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Since 1969, restaurant, hotel, travel & other witty reviews by a handpicked, worldwide team of discerning professionals—and your views, too.

Firenze Trattoria

162 S. Rancho Santa Fe Rd. (Manchester Ave.) Send to Phone
Encinitas, CA 92024
760-944-9000 | Make Restaurant Reservations | Menu
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Lovely Tuscan cuisine in a romantic setting. Firenze Trattoria Restaurant is one of GAYOT's 2013 | Top 10 San Diego Italian Restaurants |

Cuisine

Open

Lunch Mon.-Sat., Dinner nightly

Features

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Dining room at Firenze Trattoria, Encinitas, CA

Firenze Trattoria Restaurant Review

: This stylish but informal restaurant has an Encinitas address, a Rancho Santa Fe crowd, and a pleasant Italian menu that delivers quality food for the price---which is what Rancho Santa Fe types who eat in Encinitas are looking for in the first place. The mood is fun, the service is attentive and willing, and the cooking largely pleases, especially in the case of pastas, which are generously portioned but tend to have a light touch. Our recommendations: the rigatoni baked with crumbles of spicy sausage and slices of mellow mozzarella; the day’s fresh fish; and the piquant, caper-rich veal alla pizzaiola. Regulars return on Fridays for osso buco night, and Monday means half-price wine. The hearty lasagna with veal, beef and chicken is a well-received signature.

User Ratings & Reviews for Firenze Trattoria
Average rating    5
Reviews 1 - 1 of 11
arguably the best Italian restaurant in San Diego
by arthur_b on Mon Jun 29, 2009 2:45 pm
 
A friend sent me to the Firenze Trattoria website and I was surprised to discover you really can book reservations on line. If it weren't for that, we probably would have stayed closer to central San Diego. The place is a gem, much more elegant than your typical strip-mall trattoria and extremely romantic both in its location and décor. It's in Encinitas, just south of Olivenhain, where you can pretend you're dining in the Florentine countryside.

We were so taken with the place that we tried to make an entire Italian dinner of it -- antipasti, pasta course, meat course, and dessert -- but we wound up sharing everything and still didn't have room for dessert. Their wine list, while not overly long, is nonethess good enough to have won Wine Spectator's Award of Excellence (another reason why we went there) and its best feature is that most of them can be ordered by the glass. So we changed our wines with each course.

We started with an insalata dell'orto and a zuppa di verdure with a pinot grigio from San Angelo. The salad pairs fresh Italian greens with apples and pine nuts and the soup is a rich purée of fresh garden vegetables. We followed that with portobello ravioli in a gorgonzola cream sauce, an inspired dish, accompanied by an Italian sangiovese.

Then one of the house specialties, pollo e gamberi rosmarino (chicken and shrimp in a white wine sauce with fresh rosemary) with a glass of Silverado chardonnay and, finally, scampi alla fresca (garlic shrimp in a light tomato sauce over linguini) with a Carmel Road pinot noir.

We'll have to come back to try their dessert cart. As it was, we spent more than two hours at the table!
 
Reviews 1 - 1 of 11



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