcomed. We settled in to a slow sunset and reflected on our visit thus far: the spectacle of Rome, the vast treasure of Florence to be revisited tomorrow, and the unexpected jewels found in our off-the-beaten, just-follow-the-map discovery of surrounding Tuscany.

After an hour or so, my pizza arrived. Sometime later, Geoff’s gnocchi. And somewhere in our conversation, a man casually walked past us and began to light a fire in the outdoor grill. He also lit some outdoor lamps, and we barely gave a passing thought to any connection between the grill and our dinner. Meanwhile, daylight began to fade into early evening.

Between the gnocchi and my pizza and several glasses of water, we were happily satiated and sedated, drinking in the quiet beauty of dining in the sunset on a Tuscan hillside. Then the man walked right past our table with an enormous side of beef on a plate, proceeding directly to the grill of chestnut embers. We jokingly wondered aloud if that could be Geoff’s steak! Couldn’t be! But, indeed it was.

It could have easily been 45 minutes later, but by now we were lost in la dolce vita and time no longer had any relevance. It was, however, dusk when the man presented Geoff with a T-bone that could have easily fed our entire family of five. Our mouths dropped open before we remembered to say grazie to the man who stood proudly over his culinary achievement.

No longer hungry, we ate for the sheer relish of it. I can’t imagine a tastier, more perfectly seasoned cut of steak. The seasonings (drizzled with olive oil and topped with rosemary) were unlike American/western beef, but the flavor of the beef was not masked. Rather, it was intensified.

Dusk descended into a starlit sky, and more locals drifted in for the more typical Italian ritual of late evening dining. For us, the night was already full, as were our stomachs. We had spent four of the loveliest, most leisurely hours around a quiet outdoor table for two that we had ever known. The food was incredible. In one of the most perfect places on earth. At sunset. La dolce vita.