Trattoria Il Contadino

A charming place with great food at affordable prices. This place is usually full, it’s popular with locals and tourists alike. I ordered the fettuccine al pesto a la carte and my sister had the roasted chicken and potatoes… both freshly made and delicious.

A bargain Florentine trattoria! The fettuccine with mushrooms was divine. You get a bottle of wine with your salad, and a roasted chicken lunch. The oven potatoes roasted in oil makes for a meal you can only get in Italia! I highly recommend this place for an informal meal in Firenza, Italia!

This is the second time I tried this place and I was underwhelmed. Yes it’s cheap, yes you get a lot of food, but it was particularly great and the service was really bad. I asked nicely for some more cheese (in fluent italian) and they brought me an almost empty container. When I showed it to the waiter he looked annoyed at me and went to go fill it back up begrudgingly. It’s not just not worth the wait and bad service for a just ok meal…

Thanks to Unilocal — we came here and were so happy with our homestyle prix fixe menu. With 7 of us incl kids, we came here early so had no problem being seated. Found locals and Air Italia pilots eating there, so we knew we were in good hands. Nothing fancy but a real, rustic, and down to earth place with good food and wine.

The nearby Trattoria da Giorgo, closed on Sunday, was not an option after our return to the train station from a day trip in Siena, so we decided to try Il Contadino. They have decent food and lots of it with cheap prices compared to the rest of the overpriced tourist traps in Florence. Unlike many restaurants in Italy, they are open seven days a week from noon (12:00) until 10:30pm (22:30), so you can get a meal anytime you like. Arriving around 7:00pm on a Sunday night after a long day in the Tuscan sun, we were quickly seated and shortly thereafter our waiter arrived.
That was the most efficient service we received the rest of the night because as he and his female counterpart hovered around our table in the nearly empty restaurant, making for a rather uncomfortable experience, they chatted with each other and their friends at the next table. However, when we needed something, we had to try to catch their eye rather than counting on them to notice when they were needed instead of socializing with each other.
The menu is fixed price, € 9 to € 12 for lunch, and € 13.50 to € 14.50 for dinner, a decent value for what you receive in return and there is also an «ala carte» menu if you so choose. For € 14.50 (€ 12 at lunch) you are entitled to a ½ liter of water, ¼ liter of wine (per person/​red or white), primo (first course from the day’s menu — pasta, soup, etc), secondo (second course from the day’s menu — meat dish), and contorno (vegetable — salad, potatoes, artichokes, broccoli, etc).
Tagiatelle alla Boscailola, a long, thin pasta in a tomato-​based sauce with ground beef, mushrooms, and black olives was my choice as a primo. The tagliatelle were good with rich, earthy tones from the mushrooms and unlike more than a few Tuscan restaurants we have been to recently, cooked «al dente». My wife decided to forgo the meat dish, so she ordered the prosciutto e melone (cured ham and and honeydew melon) for her first course. Being difficult to improve on sliced ham and melon, her course was as good a most places and a fair size portion.
For secondi I had the scaloppine ai funghi (pork cutlets in a white wine and mushroom sauce). The meat was very dry and had obviously been sitting around much of the day waiting for a customer to arrive. The sauce was good and there was plenty of it, but a few more mushrooms would have been nice. My wife had the risotto with zucchini and gorgonzola, creamy with a bit of zing from the aged cheese, it could have cooked a minute or two longer to reach the desired consistency of a classic risotto. Our contorni were patate fritte (French fries), crispy but not very hot, and patate arrosto (roasted potatoes) which, like the pork, had also been sitting in a chafing dish for far too long.
We had to remind the waiter two times to bring our wine, a local red, which was decent, lightly chilled and fruity. Instead of bringing a half-​liter for the two of us, he brought a single one-​quarter liter carafe 5 – 10 minutes after our primi had arrived and another, having to ask him again, after our second courses had arrived. With so few people in the restaurant, there is really no excuse for such inattentive service.
The restaurant is clean and bright even though it is in a rather seedy part of town, but we were somewhat disappointed by the food and very disappointed by the service. When I gave the waiter my card, telling him that I would post a review on my blog, TripAdvisor, and Unilocal,he said «So what? I can post a review on TripAdvisor, so what makes you different from me?» I responded, telling him that «I am Unilocal ‘Elite’, a TripAdvisor ‘Top Contributor’, and have a blog averaging 40,000 views a year, that is what makes me different from you».
You will have a better meal in Italy for € 30 or less, several places come to mind, but in Florence, with its dearth of reasonably priced restaurants, you will not find many options. Although our experience was somewhat disappointing, the food was not bad overall and the prices fair. So if Trattoria da Giorgio just down the street is closed or too full, Trattoria il Contadino would be a decent second choice.
CombatCritic Gives Trattoria Il Contadino 6 Bombs Out Of 10 … More Bombs Are Better!

Great value. $ 12 each for pre fixe lunch (2 courses + side + bottle water) with 0.25L wine. Would get stewed beef & grilled tomatoes (side) again. Free bread.

Wow! This place combines value along with legit-​ness. Two course lunch with wine and a side dish for 13 euros! That includes a lively atmosphere filled with locals, good service and tasty, well prepared food.

I forgot what Unilocalers suggested to order here. I may have ordered not so well. My husband enjoyed his ravioli and the wine was good.
The pesto sauce on my gnocchi was Delish but the gnocchi itself was a bit too soft. I may have been too spoiled from the perfect gnocchi I got in Napoli yesterday.
My prawn spaghetti was good. Maybe a bit too strong on the prawn flavor but still enjoyable. For some reason I felt the pasta wasn’t as good as all the spaghetti I’ve tried in other places in italy but still good.
Over all I thought it was a very good lunch if you consider how affordable it is and very nice staff and efficient service. The food was above okay but below wonderful or memorable.

