iO - Osteria Personale

Michelin recommended spot which is still up and coming. The staff are phenomenal, and their team is what puts them ahead. Tasting menu is choose your own adventure. Many of the dishes lack a bit of dimensionality. The beef tartar, for example, is paired with mayo and is lacking some potent flavors to grab tasting buds. The squid risotto is extra earthy. They can build out the flavor profile of both dishes. The only technical issue was the popcorn in the dessert was not fresh.. it was soft. Their wine menu is extensive and their somm helpful. The by the glass options are not high quality/hi value, and you will need to choose a bottle if you want good wine. The exception is the desert offerings. All in, not bad value. Will come back in a few years to see how things have progressed.

The restaurant gives a nice vibe. We had the 6 courses meal which were fantastic. Great venue for a special treat. Staff is very friendly and helpful. Seeing us waiting outside for a taxi for few minutes, the waiter offered to help book a taxi and invited us to wait inside. Thank you!

Incredible dining experience in romantic Firenze! We somehow managed to sneak in for a last minute reservation and will never forget the experience. The intimate ambiance and service oriented team enhanced the vivacious food offerings that delight from beginning to end. Recommend 10/10 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Delicious impressive 5 course meal!! One of the best surprises we had in our Italy trip. The ambiance is romantic, service was fantastic and again the food impressive.

Amazing and interesting food with very kind service and knowledgeable about the wine. Definitely would recommend

We had the pleasure of dining at Io Osteria Personale, and from start to finish, the experience was exceptional. Upon arrival, we were greeted warmly and offered the freedom to choose any table, setting the tone for a relaxed and personalized dining experience. One of the standout aspects of the evening was the staff's knowledge and assistance in pairing the perfect wines to complement our meal. Their recommendations enhanced each dish, with the octopus being particularly memorable—tender, flavorful, and beautifully presented. Opting for the five-course tasting menu, we were not disappointed. Every dish was creative and delicious, offering a refreshing departure from the usual pizza and pasta. The diversity of flavors and attention to detail in each course truly showcased the chef’s talents. To top it off, the staff went above and beyond by helping us arrange a taxi back to our hotel, making the entire evening seamless and stress-free. In short, Io Osteria Personale provided a unique and delightful dining experience that we totally recommend to anyone looking for a break from the traditional Italian fare. This restaurant is certainly worth a visit.

Excellent tasting menu experience. We did five courses but should have done six, because the dishes were delicious but were on the small side, as we should’ve expected for a tasting menu. The service was impeccable. The decor is quite nice and, while it has an air of elegance, it still felt a bit Spartan — like an upscale cafe instead of a fine restaurant.

Best restaurant experience in Florence! Highly qualified and attentive staff, excellent dishes with amazing flavour and structure, good selection of wine. Better to book in advance as the restaurant has only 10 tables. Thank you for unforgettable dinner!

After dining at IO-Osteria, I completely understand how they earned their Michelin. This is fine dining. This is a smaller restaurant with a fascinating menu - everything we had sounded so interesting and tasted even better. Truly one of the best meals I've ever had & so different from traditional Italian fare. The service was impressive & they had a great wine recommendation. sure to get reservations because it is not to be missed.

Amazing. 5 star food and service. Make sure you reserve ahead of time since it's a small restaurant and you may not get a spot as a walk in. Where can I start..... the service was impeccable. The waiter was attentive had solid background knowledge of their wines as well as food ingredients. After each course, we received a new, warm bread basket and utensils were switched. Water and wine was always refilled without asking. As for food, this place provided such unique texture and flavor. We ordered the ceviche, pork belly, and octopus. The pork belly was our favorite and melts in your mouth. Each dish was beautifully plated and contained multiple levels of flavor. I really enjoyed this restaurant and wish I can go back in the future.

