Restaurant: Pizzeria Pretorio
Location: San Donato, Italy
Date: June 22, 2011
Cuisine: Pizza
Rating: Best pizza we had on the trip
The wine guide who took us to Montacino seemed to have very good taste in food, and so we’d asked him where the best pizza in Tuscany was. He was confident it was a place in the tiny town of San Donato called Pizzeria Pretorio. We trekked for 30 minutes each way just to find out.
San Donato is one of those pretty small stone towns. It wasn’t very big, so it didn’t take long to just stumble into the joint.
And they turned out to have such a terrible view.
And cramped unappealing terrace — not!
The menu.
One thing about this terrace — it was hot hot hot in the Tuscan sun. So I took an artsy water bottle shot.
And we felt that pizza called for beer, in this case the special premium “silly beer!”
Here is pizza margherita with mushrooms.
Calzone Napoli: Ricotta, prosciutto, cotto, salami piccante, mozzarella.
La fabrizino: small tomatoes, sausage, porcini, mozzarella and arugala.
Then the piece du ressistance: the four seasons. We don’t know exactly what was on this, but clearly the green pesto & zucchini part was spring, the sausage winter, the squash part fall, and the remaining one summer.
Overall Pretorio was some damn fine pizza in an impeccable location.
Then walking out we stumbled onto this: an artisan gelato place.
Oh the hardship. This turned out to be one of the three or so best gelatos I had in Italy too.
The didn’t have a lot of flavors, but those they did were really good.
Chocolate.
Lemon.
And my trio: Cassata di Siciliana (ricotta with candied fruits), chocolate with cherries!, and nutella. All three flavors were fabulous, but the nutella was hands down the best nutella gelato I’ve ever had (and I’ve had plenty). It was so thick I wondered if it just WAS nutella, but really I know better as even at fridge temperatures nutella becomes unspreadable.