Lugar simpático, comida boa e com um preço bacana. É o lugar onde todo turista quer conhecer quando visita uma cidade Italiana, sem ser um lugar feito para turistas, é frequentado pelos moradores do bairro!

Great food. My wife and I stopped here after a recommendation from our hotel. We were not disappointed. Extremely good pasta. The pasta was cooked perfectly. I had the spicy tomato garlic and parsley as my main dish and the peas with bacon as my side dish. Excellent.

The server was very patience explaining every dish in English. The pre fixe menu is so affordable. The food is really good. Didn’t disappoint.

Another good find because of our fellow Unilocalers! Offered a fixed menu with 2 mains (or 1 main and 1 dessert) plus one side with bread and water for 13.50 or with wine/​soda for 14.50. Amazing deal to find in what is often an overpriced city when it comes to food. The atmosphere is casual and they have waiters/​waitresses that speak English and offer an English menu to use.
Forgetting about the price, the food alone warrants a strong review. We ordered the spinach and cheese ravioli, Tuscan soup, pork sausage and artichoke pasta and roast chicken with artichokes. All the dishes were outstanding, the best we’ve had in our trips in Venice and now Florence.
Another plus is that they are open all day. Many restaurants close from 3−7ish which can make life tough if you’re traveling and get stuck between meals. I would recommend getting here early, by the time we left there was a full restaurant and groups waiting.

Free bread, great wine and a great meal for only 13.50. Now that’s what I call a deal!

This place was a very pleasant surprise. We got kick out of the steak place around the corner because we were either too early and they probably didn’t understand what we were saying. So we jump into the nearest restaurant we found and it was amazing. The food was great, but you can’t order more or less than what allow. It is a three courses dinner and you are allow to pick your course. The price was very decent, good food for only around 15 euro. The courses are listed on the board out side. If you like it then step in. House wine is great too. Will definitely come back here again. By Italian standard the service is exceptional.

I can only really say one word… Buonissimo!

So this place was recommended as good, cheap Italian food in my guide. Looking for a quick, authentic bite my party and I went. The food was edible, nothing amazing though. It tasted like something I could get back in the States, at a cheap restaurant. Really, I would skip this and try something else… It was very fast though. But I suppose that if you are starving and need fast cheap food there are other better options that will actually give you some good Italian food you can’t get at home, wherever that may be.

Excellent deal for dinner: 12.50 euros for 3-​course meal with water or 13.50 euros for the same with wine.
The food isn’t cooked to order, because it came out way too quickly, but the cooking felt very home-​styled. I ordered gnocchi with a seafood-​type sauce, rabbit with tomato sauce, and roasted potatoes. All delicious. My wife had the ribollita, turkey with mushrooms (not very good), and spinach.
It’s a small, quaint, family-​run restaurant, and if you don’t speak any Italian, the son and /​or daughter speaks enough to explain the menu and take your order.
It’s not a bad idea to go earlier, because when we left, there was a long line waiting to be seated. Which is a good sign, of course.

Not a «Piazza» trattoria with covered outside dining and hawker w/​menus trying to pull you in.
Update, the address is 71 now… 69 was a door to someone’s home.
Went straight here after a 1.5 hour tour and major walking session at the Galleria degli Uffizi @ 6:30pm on a Thursday and walked right in. 10 minutes later as we we getting our 1^st course, we noticed a line forming outside and the crowd was getting restless!
Waiter comes by and recites the menu, kinda felt like the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld, we didn’t want to mess up, so under some pressure without asking questions, we pick:
1^st course: Gnocchi in cream sauce & truffles, Wild Boar Ragu on a wide ribbon pasta (papardelle?), and Asparagus & mushroom white sauce on a twisted gemelli pasta. All three fantastic, but the truffle gnocchi was buckle your knees good.
2^nd course: Fried Beef (breaded cutlet, Milanessa style), grilled Swordfish fillet (the kid loves fish), and the Braised Rabbit in tomatoes. Rabbit was killer, fish and beef were just fine, if had to do again, would go with the grilled Beef/​Pork/​Chicken, Roast chicken, or maybe the Boiled Beef (roll the dice).
Side dish: Roasted potatoes, fries, and salad… saw some great veggies coming to other tables, spinach, roasted tomatoes, green beans, etc. if not under pressure, might’ve grabbed those instead. ADVICE: If you go with a pasta starter (you totally should) then forget the starch with the 2^nd dish, go with whatever veggies they have that day.
Ticket came and it was 38 euro — wow. For a 3 course meal w/​wine, water and bread — ticket was 13, 13, 12 (child) — I left 45 and they complained it was too much, again — WOW. One more visit for sure before we head to Soriano, Rome & Venice.

Good place for homestyle italian food. We decided to splurge a little and go here (altho not breaking the bank, prices werent that bad), departing from our usual yummy panini, pizza, or pasta.
This place is really popular and looks like the real deal. We enjoyed sampling a lot of authentic dishes (bistecca alla florentine, salami, chianti wine) and taking our time, plus it was a close walk from our hotel. Glad we went here and recommend it.

ate here multiple times since it’s such a great bargain. amazing homestyle feel food with great taste for cheap only 10 euro (choose a course meal) from rotating menu.