Rick Steve's Europe: Big Deal Lunch Meat in Florence - nah!

[MickinMD ★]

I like the Rick Steve's Europe shows - especially the episodes centered on travel tips.

One tip is to watch out for overpriced crap aim at tourists and Rick seems to be caught in promoting it.

I can put up with the frequent historical mistakes he makes, but not lunch meat passed off as "excellent local cuisine" in Florence in his "Florentine Delights and Tuscan Side Trips" (Piza, mostly).

It began with a plate of different lunch meats - for which the chef recommended an expensive dry, red wine, to wash down the taste of the salamis!

Then there was a course of mainly fava beans - in the stalk, so you had to shell the beans yourself before eating them.

Then there was a crostini (sort of a toasted baguette or French Bread Pizza bread) - except it was covered with Liver Pate and similar crap.

Finally there was a course of more extravagant lunch meat: deer salami, boar shoulder, etc. which, at least, came with bacon!

In FLORENCE!  I haven't been there but it's on my to-do list and also on the to-do is Bistecca Florentina - STEAK cooked to a smoky flavor by roasting over chestnuts, which is Florence's most famous dish and probably costs half of the lunch meat dish!