Mercato Centrale, Florence

I love it when a city has a big indoor market where there are numerous food vendors under one roof. Pike's Place market in Seattle is a great example, as are the Reading Terminal in Philadelphia, the six city markets in Baltimore (my SIL used to live a few blocks from the Cross Street Market, and I have many fond memories, most of them involving crab cakes, from there), and the Grand Central Market in Los Angeles--where I first fell in love with this style of market as a child. The essential components are the overwhelming volume of fruits, vegetables, cheese, wine, as well as fish and meats. It doesn't hurt if there is a good place or two to eat, but that isn't critical--the most important thing is that you could assemble a spectacular meal without having to exert much effort to do so, the available ingredients are so spectacular.

The Mercato Centrale in Florence is just such a place. I still ache with residual envy when I think about the options at the cheese vendors, and in particular the butchers. I am not much of a cook when it comes to things that require modifying the meat--my spouse does all of that preparation. I would cook the chicken whole any day of the week to avoid having to cut it up into parts (I am much better at that once it is roasted), so I am limited in what I can prepare. That would not be true if I lived in Florence. There were so many enticing things at the butcher counter, and I am not much of a meat eater, so it was particularly impressive.

Cheese is the next reason to go to the central market--I love to look at all the selections, and the ability to taste several cheeses before selecting the perfect one for whatever purpose is another perk. The availability of wine at the central market is also very good, but no different that what you can find in a dozen other wine stores in the neighborhood--there is a surfeit of wonderful and affordable wine in Tuscany that I also envy. I bought several things to bring home with me--spices, dried porcini, sun-dried tomatoes, and dried pastas that don't appear on my supermarket shelves at home, and longed for this sort of a place at home.