It’s Friday night and that means dinner out. This week we used our GroupOn to Bistrò del Mare. This is a seafood restaurant located along the Arno. TripAdvisor has it ranked #47 of 795 eateries in Florence. I picked up the GroupOn several months ago for €39 (a €98 value) which included an antipasto of the day, primi of trofie pasta with seafood, secondi of Branzino, and dolce of “The Kremlin”. Cinzia isn’t a big seafood fan, but I knew she’d like the pasta and main course, only the antipasto and the mysterious “Kremlin” were risky.
The restaurant is very tastefully laid out with a clean black and white look. Artwork from featured artists hang on the walls with new artists rotated in every 3 months. The main dining area has about eight tables with more in a side room. Black cured olives, warm fritters, and crusty homemade bread arrived at our table while we awaited the antipasto.
Cinzia ordered a glass of white wine. While the antipasto was just what I was looking for, I also knew I’d have the added bonus of getting to eat all of Cinzia’s as well. A small plate with about a dozen lightly battered and fried anchovies on a small green salad were put in front of me. They were tender, salty, and crunchy.
The primi, or first course, was trofie pasta with clams, mussels, shrimp, and white fish in a light tomatoe sauce. It was served in a single large platter where we could then serve ourselves. Nice dish and plenty of pasta, but the white fish had bones that had found their way throughout the dish – very annoying.
The secondi, or second course, was branzino (sea bass). I had read several reviews and many people said this was their specialty. It was delicious! Two nice sized fillets pan fried in butter until they were crispy on the outside and tender on the inside.
We had no idea what to expect for dessert. The GroupOn ad said we’d be “seduced by the Kremlin”. I used Google’s language tools to translate the Italian GroupOn ad into English, so you couldn’t be 100% sure that it was accurate. Often times when we go out to eat here in Italy they know we’re Americans and automatically hand us the English menus. We always ask for the Italian version because the translations are always so poor. (You’re going to pass up the “ham and cheese sandwich with tomatoes” only to kick yourself later when you find out it was a “Prosciutto di Parma e mozzarella di bufala panino con pomodori di San Marzano”.) So, what was this Kremlin? It turned out to be a rich chocolate mousse with a coating of Rice Krispies and strawberry sauce. Very tempting indeed (and filling too). We were both stuffed after the meal.
After dinner we walked back to our apartment passing through Piazza della Signoria and the Palazzo Vecchio where an orchestra was playing for the late night crowd. It was 10:30pm at this point, but the streets and piazzas were crowded with locals and tourists alike.