I went to Delfina restaurant in the Mission for the first time because person after person raved about it. But I went to Da Delfina ristorante in Tuscany because of a blog post. This one, to be specific.

Solociccia and Da Delfina were the only two places we made reservations for our whole trip, and our first night in Tuscany we drove to Artimino. The adventure began as soon as the journey there. Being technologically-dependent Americans, we MapQuested the route from the villa we were staying in (poor us) to the village of Artimino, apparently very near Firenze. The MapQuest promised us a thirty minute drive. The hosts at our villa said it would be at least an hour. We got dressed.

It was a disaster. Traffic circle after cursed traffic circle. And when we saw signs indicating that we were about to drive all the way into Firenze proper, panic. But as the sun started to go down, by a combination of cartological prowess and sheer luck, we found signs for Artimino. And promptly passed the lone road up the hill and went into some kind of forest where the road went from two lanes to one lane to no lanes. We persevered, and finally (finally!) made it to the top of the hill where the beautiful restaurant sat.

I had made reservations online for 7:00, using a sort of fake pieced-together Italian derived half from Babelfish and half from my Latin studies. Uh huh. So at 6:58 we walked from the car (the only one in the lot) up toward the restaurant. Inside, the staff of Da Delfina sat around a table eating dinner and talking and drinking wine. Okay, so we were early. We walked around the parking lot a little bit, looked at the stars, debated whether or not we should go in now or in five minutes or in ten minutes, and were both exhausted from the traffic-circle purgatory we had just been through.

At 7:15 I thought, okay, we can go in. We trepidly walked back to the door, and in. Forks froze, conversation stopped, and they all looked at us like, wtf? A young woman came up to us and I tried to stammer that I had a prenotazione in Itanglish. She asked what time, and I said 7:00. She said, impossible. This is bad. I gave her my name, and she looked on the roster of reservations, on which my name emphatically did not appear. This is the part where my stomach really sank—not only had we intruded upon a family dinner in this beautiful restaurant, not only had we driven for 90 minutes through insane traffic circles and into boar-laden (right?) woods, but now we were not even going to be able to eat at the restaurant for which we had gone to all the trouble.

But my stomach could rise again—she said I could make a reservation right then, and asked what time. 7:30? Sure thing. So we grazied her and went back out and sat in the car for 13 minutes and then gave it a couple extra minutes and then went back in at 7:33 for dinner. We were still the only ones there. She led us into the back dining room and we sat down at the table with a tiny scrap of paper that read “Brown, 19:30” on it. And then she gave us menus and left. And then we sat there.

The menu was terrific. My cockiness about being able to understand Italian food words took a blow, but hey, even that was terrific. The only weird thing was that we discussed the menu together at length, trying to decide what to order, and nobody came to check on us. Later, in hindsight, the only reason this seemed weird is that once again we were the dumb Americans barging in on their party. In the United States, if a server sits you and leaves you alone for 20 minutes, one automatically assumes that the server is out to get us and for which we must exact revenge in the form of depreciated gratuity. At Da Delfina, they were probably just having dessert and giving us time to figure it out. Or more likely, actually, they were doing something totally, beautifully logical: they were waiting for more people to arrive. Another couple came in and were seated next to us, and then a bigger party. And then it was like the gun went off and it was okay to go! Carlo came over and asked for our order.

We knew we were ordering too much food, but couldn’t stop ourselves. We had to order the Sformato di ceci con bottarga because it was at Delfina in the Mission that I had fallen in love with sformati. We had to order the Ribollita because if you have “Ribolitta Da Delfina” at Delfina in the Mission, then you have to order Ribolitta at Da Delfina in Artimino.

I wondered if Carlo knew the English word for cerva, the tempting ingredient in Pappardelle con ragu di cerva. He didn’t. But thankfully a deer’s head jutted out of the wall above our heads, so he could just gesture, and kindly smile: “cerva.” Uh huh. We ordered Fegatelli spiedo because it was at Delfina in the Mission that I had eaten a chicken liver spiedini that, still, is the only thing I’ve ever eaten which has brought tears to my eyes (the difference being that Da Delfina’s spiedo used pork liver, and was gigantic and amazing, but gigantic). And to add insult to injury, we ordered Contrafilleto in vino.

The sformato was made of chick peas, and had all of the creamy texture and savory depth I was hoping for. The bottarga was interesting—I didn’t know what it was—a strange pinkish, soft chip topping the sformato. (It’s grey mullet roe). Dish after dish came out, and it was all tremendous. We were all done after the pappardelle and the delicious, deep venison ragu. And then a huge piece of meat and gigantic pig livers came out. Which is why we smartly declined dessert, and stuck with a piccolo grappa and caffe. Our server (in sharp red tux) brought us some anyway, slices of a rosemary-walnut torta, with the texture of a pancake.

After we had done as much as we could do, we paid and steeled ourselves for what we knew could be a journey of many hours and traffic circles in the dark Tuscan night. It seemed altogether more conceivable, though, after that meal. On the way out, I tried to tell Carlo that we lived near Delfina in the Mission—capito, he said, capito. He communicated to me, and I don’t know how I can be so sure of this but I am sure, that normally Da Delfina is bustling with people (it was, in fact, pretty bustling by the time we left). Capito, I said (yeah right), capito.

As Alli came out the door Carlo followed her. He handed her an ashtray, it looked handmade and painted and read Da Delfina. Artimino. He said, “Signora, signora….don’t smoke.” We took our treasure and made it home in record time.

post script--I didn't take photos inside Da Delfina for the same reason I didn't at Solociccia the next night--part of me wishes I had them, sure, but in the moment, it would have seemed totally inappropriate to pull the camera out and photograph this stuff. I hope you and I will both forgive me and understand. Thank you.