Eat like the locals in Florence: Florentine lampredotto

Last visit: February 2025

My rating: 9/10

Price: €/€€€€€

Cuisine: street food

Lampredotto is not just a sandwich: it is an initiation rite, a declaration of belonging, an entire chapter of Florence’s social history and tuscan cuisine. And, like all truly authentic things, it is also a slightly monstrous creature — in the most affectionate sense of the word.

Florentine lampredotto is the fourth and final chamber of a cow’s stomach: a piece of tripe with a rough, wavy, almost marine appearance, named for its ancient resemblance to the lamprey, the fish that once swam up the Arno. It is a humble, working-class cut, born when Florence was an industrial city and every part of the animal was respected and used. And even today, while hordes of tourists wander around looking for 1.2-kg steaks and carbonara (sacrilege!) served in Piazza della Signoria, the lampredotto stalls remain where they have always been — unmoving, indifferent to trends, like bastions of a Florence that never yields.

I’ve eaten lampredotto from several stalls over the years, but the sensation is always the same: you walk up, look at the cauldron bubbling like a medieval alchemist’s pot, see the lampredotto simmering in hot broth with celery, tomato, and onion, and you instantly understand this is not something you can improvise. The trippaio lifts it from the pot like an oracle drawing out a prophecy, lays it on the chopping board — a board so steeped in history it could tell you more stories than the Bargello Museum — and slices it with a quick, decisive gesture. Then comes the choice: salsa verde, spicy sauce, or both (the correct answer is obviously both).

The bread — a Tuscan rosetta that falls apart to perfection — is dipped into the broth like a gastronomic baptism: a simple gesture, yet with a sensuality all its own. And then comes the bite: melting fat, herbal notes from the salsa verde, a hint of vinegar, the spice that surprises you but never overwhelms. It’s a complex flavor, archaic, urban, elegant and brutal at the same time: Florence, in sandwich form.

Eating lampredotto means accepting that real cuisine is not born from Michelin-starred menus, but from the street, from the people, from centuries of necessity and ingenuity. It means accepting that sometimes the best part of the animal isn’t the noble one, but the one most people would rather ignore. And it means recognizing that the city is taking you by the hand and saying: “Do you truly want to know me? Then start here.”

The stall itself makes no pretenses: two stools, a few paper mats, customers chatting in thick dialect, a constant flow of workers, retirees, students, and only a few brave tourists (usually the ones unafraid to live). It’s the kind of place where you feel like part of the city even if you aren’t; a place where Florence, the real Florence, breathes again—completely indifferent to whoever is standing in line at the Uffizi.

If you want to eat something that tells the story of Florence better than any guidebook, go to a trippaio (tripe man), order a lampredotto bagnato (wet lampredotto) with salsa verde and spicy sauce, and let yourself be carried away. Close your eyes at the first bite and you’ll hear the city speaking to you in an ancient and beautiful language.

Buon appetito — and welcome to the real Florence.