We’ve written before about Teatro del Sale, the Florentine members-only social/supper club operated by the owner of the city’s renowned Cibreo restaurant. But the opportunity to have lunch at Teatro is one of the main reasons that drew us back to Florence for our brief two day, beginning-of-the-trip excursion. That and trying to unlock the mystery of what makes Teatro del Sale so special and how we could translate its concept into the new Bella Italia.

Located in the Sant’Ambrogio neighborhood of Florence, about a ten minute walk from the Duomo, Teatro del Sale is a little hole in the wall that you have to be looking for to find. The entrance, just around the corner from a popular tripe stand and in the complex of Cibreo restaurants known affectionately as Cibreo Citta is unimpressive and belies what lies on the other side of the swinging wooden entrance doors. You enter to a rich, wood paneled room laid out like an old fashioned general store or apothecary, with a modest selection of gourmet goods and other foodie products lining shelves from floor to ceiling. Behind the counter, which runs the length of the ‘shop’ you will find a manager who guards access to the private rooms beyond.

Teatro del Sale is a circo-lo or private club, but membership is hardly exclusive. Anyone with an interest in good food and willing to abide by the club’s simple rules of civility can pay the annual membership fee and join. Like that you are a member of one of Florence’s most unique clubs, complete with your own membership card.

You want to join because Teatro del Sale is a great place to relax and enjoy a meal. We primarily visit it at lunch, which is served buffet style around 1:00 in the afternoon, but its fame and notoriety derives from the performances that take place there nightly on the stage which gives this place its name. Several years ago we enjoyed an American style blues performance by an Italian performer, but the real entertainment was to sit among our fellow soci, or members, and watch the Italians enjoy this American phenomenon.

Our lunch was more relaxed and less of a food frenzy than we have experienced in the past. Perhaps because we have not yet reached the height of the tourist season, the crowd was smaller and much more relaxed than our past visits, which have seen large groups of tourists mobbing the buffet table in search of an inexpensive meal. In contrast, today’s group consisted of 15-20 Italians in groups of 2-4, including Fabio Picchi, the owner of Cibreo and the Teatro, who spent the lunchtime oogling over a small child, presumably his grandchild. The less hectic atmosphere was a welcome and pleasant change of pace, particularly under the day’s threatening Florentine skies. A sense of peacefulness laid over the club, allowing the restaurant’s two main protagonists, a young Italian kitchen manager and the dining room manager, to interact with us and even provide table service in place of the normal rush to the buffet table.

The food, which in the past has constituted an orgy of eating resulting in what our children refer to as the Teatro del Sale ‘food coma,’ was served and consumed in more sensible quantities. But the quality – the enormous kitchen is located behind a long window that allows one to watch as the staff prepares lunch as well as preps dishes for the Teatro’s sister restaurants – was as it always is, simple, authentic and mouthwatering. We enjoyed polenta (Suzy reminded me that it was at Cibreo, across the street from Teatro del Sale that she had her first plate of polenta over two decades ago) and a sformatino that included faro and bietole. A rich pasta with ragu was washed down with glasses of serviceable self serve red wine, which is poured from a wooden dispenser in the adjoining room. The final, main course was a polpettone or meatball made from chicken and stewed in a rich tomato sauce. Several hours after wandering across Florence for our lunch, we emerged into the gray skies, threatening but never quite follow up on the promise of rain in this birthplace of the renaissance.

So what is it about Teatro del Sale that we love so much and what is it that we would like to incorporate into the new Bella Italia? For one, and perhaps for all, the food. Simple, uncomplicated, authentic, satisfying and delicious. On nearly every visit to Florence we wander across town for lunch, not knowing what is going to be served, paying our €15 to come in, and always end up marveling at how good it was. There is no menu, there is no service to speak of (members are asked to clean up after themselves, to bus their tables and to serve their own drinks) but the experience, while different, is always superior to traditional restaurants with their armies of waiters, two foot high menus and monstrous creations that stretch the boundaries of human imagination. And only in a private club, as unexclusive as it may be, would you be in the mindset to give up the luxuries of restaurant dining and find it a positive. But here at Teatro del Sale, our home away from home in Florence, we are members and we belong. And that is a powerful draw that we would like to incorporate when we reopen our doors in the future.

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy