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Florence, Italy is not short of spectacle, nor good food, but head up to the hills just outside the city and you’ll find a delicious experience in the most stunning of settings.
La Loggia is the fine-dining restaurant at Villa San Michele, A Belmond Hotel, Florence, a luxury hotel in a 15th-century converted monastery in Fiesole that Napoleon once used as a base. Meander through the lobby, lounge and bar area, dotted with thought-provoking installations from modern artists and you’ll find the restaurant situated on a terrace with panoramic views of the Renaissance masterpiece of a city below. It’s drinking it in and then some.
Executive Chef Alessandro Cozzolino (above) came to Villa San Michele in 2019, after some years working in Asia. Originally from Caserta, close to Naples, he has developed a cuisine informed by the local territory, his personal history and an interest in nutrition.
“The menu is based not only on the sustainability of the territory, but [it] also recognises healthy eating,” he says. “In terms of taste, the acidic, alcoholic, fresh note in every dish has always characterised my cuisine. In terms of texture, all the dishes always play on the right balance between soft, crunchy, frothy, and creamy.”
Mattia Aquila Photography
There are in fact three new tasting menus at La Loggia, available from now until mid-September (“Summer, with its products, gives light and liveliness to our dishes,” says Cozzolino): Sensualità, “a vegetable menu mainly composed of vegetable proteins with specific biological functions such as digestibility, using 100% Tuscan products”; Contrasti, a seafood menu that “contrasts, reinterprets [and] observes the continuous evolution of Florentine gastronomy”; and Legami, “a menu characterised by the vices and quirks that distinguish my personal gastronomic background,” says Cozzolino.
Stand-out dishes include tortelli of salt cod, ricotta, turmeric and wood sorrel; local Valdarno pigeon paired with vermouth-soaked melon and smoked aubergine; and a pizza-like sweet tomato tarte tatin in the petits fours (he’s from Campania, how could he resist?).
“I hope that our customers feel that they have lived a special moment made up of art, gastronomy, [and] service, all in a wonderful setting overlooking Florence,” says Cozzolino.
Take an exclusive look at dishes from the new menu, below.
Snacks
Tortelli filled with Versilia-style cod, ricotta, turmeric, wood sorrel
Grafagnana spelt, Fiesole saffron, escabece ciambotta, sobacha
Amberjack, xeres vinegar panzanella, canestrino tomato aspic
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