A Civil Bite of Cow Stomach in Florence

The brisk walk in the bracing Florence spring air from the Ponte Vecchio to the Duomo had sharpened the appetite, which had already emerged three hours earlier after a night drinking Italian Chardonnay and Dry Martinis spruced-up with mists of extra virgin olive oil. Appetite does this. Especially after a night of graceful decadence in Florence’s new Collegio alla Querce Hotel.

This morning in Florence the need to eat came before that of a Renaissance cultural immersion, as the queue outside the Duomo was longer than a line of West-Virginian rednecks waiting to take-out their hunting-licences ahead of deer season. I was going to have to worship elsewhere, I thought, looking to see if I could not perhaps partake in a bit of queue-jumping. To no avail.

I trundled to the cacophony of rumbling tunes from my stomach, and found the Lorenzo market, Florence’s major public food arena where fresh produce and all those glorious Italian delicacies of cheese and mortadella and prosciutto and lardo and olives and anchovies are sold on the ground-floor. Up the stairs, there one finds the Lorenzo eating arena. It was still only 12.00, but the place was heaving as locals and a few tourists sat at tables bearing culinary delights procured from the vendors. There were blistery, wafer-thin pizzas with aromatic tomatoey toppings, pastas of all shapes covered in every sauce imaginable and golden tubes of squid served with a lemony green sauce.

But I had come for the lampredotto.

Lampredotto is the true – and most authentic – street-food of Florence, and comprises the two most basic edible ingredients known to humankind. Namely animal stomach and bread. Nope, does not get more real than that. For it is all real and all true, and it is good.

At the Lorenzo market, the lampredotto vendor-stand was half hidden in a quiet corner and the tables next to it were inhabited by elderly, modestly dressed folk which I presumed to be local Fiorintinas. No talking, gesticulating or scrolling on phones. They were there to eat the lampredotto, drink their glasses of white or red wine, and get back to life outside the market. It was lunch on the go, Florence style.

There were no options at this stand. Lampredotto. Six euros. Hot-sauce, if desired. That is that.

The lampredotto begins with a huge pot of cow stomach sliced into slivers the size and girth of silk-worms. Why the name lampredotto? Because the bristly texture of the lining of dead cow stomach reminds one of the mouth of the lamprey eel with that circular mouth holding a ring of small sharp teeth. The lamprey uses these tiny dental shards to attach itself to unwitting prey, whereafter the eel gently sucks the blood from the unlucky – and involuntary – host.

In any event, at the stand I asked for one lampredotto in my best Italian, as well as a glass of white wine being poured from an unlabelled bottle, this another sign that lunch was going to be as authentically a Florentine experience as a selfie taken next to the crotch of Michelanglo’s David statue.

The wine was poured, and the vendor made my lunch, this not a complicated affair.

He opened the lid of a pot where the elongated morsels of cow stomach lay, glistening in a lightly coloured tomato sauce. They were beautiful pieces of tripe, marble white and trembling expectantly as their owner stirred the mass of innards, ensuring thorough exposure to the sauce, which had been thickened by the gelatinous tripe enzymes during a six-hour process of slow-cooking.

The next step in creating the lampredotto was for the server to from a basket pluck a round bread roll encased in a russet crust and to cut the baked gem it in half to reveal an angelic white, fluffy interior. Deftly and with acumen and concentration, the roll was brought towards the pot of heaving, simmering tripe. Then a slotted spoon was employed to lift a mound of steaming cow stomach and carefully place it onto the lower half of the bread-roll. Using a conventional soup-ladle, the lampredotto maestro scooped a portion of that life-affirming rich tripe sauce from the pot with which to anoint the other part of the roll, this instantaneously drawing-in the unctuous, fatty sauce with a desperate wanton thirst.

Once both parts of the bread had been assembled into one harmonious, fragrant unit this was placed on a square of waxed-paper and handed over to my hands, which were trembling with expectation.

I sat down at one of the tables with my tripe roll and glass of wine and gazed at the wonder before me. The bread-roll was soaked with sauce, and the dense ribbons of cow-stomach protruded from the edges like dead witch fingers daring one to bite. And bite I did, using both hands to bring the lampredotto to my mouth, hungrily ripping into the first mouthful like a stranded sailor just rescued from a desert island after three months’ subsistence on coconut water.

The sandwich was fantastic. Earthy flavours of cow tripe had been mildly tempered – but not obliterated – by aromatic tomato sauce. Textures were enticing, totally incredible as slimy-soft strands of well-cooked tripe met the cleansing crusts of fresh bread, creating the kind of harmony that would motivate a Renaissance sculptor to spend two years turning a block of Carrara marble into a streamlined muscular and godlike figure.

I ate hungrily, the dry white wine cooling the palate after each greedy, savage bite of tripe sandwich. Pausing to look up at Florence, I pondered on the wonders of civilization and wiped a rivulet of fatty moisture from my chin. We are blessed.