Back in Florence for dinner at one of the most famous restaurants in Italy, Enoteca Pinchiorri. It's one of only five Italian restaurants with three Michelin stars, and also one of the few in the world with a woman chef. For those of you familiar with the quirks of Michelin's rating system, you will understand that the three stars doesn't really mean it has the best food, but rather that it best conforms to Michelin's three star standards. Luxurious surroundings and an enormous staff are absolutely essential to a high rating, but the real key is to have a French connection. In this case, the chef is French, and the food is a sort of French-Italian hybrid. So no doubt there are many more authentic Italian restaurants, but if you just want a wow experience rather than an authentic one, this is your place. The restaurant occupies a sixteenth century palace, but we were lucky enough to sit outside in a charming courtyard. Service was amazingly attentive, although a large portion were Japanese since Japanese tourists seem to make up a large part of the clientele. The wine cellar is supposedly the biggest in the world, and stocking mostly French wines, another prerequisite for a three star rating. We had a ten course tasting menu, which is what we normally do at the global restaurant superstars, and it was outstanding I think. I say I think because we opted for the matching wine, where they serve the perfect accompanying wine with each course. Again this is quite standard for these sorts of restaurants, and usually a great opportunity to sample some unusual wines by the glass. This restaurant is unusual, however, in that there are unlimited refills of each wine. When you start with ten courses and ten matching wines, and combine with extremely attentive staff who top up your glass as soon as you put it down, you've got the makings of a huge hangover the next morning. So we plowed through course after course of interesting food, (including three desserts!) and got very, very drunk. Then we made a terrible mistake. Italy was still using the horrible lira at that time, and the exchange rate was some ridiculous number like 1,380 to 1 dollar. So after drinking dozens of glasses of wine, I attempted to try to figure out what tax and service were included, then give a twenty percent tip to the base amount, while working with a bill in the seven figures. So, as I learned to my horror the next morning, all my expert calculations resulted in leaving a tip of about 1%.



This tipping fiasco did get me thinking about how ridiculous the whole system is. I know many people think tipping is generally ridiculous, but it's never going to change, I just wish it could be standardised across countries. But my real issue is why restaurants force customers to do all this advanced math at the end of a usually drunken meal. It seems to me you should be allowed to just state the percentage you want to leave, rather than have to do all that advanced math while your head is spinning.

Enoteca Pinchiorri (17-16-19).