Guided tour of a 3 Michelin star restaurant with wine cellar worth €100 million

Anyone who has ever visited Italy raves about the restaurants and traditional meals served there. Fair is fair: the Italians know about good food. But if you really want the best of the best, you should join Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence.

Origin of star restaurant Enoteca Pinchiorri

The story begins in 1973, when an Italian man named Giorgio Pinchiorri with a passion for wine meets a French woman, Annie Féolde. The two start a wine bar in Florence, something that was not common at the time. The wine bar became very popular because of the vintage wines that Pinchiorri gets from all over the world.

However, it wasn’t just wine. Given Féolde’s passion for food, highly acclaimed dishes are soon added to the menu. The wine bar grows into a chic restaurant. Since the 1980s, this restaurant has been earning its Michelin stars. In 1993 comes the icing on the cake and Inoteca Pinchiorri officially receives its third Michelin star. With this, Annie Féolde became the first female chef in Italy to achieve this.

Top quality meals and service

The historic restaurant is located on the first floor of a 5 star hotel called Baglioni Relais Santa Croce. The restaurant is decorated in a very classic Italian style, with white tablecloths and red chairs. The walls are covered with paintings, which give you the feeling of being in the middle of an Italian museum even more.

In addition, the building has something special: during the renovation of the building, a beautiful classical statue was discovered in the wall. The owners decided to build the restaurant around the statue and leave this beautiful work.

The menu is very extensive, with the option to take a whole course menu or order from the menu. On the Enoteca Pinchiorri website you can choose from two menus: the ‘Heart Mother’ menu, with nine courses for € 290 per person, wine excluded. Or the ‘Evolution menu, also nine courses for the same price. This seems a good price for the 9-course menus, given that the individual options on the menu can cost between €90 and €130.

The dishes served vary from fish dishes to various pasta and meat dishes. It is indicated in various reviews that the food served is mainly classic Italian with a lot of inspiration from French cuisine, which leads to dishes that are very tasteful and special.

In addition to the phenomenal food and beautiful surroundings, Enoteca Pinchiorri is also known for its fantastic service. They are served by the most professional and talented waiters, who treat their guests in a professional yet convivial manner. This makes visiting the restaurant an experience that will not soon be forgotten.

The best wine cellar in the world

Ultimately, the restaurant is best known for their high quality wine. Over the years, Giorgio Pinchiorri has collected wines from no less than 19 countries and stored them in a wine cellar that is now said to be worth a whopping € 100 million. In total, they own more than 100,000 bottles from different periods: from 2022 to the 1940s.

So it is certainly not surprising that the wine list has the thickness of a bosatal, with wines ranging from € 300 to several tens of thousands per bottle.