Review: Ristorante Cibrèo - Really Slow Food

(See end of post for photo info)

Sometimes you want to go out for an expensive meal. Not just expensive for the sake of being expensive. Just, expensive in order to experience a little luxury. Some fine food and good service un po della bella vita.

After polling of various friends and websites we settled on Ristorante Cibrèo. Most foodies passing through Florence choose the cheaper trattoria Cibrèo next door with its restricted menu, no booking, and no tablecloths. But we wanted to go posh. To be pampered.

The ristorante and the trattoria offer many of the same dishes. I assume that portioning is the same but the pricing at the ristorante is significantly more. All primi were listed at €20, all secondi at €36, with sweets at €15 (Not that we made it to the sweets).

We swallowed the price hike because we thought that we would be getting more for those extra Euros. If the food is the same as the trattoria’s, we reasoned, then everything else will be much better.

On arrival, we were greeted and then dithered over. Was our table ready or was it not? Eventually we were seated at the table nearest the door. So we sat down in comfort, looked around, and breathed in the bustling atmosphere.

Then we chatted.

Then we looked around some more.

And we chatted some more.

And we thought: ‘mmmm we’re thirsty’.

And we sat.

And we waited.

And we waited some more.

And eventually a man appeared, unbidden, with two bottles of water. He poured us each a glass of water and then left.

Cibrèo famously has a ‘spoken menu’. So where, in most restaurants, you would spend those first idle minutes reading the menu and choosing what dishes you might have, in Cibrèo you sit and wait for someone to come and talk through the menu with you.

And wait we did; with our glasses of water.

I think that the talking menu came to our table about 15 minutes after we had sat down. Now call me a lush, but if I have been sitting twiddling my thumbs in a nice restaurant for 15 minutes I’d like to twiddle whilst drinking something stronger than water. For this reason, I interrupted our spoken menu (actually a pleasant English speaking woman) to ask for some prossecco.

Ristorante Cibrèo, if you are reading this, here is a tip: if you are busy, give your customers a drink whilst they are waiting for your spoken menu to arrive. Maybe even a free one. It would make them happy. Don’t make them have to ask you.

I knew from my incessant web surfing and book reading what the menu would offer. I knew that there is no pasta, that Cibrèo is famous for soups, famous for offal, and for simple dishes with great flavours. And this was what the spoken menu offered us: fish soup, minestrone, egg and potato flan, soft polenta with parmesan and olive oil (for €20 - that has got to be some good polenta.) It offered us: veal, meatballs, raw red snapper, mackerel with salsa verde, roasted pigeon, and calves’ foot (anyone who puts calves foot on their menu is either insane or brilliant).

The sommelier came soon after we had placed our order already knowing what it was we were going to eat. Good service. He recommended a good Pinot Nero (mark-up, 3 times cost price).

Before the primi arrived, a selection of amuse bouche(s?) were brought out. We were each presented with a large plate with two tiny slices of bread. One with a truly excellent chicken liver pate, the other with an ordinary sun dried tomato. We were pointlessly told that ‘you must eat them with your fingers’. Along with these came small dishes with a very good tripe salad, an excellent spicy tomato ‘jelly’, some good tiny broad beans with pecorino, porcetta, and some marinated courgettes. All accompanied by some good small crusty rolls.

It was an interesting selection to whet our appetites. Our waitress told us that if we wanted any more of anything – there was really only a small taste of each dish – then to let her know. She then promptly disappeared until our plates were empty and we were again left waiting.

When they eventually arrived, the primi were universally loved and were the highpoint of the evening. The spicy fish soup was rich and deep in flavour, my delicate sformato was accompanied by a wonderful ragu (‘you must eat them together’), and the minestrone, despite being served in what looked like canteen crockery on top of a paper napkin, was a great success too.

After this early success there was much anticipation around the table for the secondi. Whilst we waited for them to arrive we had plenty of time to watch the table next to us being cleared after the couple who had come in after us finished up and left. Soon to be replaced by an equally glamorous couple causing another flurry of attention, handshakes, and pampering from the staff.

Next to them meanwhile, we waited.

We waited with four wineglasses in front of each of us. The sommelier had to be prompted to remove the empty glasses but the empty Pinot Noir bottle remained on the table.

Still, the starters had been good so we tried to subdue the feeling that we were being ignored and we tried to ‘enjoy’ the slow pace of the evening. When the mains finally arrived, we tucked in with gusto.

Dr B’s single (€36) artichoke was lukewarm (if not cold). The rabbit was totally overwhelmed by the sauce and the meat was dry and overdone. The veal, unattractively framed by crusts of bread on the plate, was just plain under whelming.

I really wanted to enjoy my dinner and the first thing I tasted on my plate was a mustard fruit (possibly a pear) that was roasted with my pigeon and it was wonderful. The legs, thighs, and wings of the pigeon weren’t bad and worked well with the roasted fatty mustard fruits. But the breast of it was inexcusably dry and overdone.

To accompany the primi were some very small contorni. A very nice puree of broccoli and anchovy, a small dish of puree potatoes, and some small balsamic onions. All meagre and lukewarm.

By this point in the evening at least one of our party was quite displeased with our meal. They were unhappy with the under whelming food and more so with the service. Or lack of it.

We were again left alone until after we had finished our secondi; when we actually had to grab someone to take our plates away. None of the staff seemed interested in whether we might be enjoying the food or not.

Now you could argue, quite reasonably, that if we were unhappy with the food we could have or should have flagged a waiter to let them know. But, for whatever reason, we didn’t.

It wasn’t until our plates were cleared that someone finally thought to ask how our secondi were. At that point we made it clear that the secondi hadn’t been good and that the service had been poor all evening. The waitress didn’t appear really to know what to say, but the owner appeared soon after to apologise.

His excuse was unexpected. He explained that the waitress who took our order believed that we had said we wanted to be served slowly. Though, I remember her saying something about things being slow when she took our order, we hadn’t requested this ‘slow service’.

The owner gave us a hundred sorrys and explained, remarkably, that Saturday nights are busy. We were then given two free desserts and a couple of jars of jam (we saw another couple getting these too). Nothing was taken off the bill which was well over €300.

I don’t doubt that dining at Cibrèo can be good; if only because it has been recommended by people whose opinions I trust. But if I am going to pay those amounts for Cibrèo’s take on haute-rustic Italian food then I want great service and top quality food. The food occasionally hit the mark but the service was way off doing so. We were left wondering what it was that we got for the extra money.

[ The photo at the top is taken from here on Flickr thanks to Creative Commons. The photo is accompanied by a brief review that basically says the complete opposite of mine. cosi e la vita as they may say round this way]