Pici appears as a signature dish in 1 Italy cities. See each city's local variant and where to eat it.
Pici · Florence
The Tuscan hand-rolled pasta of Siena and southern Tuscany, a thick spaghetti shape kneaded from flour and water alone, served with the cacio e pepe pecorino-and-pepper sauce or a slow ragu.
Pici trace to Etruscan-era southern Tuscany around Siena, Montalcino and Pienza, where flour and water made a pasta that needed no eggs and survived the lean months. The hand-rolling technique (pici fatti a mano), worked between flat palms on a wooden board, was a wartime skill passed mother-to-daughter. The pasta entered the Florentine canon by the 1960s through trattorias importing from southern Tuscany; today every Florentine restaurant carries pici cacio e pepe or pici al ragu di cinghiale.
Where to eat in Florence:
- Coquinarius
- Cantinetta Antinori
- Osteria di Giovanni
- Trattoria Cammillo