Restaurant in Florence, Italy
Truffle and game near the Uffizi, without the tourist trap.
Degusteria Italiana earns its 4.7 Google rating with a tightly focused menu built around truffles, cheese, and game — a rarity steps from the Uffizi. At €€€, it sits well below Florence's top-tier Italian contemporary restaurants while delivering a more purposeful meal than most of what surrounds it. Booking is easy; commit to the truffle and game dishes.
If you're comparing Degusteria Italiana against Florence's broader roster of tourist-facing trattorias clustered around the Uffizi, there is a clear difference in ambition. Where most spots on Via Lambertesca and its neighbours serve crowd-pleasing pasta to gallery visitors on a schedule, Degusteria Italiana runs a focused, specialist menu built around three ingredients: cheese, truffles, and game. That specificity is either exactly what you want or a reason to look elsewhere. At the €€€ price tier, it sits a full bracket below Enoteca Pinchiorri and Il Palagio, and it earns a 4.7 from 585 Google reviews, which is a meaningful signal for a small room in a high-footfall area where average scores tend to compress toward the mediocre. Book it.
The room sits steps from the Uffizi, which in Florence usually signals danger: inflated prices, inattentive service, and food calibrated for people who won't return. Degusteria Italiana sidesteps that trap with a menu that has a point of view. The focus on cheese, truffles, and game gives the kitchen a defined identity that most neighbourhood restaurants in this corridor lack. Visually, the restaurant is small and welcoming rather than grand, which matters for how an evening here actually feels: this is a place for deliberate eating, not a backdrop for a celebration photo.
If you've been once and ordered cautiously, the instruction for your next visit is to commit to the truffle dishes and to ask about seasonal game availability before you order. The cheese programme rewards attention too. Italian cheese craft at this level is underrepresented on Florence menus that default to Parmigiano as a garnish, so the treatment here reads as a genuine specialism rather than a marketing line. Across Italy, the restaurants that have made comparable ingredient-focused bets, from Osteria Francescana in Modena to Uliassi in Senigallia, demonstrate that narrowing focus tends to deepen execution. Degusteria Italiana operates at a far more accessible price point than those addresses, but the underlying logic is the same.
The Michelin-sourced description of the restaurant as specialising in these three ingredients has appeared consistently across multiple guide cycles, which suggests the menu hasn't drifted significantly from its founding proposition. That kind of stability is useful to know: you are booking a restaurant with a clear, maintained identity, not one that has pivoted post-pandemic into something different. For context on how other Italian contemporary kitchens have handled recent evolution, the trajectory at Reale in Castel di Sangro and Atelier Moessmer Norbert Niederkofler in Brunico shows what ingredient-led Italian cooking looks like when pushed to its highest expression. Degusteria Italiana isn't operating at that register, but it is playing the same conceptual game at a fraction of the investment.
On the question of whether the food travels: this is not a delivery or takeout proposition. Truffle dishes, warm cheese preparations, and game cooked to order lose their point outside the room. If you are looking for something from Florence's Italian contemporary scene that works off-premise, you are looking at the wrong venue. What Degusteria Italiana offers is specifically an eat-in experience, where the small room, the ingredient focus, and the proximity to one of Europe's great museums combine into a lunch or dinner that has a reason to exist. That's rarer near the Uffizi than it should be. For broader options across the city, our full Florence restaurants guide covers the range.
Booking is easy. The restaurant does not carry the reservation pressure of Florence's €€€€ tier, so you are not planning three months out. A week's notice is generally sufficient, though if you are visiting in peak season (April through October, and especially the Ferragosto period in August), a few days' extra lead time is wise. The central location on Via Lambertesca means it integrates naturally into a Uffizi day: visit the gallery in the morning, eat here at lunch, and you've avoided the worst of the midday tourist-restaurant trap around Piazza della Signoria. For everything else around that visit, our full Florence experiences guide and our full Florence hotels guide are the places to start.