We dined in Florence for four nights, and our meal at Io Osteria Personale was by far our favorite. My husband and I dine out frequently and are adventurous when it comes to food. We also believe good service and ambiance to be essential. This small, intimate restaurant delivers on every level. It provided a refreshing break from some of the more 'traditional' formula menus we encountered during our stay. My husband and I had the four course tasting menu with a perfect bottle of wine recommended by the sommelier. The meal was creative, beautifully presented and most importantly, delicious: a real treat! Try it.

This was our first dinner in Florence. It is a relatively small restaurant. The owner/manager is very friendly and involved with all the tables. He appears fluent in multiple languages including English and French. We ate early (7:30pm), but we saw locals arriving around 9:30pm/10:00pm; however, the restaurant is definitely geared for tourists, but I do not believe in a bad way. If you do the tasting menu, you have several options of number of courses. However, the trick is that everyone at the table must get the same thing. In other words, not just the same number of courses, but same choices. If one orders steak tartare, then everyone gets steak tartare. We did enjoy the tasting menu and speaking of steak tartare, this was one of the highlights. It was very fresh and the tasting menu portion appeared to be the same as the table next to us who ordered a la carte. We had grilled calamari for other starter, and it was extremely fresh and well presented. We also had raw red prawns and pasta, provided interesting texture and play on hot and cold. The crispy veal with tuna sauce was certainly fine, but it was not our favorite. We also had the pork with roasted corn cream and hints of coffee, which I really enjoyed. For dessert we opted for something light. The lime sorbet with coconut foam was very tasty and satisfying. We would likely return on another trip to Florence.

When you walk in, you can tell this place is classy: the staff is very professional yet warm and welcoming, attentive but never intrusive. You are given a dish to cleanse your palate and prepare you for the experience. We chose the 5 course tasting menu, as everyone has to have the same plate in every course (not a show stopper, but it would've been nice to have individual choices) and everything looked so good. 1.Grilled CALAMARI,potato and lemon cream, fried capers,rocket pesto: the squid was perfect - melted in your mouth, I'm not sure it was possible to cook it to this perfection 2. SCALLOPS,friggitello pepper,salted codfish cream,licorice: it was so fresh and the preparation really complimented the delicate scallop meat 3. Tagliatelle with raw RED PRAWNS, porcini mushrooms,sesame seeds: the pasta was a great backdrop for this special prawn, which tasted heavenly, reminded me of Sweet Shrimp sashimi 4. PORK fillet,roasted corn cream,spring onion,olives,coffee: Tenderloin pork like I've never had before - medium rare, like eating a lighter version of filet mignon 5. Beer Ice cream for dessert - YUM Best value tasting menu we've seen in Firenze

This dining experience left me speechless... good thing I can still type. I'm glad I chose Io-Osteria Personale for a night out with family and friends - with all the excellent choices, I knew we would eat well in Borgo San Frediano, but Osteria Personale raised the bar. This cozy restaurant is beautifully decorated and creates a wonderful atmosphere for those that know you must travel oltre-arno (the other side of the Arno river). The wine list is full of local Italian wines - designed to pair perfectly with the creative, fresh, flavorful meals. Everything from the antipasto to dessert was a thrill to order, receive and eat! The presentation, the colors and of the fresh delicious ingredients, all these things came together with the flavor to make a perfect meal. Whenever asked for a suggestion for this city, Io-Osteria is usually the first. And if I am in Firenze, I will usually have dinner here at least once, I suggest you do the same :)

Creative, beautifully presented and every bite was delicious. If you can, go with friends so that you can order more items and taste more dishes. We sampled our way through nearly the whole menu, and while we had favorites, there was nothing that was less than amazing.

For dinner, we ended up eating at this restaurant since it had good reviews. Overall, I thought the food was trying to be a little fancy and just barely made it out as such. I don't think I would go back here since the portions were quite small for the money that you pay. The flavors were good, but not enough to justify the price point. They do have set courses, which may have been a better value, but they require that everyone order the same set course. No customizing. Not cool.

