Il Cedro

Two sisters and a forest village

Il Cedro stands at the entrance to Moggiona on the road from Camaldoli to Poppi, in the Casentino valley a few kilometres from the Camaldoli monastery, and it has fed locals and visitors for forty-five years. Two sisters run it: Cristina in the kitchen, preparing rustic dishes, and Mariangela in the dining room, sharing Casentino tradition with the guests. Relatives from the valley help, with the mother and father named in accounts going back more than a decade.

The founding idea is simplicity and sincerity. A modest doorway opens onto wooden tables, and what greets an arrival is the smell of simmering tomato, herbs, seasonal vegetables, local olive oil and slowly cooked meat. The house calls itself family-first and means it operationally rather than as branding, since the family is the entire brigade.

No written menu, read aloud instead

The menu changes daily according to what the market and the forest give, and there is nothing printed. Mariangela reads the day's offerings aloud at each table, which turns service into a communal ritual and puts the kitchen's choices in front of the guest as choices rather than as a list.

What she reads is Casentino cooking: pappardelle with hare, tagliolini with blackthorn mushrooms, venison in Chianti, rabbit with fennel, wild boar, guinea fowl. Game and foraged mushrooms are the backbone, and the technique behind them is deliberately unmodern, long reductions for ragu, steady braises for meat, simple grilling to let the produce carry itself. Sourcing runs farm-to-table and organic where possible, with local producers supplying the valley's best on the day. Reading the menu aloud is only possible because the cooking is this direct; a kitchen of elaborate constructions could not be described at a table in a sentence each.

A homely room with the forest outside

The room is warm and homely, with simple rustic decor and natural light through open windows onto the surrounding greenery and forest. It is intimate in capacity, tranquil, and closer to a private lunchroom than a restaurant dining room. Guests use the word family repeatedly, and they mean the atmosphere as much as the ownership.

The setting does part of the work. Moggiona lies inside the Parco Nazionale delle Foreste Casentinesi, where mountain kitchens work with regional specialities amid the landscape they come from, and the proximity of the Camaldoli monastery brings visitors exploring the area's spiritual and natural heritage. House and local wine sit on a curated list scaled to the food.

Forty-five years without flourish

Il Cedro holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and three awards, one from the current year and two from previous ones, and the distinction measures exactly what the house does: good quality at good value. People find it by accident in the national park, reserve with Mariangela, and come back every year from two hours away.

The evolution has been an absence of one. Steady service and consistent cooking built the reputation without a single flashy change, and the insistence on minimal processing and clear flavour is what separates the house from more touristic Tuscan tables. In Moggiona the daily list is still read aloud, and it still depends on what came out of the forest that morning.