If the menu's focus doesn't match what you're after, the alternatives in the city worth considering depend on what you're optimising for. Atto di Vito Mollica offers a more complete contemporary Italian menu at a comparable engagement level. Konnubio is better if you want flexibility and a broader range of dishes. Gunè San Frediano is the call for something more neighbourhood-rooted and less central. For reference points outside Florence in Italian contemporary cooking, Quattro Passi in Marina del Cantone, Dal Pescatore in Runate, and L'Olivo in Anacapri demonstrate the range the cuisine covers.
Booking is easy and does not require significant advance planning outside peak season. The restaurant is on Via Lambertesca, 7 Rosso, in the historic centre, a short walk from the Uffizi. No phone or website is listed in available data, so booking via a third-party reservation platform or arriving in person to reserve is the practical path. Dress code data is not available, but at the €€€ price point in central Florence, smart casual is the safe assumption. Seat count is not confirmed, but the room is described as small, so larger groups should confirm availability before committing. For bars and wine options nearby, our full Florence bars guide and our full Florence wineries guide cover the area. The Italian contemporary scene across the Adriatic is also worth tracking: Agli Amici Rovinj in Rovinj is a useful regional comparison point.
| Venue | Price | Booking Difficulty | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Degusteria Italiana | €€€ | Easy | — |
| Enoteca Pinchiorri | €€€€ | Unknown | — |
| Santa Elisabetta | €€€€ | Unknown | — |
| Gucci Osteria da Massimo Bottura | €€€€ | Unknown | — |
| Il Palagio | €€€€ | Unknown | — |
| Borgo San Jacopo | €€€€ | Unknown | — |
Side-by-side comparison to help you decide where to book.
At €€€, it earns its price if you want a focused, ingredient-led meal built around truffle, cheese, and game rather than a generic Florentine menu. For the same spend, Enoteca Pinchiorri delivers more formal prestige, but Degusteria Italiana wins on specificity: it exists to do three things well rather than everything adequately. If those three ingredients are your entry point, the value holds.
The restaurant is described as small and welcoming, which signals a relaxed but not casual tone. A step up from sightseeing clothes is appropriate given the €€€ price point and the central Florence setting. Leave the resort wear for lunch at a café; this is an evening-out restaurant, not a white-tablecloth formal event.
Yes, with a caveat: the room is small, so expect an intimate rather than a grand atmosphere. The specialisation in truffles, cheese, and game gives the meal a clear narrative that suits a celebratory dinner for two more than a large group event. For a landmark anniversary or a milestone birthday dinner for a small party, it works well. For a larger group celebration, consider Borgo San Jacopo, which can offer a more expansive setting.
The kitchen builds its menu around three core ingredients: cheese, truffles, and game. If any of those are not to your taste, this is not the right restaurant. It sits near the Uffizi on Via Lambertesca, 7 Rosso, in the heart of Florence's historic centre. Booking is manageable outside peak season, so you rarely need to plan far in advance, but summer and major holiday periods are the exception.
Bar seating is not documented in the available information for this venue. Given its description as a small restaurant, the distinction between bar and table seating may not apply in the way it would at a larger space. check the venue's official channels to confirm seating options before visiting.
For a step up in formality and budget, Enoteca Pinchiorri is Florence's most decorated dining room. Santa Elisabetta and Il Palagio both offer historic-centre fine dining with broader menus. Gucci Osteria da Massimo Bottura is the comparison for contemporary Italian with international profile, though the format and tone differ significantly. Degusteria Italiana sits in its own lane: smaller, more ingredient-specific, and without the celebrity overhead.
If the kitchen structures a tasting menu around its core specialisms in cheese, truffles, and game, that format makes sense here: the ingredient focus is tight enough that a multi-course progression should feel coherent rather than arbitrary. Specific menu structure and current pricing are not confirmed in available data, so verify directly when booking. At €€€, the tasting route is the format most likely to justify the spend if you are already committed to those flavours.
Keep this venue in your Pearl passport, rate it after you visit, and track it alongside every other place you collect.
