O’Munaciello Pizzeria , Florence | Food

I know, it’s another foodie one and it’s another pizza, but I mean I’m in Italy how could I not have pizza?!

I am so lucky to have my roommate Valeria because she know all the best places and is happy to take me wherever, she is a great person to go to restaurants with. A couple of weeks ago she took me to a very traditional Neapolitan Pizzeria. Now I know what you’re thinking, I’m not in Napoli so surely I should be going to more traditional places that are linked to Florence, well when the pizza is this good it doesn’t matter. I have never seen a place so busy in all my life, we had to book a table and the earliest we could get was 10PM, bloody 10PM! I’m normally in bed by that time, but I guess I have to start getting used to these European dining hours, but I do love that they make an entire night out of it starting with an aperitivo which is something I will go into in another post and moving onto dinner later.

O’Munaciello is an incredibly lovely Neapolitan restaurant just situated over the river with lots of quirky design pieces to try and make it as close to Napoli as possible, they even had a washing line going across it which is actually very typical of Napoli apparently. When it comes to service the place was fine, but we went on a Saturday night so it was completely rammed and the staff were just so incredibly busy so there was a little wait with our food but I didn’t mind so much because I got to see everyone elses delicious pizzas.

I was very fortunate to have Valeria take me through each pizza and what they had on them, there were some typical topping with meat and mushrooms but I settled for the ‘Nduja pizza which you can see above. This is quite a simplistic pizza but the dark red dots on the pizza you can see are actually Nduja meat which is like a very spicy pork sausage but it’s more of a spreadable type of meat kinda like a pate consistency. I love spicy things and I love meat so I was pretty damn happy. When the pizza arrived I literally couldn’t wait to dive in. Since being in Italy I  cannot get over how intense the flavours are here, I mean they are incredible even down to the pizza base, it’s much thinner but still very doughy. The tomato sauce on top, was very rich and you could taste how fresh the tomatoes are, the mozzarella...don’t even get me started, I have just become obsessed with cheese atm and the sausage was incredible. I’d say it was slightly spicier than expected but it wasn’t over powering, it was the perfect amount to create a delicious dish. The thing that amazes me is that the pizza was only like 10EUR which for the quality is amazing. I decided to keep it fairly traditional and had a light beer to wash it down with which went very well actually.

I’m not gonna lie, I couldn’t quite eat it all, I did however eat all of the cheese because...just wow! But I was very full and incredibly satisfied. In keeping with the theme we decided to end the meal with a Limoncello which I loved! O’Munaciello

What is your favourite pizza topping?

Food Glorious Food | Food

Well it just wouldn’t be right if I didn’t have at least one post on the food here would it. I do want to apologise for the quality of some of these images, the lighting isn’t always the best but what can I do?

On my first week in Italy I tried out a lot of traditional/stereotypical Italian dishes, mainly Pizza and Pasta. As you know this year I had pretty much eliminated all carbs from my diet and developed a wheat intolerance but as I started to eat carbs/wheat again I started to build that tolerance up so now my body can handle carbs much better, thank god! So first things first, let’s talk about that funny looking pile of brown stuff in my first picture, which is truffle tagliatelle. Now, I have had truffle infused things in my time, it’s an acquired taste but just look at the amount of truffle on that! I was pretty shocked, truffle is a very unusual taste but packs a punch. The pasta was also in a creamy sauce which of course, had just a little more truffle thrown in for good measure. Truffle is actually in season right now for Italy as my tour guide/wonderful roommate Anna told me, so we both got a portion each. I do have to be honest, I wish there was just a little less truffle, I think I would have enjoyed it slightly more, but it was delicious but the truffle was a bit over powering. How many times can I say truffle in one paragraph, clearly trying to break a record or something.

Moving onto the fine specimen of a pizza, this was a takeaway pizza we got from the local restaurant not far from our flat. The thing that makes it different is that it’s a white or “Bianca” pizza meaning that it doesn’t have a tomato base, just cheese. My one also had Speck which is like a smoked ham and some tomatoes on top, it was by far one of the tastiest pizzas I’ve ever had. The thing about Italians/ Italian Culture is they really care about the ingredients they use, the mozzarella was buffalo mozzarella which comes from Napoli and the oregano that is added on top is from a roommate’s friend’s herb garden in Sicily. I love knowing where all the different ingredients are from.

So there is my carb heavy post, maybe I’ll write a healthier version another time. What is your favourite pizza topping or what type of pasta do you love?