Santa Lucia, Florence

The hotel staff recommended this restaurant and we returned, five times!!! The food is superb, nothing like it in the United States. We enjoyed the staff, they were very attentive and made our visits memorable. The evenings we went early, they showed us how the food was made and gave us free limencello (good for the digestion, of course!). I can not recommend this restaurant highly enough. DON'T MISS IT!!!

We could have eaten at Santa Lucia every day while in Florence. Yes, almost all Italian restaurants know what they're doing, but this one was one of our favorites in all. Service was fast, friendly, and the menu offered lots of choices. When the waiter realized we were not from Spain or England, but American, he offered to put tomato sauce on our quatro fromage pizza. We got it and found that it was lightly covered under the cheeses with fresh, ground, drained tomato. Very nice. The tiramisu was perfect as well. Even though the restaurant was catagorized as casual, there were fresh white linens on the tables. There was more than one dining room which gave it a cozy feel. It must have been someone's home at one time. It is an easy walk from the train station and happened to be near our hotel in a quiet neighborhood. In the US it would be almost one of those "gem" hole in the walls but upscale, not a greasy spoon. You could tell by just walking in and breathing the cooked air, that it was going to be good, real good.