All'Antico Vinaio

Schiacciata held to Via de' Neri

The schiacciata comes first, split at the counter before Chef Daniele Mazzanti sets All'Antico Vinaio in Florence back into motion. The bread is the grammar here: oil-rich, salted, crisp at the edge, built to carry finocchiona, porchetta, aged cheeses and creams without turning precious. Mazzanti's work has stayed unusually close to one street. His family managed a gastronomia on Via de' Neri from 1989, and that same year he and Fedra Gani Galli gave life to the first All'Antico Vinaio nearby. In 1997, Mazzanti took over the premises and bought the name from the Posani family, fixing the house to the old wine-bar identity that still sits inside it. He later carried L'Antico Vinaio as owner-operator until 2018. At the Florence address now, his role is chef, not in the white-tablecloth sense, but at the discipline of a counter where the craft depends on bread, proportion, memory and speed.

The creams do the seasoning

The method is not hidden behind a long menu language. Schiacciata is opened, filled and pressed into service by the hands at the bench, with the spreads doing much of the seasoning. Pecorino cream, artichoke cream, truffle cream, pistachio cream, onion cream and mushroom cream give the sandwiches their structure; salumi and cheeses carry the salt and fat. The signatures read like a working vocabulary of the place: Paradise, Inferno, Purgatory, La Italiana, Tricoloro and Fabulosa. Fabulosa sets sbriciolona salami with pecorino cream, artichoke cream and spicy eggplant. San Marco brings mortadella, gorgonzola, pistachio cream and sun-dried tomatoes into the same fold. La Numero 1 uses roast suckling pig with onion cream and roast-potato cream. Nothing asks to be plated. The house keeps the food in the hand, close to Florentine street eating, and lets the counter decide the rhythm.

A counter with no spare motion

The room on Via de' Neri is small enough that the glass case becomes a kind of pass. Meats, cheeses, creams and porchetta sit in view, and the order moves from voice to knife to paper with little pause between. Counter service gives the place its tempo: loud, crowded, bright with movement, with most customers eating standing or carrying the wrapped schiacciata back into the street. Bottles of wine and olive oil line the walls, and mirrors return the action to itself. The old wine-bar name still matters here, even when the sandwich is what pulls the line outside. It is a room built less for lingering than for repetition, and repetition is where the hand shows.

The flatbread that travelled

Recognition has attached to the Florence restaurant without changing the basic station. Saveur placed its sandwiches among the world's best, and in 2025 Opinionated About Dining ranked the address #52 on Europe Cheap Eats. The public story widened through later Italian and American outposts, but the Florence house still returns to the same materials. The craft itself is schiacciata, pecorino cream, finocchiona and Via de' Neri.