Off to explore more of Chianti. We’ll drive a bit farther to Greve in Chianti today.

We goof around the house in the morning, so again we are driving directly to lunch. We choose a place because it’s supposed to be an excellent Tuscan burger from a famous Italian butcher. We are not the only ones hoping to have lunch at Dario DOC though. The wait is 30 minutes. Luckily they are pouring guests glasses of chianti, and there’s a long table with bread and olive oil and salami. It’s the best service while waiting for a table that I’ve ever had.

But then we are still waiting an hour later. It’s 2pm. We are hungry. Just when I was giving up home, we are sat. The restaurant is upstairs and has one long table down the middle. The open grill is cool, but it makes the room hot. We immediately order the 10 euro menu (yay for cheap prices!) for the burger we’ve been waiting for.

The food is such a disappointment. Do not go here. There are two other restaurants serving different meats, and they may be amazing. I don’t know. But the burgers here are dry and tasteless. Stefan ordered a selection of meats, and one of them is a pork that is pretty much inedible. I am so disappointed. Not just because I had to eat this awful food, and that we waited forever for it, but that we missed out on some delicious Tuscan food. This was a wasted meal. So sad.

//Grandpa notes> The lucky part of waiting so long to eat a dried out burger patty in an uncomfortable setting is that Debbie has time to shop.  She buys a painting from a local artist.  It’s actually pretty fun.  The artist explains that Verazzanno (that is credited with discoverying New York) was born in Panzano a couple of hundred yards from where we stood.  It turns out that people from here know a lot of New York history.

After lunch we try a winery that is recommended in my guidebook, Castello di Verrazzano. We didn’t book a tour because it is 18 Euros per person, which seems really steep to taste some wine.

The wineries my guidebook recommends are alright, but they seem more commercial and expensive. We’d like to find more of the small wineries we enjoyed in Barolo. So now our strategy for the rest of the afternoon is to stop by places we see. The first is not a winner. I really wish I could remember then name because it is terrible. The woman is unhelpful and maybe leaning toward rude (completely different from the Italians we’ve met thus far).  

Thankfully, the next stop, Castello Vicchiomaggio, is wonderful. We are welcomed cheerfully and directed to enjoy our tastings out back. The room itself feels like an old tavern, so I’m surprised to see the most amazing view open up before me as I step through the small wooden door to the backyard. This place is a gem. The wine is good, though incredibly overpriced, and the environment is exactly what I want from Tuscany.

We drive 15 minutes to a place my guidebook recommends,  L’Antica Scuderia, because it has a playground in the yard–exactly what we need. It seems to be one of the only things in a tiny town. The road narrows to single-laned between stone walls as we enter the town. It’s pretty, but a bit crazy.
We arrive 15 minutes before they open, but they let us in anyway. The patio is all reserved, but we get a nice table inside. I recommend booking in advance and sitting outside. Also, the playground is in a yard separated by a rock wall. The logical way to get from the playground to the table (without crawling over the wall and into someone’s lap) is to go out a gate, walk on a narrow sidewalk by the street (and blocked from view by a large rock wall) and go inside the front door of the restaurant. I do not recommend it. That said, the kids enjoy playing there before and after dinner. The food is good here, and I may recommend it for a date night. But it wasn’t the kid-friendly place I expected. I wouldn’t recommend bringing your kids here, even with the playground next door.