Owner Matteo Fantini personally selects top seasonal ingredients to create his delicious plates. Recipes are created by Matteo then prepared by his top chefs. An innovative approach to Tuscan Dining of which few restaurants in Florence have managed to successfully achieve. His wine cellar is stacked with National wines from Boutique wineries. Matteo perfectly selects the perfect wine to pair with you food and creates an exceptional night of mouthwatering flavors. I can not stop visiting for us who live in Florence it is a must at least once a month!

If your looking for contemporary, revised Tuscan Food then you have come to the right place. Owner Matteo Fantini creates superb dishes using seasonal regional product from organic local farms . The quality and artistry of each plate is perfect. His wine cellar boasts a selection of National boutique wineries that pair perfectly with the food. Choose degustation menu or alla carte and be sure to taste the dessert!

We had an great experience. We tried the five course tasting menu and it was delicious. We got the steak tartare and calamari- both very good and worth every bite. We than tried the chicken ravioli in miso broth sounds different but was equally delicious. We went on to try the crispy veal- that was cooked perfectly and it does sound different to try with tuna sauce definitely worth it. The dessert was good not the best I had but def different- we tried the caramel popcorn ice cream and olive oil ice cream with lavender they are not overly sweet. I can definitely see why they are on the Michelin guide worth a stop if you are in Florence. I can definitely see them earning a star in the future

Had a special dinner here for my wife's birthday with our 15-year old niece who is frankly a pretty picky eater. We went with the tasting menu and each of us picked a course for the table (except for dessert where we each picked our own). Wife and I loved each and every course, but the niece had a hard time with a couple. I got hers :-) The service was very attentive and friendly. Each course was described proudly. The place is tiny and has a clean modern look. This was probably my favorite meal of our trip to Italy.

Osteria Personale is an Absolute Revelation Osteria Personale is a visionary masterpiece. The owner Matteo Fantini is a former veterinarian turned brilliant chef and mad scientist that has prolifically pushed culinary taste, texture and creativity to an unchartered territory of innovative deliciousness. Florence is home to many amazing restaurants that cook traditional Italian food, but that's not what you'll find here. The affable Mateo has taken traditional dishes and reimagined them in smart and inventive ways. In fact, he does not even serve pasta! Personale has a very comfortable and intimate setting further enhanced by a seductive jazz soundtrack that creates an inviting ambiance. Matteo, himself, warmly greets you at the door. The restaurant only seats 28 and was virtually packed on a rainy Friday night. This profoundly visionary menu is so complex, yet so simple with only 15 dishes to order from. It's impossible not to get excited after reading the menu. The journey began with a vibrantly vivid Carrot "Soup" sprinkled with miniature morsels of herring. While it was called a soup, it was far lighter than your typical carrot soup. Any lighter and it might have just floated away. It was adeptly fine and silky smooth, reminding us of Scarpetta's velvet like polenta in its delicate consistency. The show really started when Mateo's brilliant take on burrata graced our table. His Burrata Cheese with Tomato Sorbet, Olive Crumble, Peas and Crispy Rocket was by far the best burrata we have ever had. Two beautiful scoops of this soft cheese lay atop a celestial olive crumble. The magnificent olive crumble added such a beautiful level of oral depth and texture to the phenomenal cheese. It was akin to cookie crumbles on a sundae or Bacos on a salad that adds a glorious and much needed crunch. The mound of tomato sorbet atop the olive crumble was original, tasteful and refreshing. No crumb was left behind on this epic dish. So if you think your experienced gourmet mouth has tried everything out there, get ready for his take on mollusk. His Calamari with Potato and Lemon Cream, Agretti Parsley Oil and Capers was a new flavor combination for us. The Calamari was supple, fresh and seductively enveloped by a buoyantly light cream. The cream contained such a harmonious balance of both potato and lemon that is a brand new experience for your gluttonous taste buds. This sexy dish is so stunning that you are reluctant to disturb it with your spoon. The next astonishing dish to be bestowed upon us was the Steak Tartar with Asparagus Ice Cream and Sweet Garlic Cream. While we are both not huge fans of steak tartar, we really enjoyed this version. The true epiphany though was the asparagus ice cream. This diminutive scoop of green cream irrevocably altered the way we will forever look at asparagus. The way in which the asparagus and the cream hit your mouth was truly a palate changing moment. Upon first impact your brain is overloaded with immense endorphins from its pure astonishing delight. There is an asparagus taste to it but it is coupled with such an enrapturing cream that it literally mesmerizes you. Our only complaint was that we could not get a huge sundae style scoop of it. The phenomenal finale came in the form of a dessert that was captivating in both taste and appearance. White Chocolate and Olive Oil Hot Cream with Lavender Slush and Passion Fruit Jelly. This is a dish that most chefs would need a genie to conjure up. The mix of hot olive oil cream and white chocolate was insanely gratifying, addictive and would have been a stellar dessert just on its own, but it did not stop there. There was this lavender slush in it that was simply divine. It was the perfect exclamation point to one of the best meals we have ever had and our favorite restaurant in Florence. Osteria Personale is an absolute MUST to eat at in Florence. It is one of the most creative and delectable restaurants in the world. It is a place where you can experience brand new flavors and eat ingredients like you have never imagined before. This sensational food is also reasonably priced. He has a four-course tasting menu for only 40 euros or 6 courses for 55 euros. You probably will not find more delicious, rare and creative food anywhere else in the world at these prices. If you go to Florence and do not eat there you have failed miserably. We missed out by getting there too late and only tasting a fraction of his 15 dishes. On our next trip to Italy, we look forward to going back and trying them all. Osteria Personale is an unadulterated and special gift to the world. We hope that Michelin will reward it soon with well-deserved stars. Thank you, Matteo, and keep up the ingenious work!

