If you want a killer meal at a killer price, just be female and smile a lot. That is precisely how I got possibly the most amazing meal of my life. On Saturday afternoon, I headed to Cibreo Caffe, the less expensive counterpart of the famous Florentine restaurant, Cibreo. I was the only English-speaking person in the place, which perhaps gives some idea of the place's caliber. Anyway, the young, attractive waiters sort of took pity on me for eating alone, and gave me half my bill at lunch. Which was nice. But the story hasn't even begun. I went back that night with two roommates in their mid twenties, because the dinner menu is bigger than the lunch menu. Anyhow, the waiters remembered me and sent the three of us a bottle of champagne as we waited for a table on the patio. We sat down, and before we even saw a menu, were surprised with one of each and every appitizer on the Cibreo menu. The Expensive Cibreo, that is. After finishing that with large glasses of complimentary red wine, we got the menus-- but not the cafe menus, the Expensive Cibreo menus. We ordered food-- I got this incredible ricotta potato flan thing that was better than 99% of desserts I've ever had-- which was brought with every side dish on the menu (about 7). At this point it was about 11:30 pm-- we had been there since 9-ish-- and we thought were going to explode from fullness. And we were vaguely worried about the bill... we had eaten about 350 euro worth of food at this point. Seriously. So the lovely Italian waiter Josef asks us if we want dessert, and we just start laughing. Yeah right. Like we could eat anymore. But, nevertheless, he brought us a huge bowl of cherries that had been 'pickled' as it were in red wine, so the wine sauce tasted like cherries, and the cherries like wine. Delicious. Oh, and three pieces of flourless chocolate torte. Irrisistable. Probably the best dessert I've ever had. Ever. So, at the end of the night, 1 bottle of champagne, 6 glasses of wine, 6 glasses of water, 8 appitizers, 7 side dishes, 3 main courses, and 2 desserts later, our bill came to 60 euro, which we split for a grand total of 20 euro each. Damn, life is good.
