Acquacheta

Kathy, Rory, and Iris here-
We decided to write together for this post, as we all just had an AMAZING gastronomic experience, on the advice of our friends Michelannette.
We have just come back from an exquisite dinner at Acquacheta. It's an osteria, a tavern, a tiny spot with room for three dozen beefeaters, seated cheek-by-jowl along wooden tables covered with big brown-paper place mats (more about them later). You could call it dinner theatre, or perhaps a dinner circus. The ringmaster met a steady stream of diners who had booked in for the 7:30 sitting and ushered them in like cars into a parking lot, leaving no space empty. There was superb pasta with truffles and beautiful, solid soup of tomatoes and bread and olive oil, great caprese salad with bufalo cheese, and good robust local wine. But the real star of the show was the steak, and like the star of any show, it took the limelight. Up a dozen stairs at the end of the dining room is the open kitchen, exposed for all to behold. At the top of the stairs, front and centre and sitting on a pedestal -- a table-height chopping block -- UNDER A SPOTLIGHT (yes) for our viewing pleasure, is a twenty-kilo chunk of red, raw beef. 
But attention is diverted from the star by three attractive young women, apparently sisters and likely daughters of the master of ceremonies, who serve the tables. One of us couldn't help noticing that all three servers, dressed in black, sported decorations in that little space between tops and pants, in the small of the back. And it seemed, for all the world, that the decorations were in the style of the towns ancient architecure, but maybe someone's imagination was getting carried away. Back to the star attraction. "How much Bisteka alla Fiorentina would you like? What? Five hundred grams?! For three of you??!!  Five hundred grams of steak for three people!!!! The locals will each eat one kilo. I will bring you one kilo." Okay. As the steak orders come in they are delivered to papa who scales the stairs to the spotlit shrine above and takes a slightly overstated cleaver in hand and comes down convincingly on the beast, slicing off a rather overstated T-bone steak, which he slabs onto a sheet of butcher's paper to bring to the table for approval. With a proud flourish, he pulls a pencil from behind his ear and writes on a placemat the digits 1.050 indicating the precision of his cut. Back up the stairs and the meat goes onto a grill and into the fire. It is cooked in an open wood-burning oven (mirroring the wine-cellar shape of the dining room) which also serves as dramatic backdrop to the meat altar itself. The beef is not cooked for long. It arrives at the table on a wooden board sliced thick to expose a little pink but mostly bright red flesh. The crust is brown and well salted and seasoned, the waitress instructs us to drizzle the extra virgin olive oil over the steak, the meat is incredibly tender and delicious and at this point things go all blurry........... 
After the Bisteka alla Fiorentina, there is nothing more, there can be nothing more. The waitress was spot-on about the one kilo. Any less than a kilo would have been punishment, but any more would have been hard punishment. At this point there is nothing left to do but express our deepest gratitude and pay anything they ask. Papa returns to our table with his pencil in hand. We draw back to make room. A flurry of sums appear on the placemat with a quick recitation in Italian or English or both, a re-telling of the dinner, a quick summation: 62.80 euros. And just as quickly and dramatically he strikes a line through the 80 centesimos to pronounce his final price. Eighty bucks Canadian for dinner and a show for three very happy customers? "Ridiculous!"