Trattoria Zà Zà

Piazza del Mercato Centrale has been the gastronomic heart of San Lorenzo since 1874. The iron-and-glass covered market — designed by Giuseppe Mengoni, the same architect who built Milan's Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II — fills every morning with Florence's finest produce: Chianina beef from the Val di Chiana, Tuscan pecorino, wild boar from the Maremma, the season's first porcini, and the kind of zero-kilometre vegetables that define central Italian cooking at its most honest. Trattoria Zà Zà opened its doors on the same piazza in 1977, and in nearly five decades has never once pretended to be anything other than what it is: a big, boisterous, thoroughly Florentine trattoria built for groups of hungry people.

The dining room is a sprawl of long shared tables, terracotta floors, and walls papered with the photographs, postcards, and graffiti of a restaurant that has absorbed generations of Florentine life without ever being precious about it. The eclectic decor — part Tuscan farmhouse, part vintage poster gallery — reflects a restaurant that has survived by being useful rather than fashionable. Tourists and locals have always shared the same benches here, united by the same appetite.

The menu is a compendium of Florentine necessity. Ribollita — the twice-cooked bread-and-vegetable soup that is the city's most democratic dish — arrives in a generous terracotta bowl, thick enough to eat with a fork. Pappa al pomodoro, the Tuscan tomato-and-bread soup that requires ripe August tomatoes and good olive oil and nothing else, is served year-round and executed with conviction. The pasta programme is solid: pappardelle with wild boar ragù, tagliatelle with truffle, pici with the brutal simplicity of garlic and oil. And then the bistecca fiorentina — the Chianina T-bone, sold by the kilogram, cooked over charcoal to the city's prescribed medium-rare, rested, seasoned with salt and the finest Tuscan olive oil. The measure of every Florence trattoria and at Zà Zà, reliably correct.

The wine list leans hard into Tuscany: Chianti Classico from the Gallo Nero producers, Morellino di Scansano from the Maremma coast, and an affordable house wine by the carafe that does the job admirably. The house wine costs €4 a glass, which in the context of contemporary Florence represents something close to a public service.

There is a particular problem with team dinners in Florence: the finest restaurants are configured for intimate couples or corporate power tables of four, while groups of eight to fifteen people with a shared expense account and unaligned dietary requirements need something altogether different. Trattoria Zà Zà solves this problem without drama. The long tables accommodate large groups naturally, the menu offers enough variety that no one goes unfed, and the pricing is benign enough that the evening doesn't become an exercise in expense report justification.

The ribollita to share as a starter, the bistecca fiorentina carved tableside, the Chianti Classico by the carafe — it is the kind of meal that generates conversation and goodwill without requiring anyone to perform their knowledge of haute cuisine. For post-conference dinners, offsite team gatherings, or the end-of-project celebration that simply needs to feed people well and generate warmth, few addresses in Florence deliver with more reliability. The piazza setting adds the ambient context of the city without the formality that can make large group dinners feel like corporate obligation.

"Brought twelve people here after a conference session. The ribollita arrived in a pot large enough for the whole table. The bistecca for six people was properly rested and carved correctly. Carafe of Chianti. Everyone was fed and happy for well under €40 a head." — Join to read full reviews