Osteria Pastella, Florence – Home of the Flambée Cheese Wheel Truffled Pasta

If you have been on Instagram in the last few months, chances are you caught wind of the hottest destination in Florence, Italy.

Sure, Michaelangelo’s David is a tough Reservation, but have you tried getting one at Osteria Pastella?

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Dave Grossman MilesTalk (@milestalk)

They’ve become “Instagram Famous” because of their flambée pasta Cheese Wheel, where they basically light a parmesan cheese wheel on fire, then spoon loose the cheese, drown your pasta in it, and then drop an absolute ton of shaved truffles on top.

The Reservation “Hack”

In theory, you can just hit up their reservations site. 

If your trip is several weeks away and you actually had the foresight to plan that far ahead, you are in luck – you’ll be able to reserve.

But inside of two weeks, when you most likely have already arrived in Florence and THEN found out about it? No way. 

Now, some people will go ahead and arrive at 6pm and wait on line for a spot at dinner. The restaurant opens at 7pm and if there are ANY no shows, you may get lucky and be seated by 8, however, I’m told that many sit and wait and never get in on any given night.

The secret?

LUNCH!

Now I don’t mean a lunch reservation in advance – you won’t find that either.

However, the morning of our last day in Italy, I tried at about 10am and got a reservation for noon!! It was almost too easy.

I’m sure most don’t even consider that, because when we arrived for our reservation, there were 20 people on line waiting without a reservation.

But here is the thing – every single one of them got in by 12:30.

So while I can’t guarantee this will work for you, avoid waiting on the dinner rush line when you are likely to sit in the heat for hours for no reason.

Try a morning same day reservation online and, if that fails, head on over around 11:15am and you should be in within about an hour.

Let me know if this works for you and how you like it!

Questions?

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