Really, really incredible. The setting was romantic and modern, service lovely and the food out of this world. We had a nice bottle of Chianti and the four course tasting menu. The grilled calamari was so light and delicious! The ricotta cheese gnocchi was the best gnocchi we had in Italy, and they were surprisingly light for such cheesy bites. The pork fillet and toasted corm cream was juicy, hearty and yet I ate the entire fillet. For dessert (you can get two different dishes for dessert) we had the salted popcorn ice cream and the coconut foam with lime sorbet, which was the absolute star! Mateo said goodbye to us at the door. What a warm and lovely last meal in the gorgeous city of Florence. Make SURE you book ahead of time, as they were turning walk-ins away on a Wednesday night.

牛逼。相当牛逼。simply the best meal I've had in Florence and I was here on a food tour. Perfectly balanced food of local ingredient, local preparation, and creative infusion.

The Food is interesting, well combined. I might have made the mistake of criticizing the policy of forcing everyone on the table to have exactly the same meal if choosing the degustation menu. From there on, atmosphere was ruined, waiter was extremely rude and arrogant. Probably my fault, but we felt not welcome and I find this policy idiotic and customer-unfriendly.

Aside from being impeccable in every respect, this restaurant is truly special. One of the dishes (tomato sauce with three forms of tomato) was so good it made me emotional. It's true but not fair to say that it was the best tomato sauce I've ever eaten; it does a disservice to this dish to put it in the same class as other pasta-and-tomato-sauce dishes. It was clearly some other level of thing entirely. Just go here already. Jesus.

This meal was amazing. Each course was delicately prepared and the flavors just light up your mouth. Highly recommend!

New small hipster restaurant. Cute location. But very small menu and very long wait to get our food. It's kind of a meh.

I could detail every part of my gorgeous meal and experience at this location, but I'll keep it brief: this was one of the very best meals of my life. Excellent, kind service, creative and thoughtful usage of fresh ingredients, well-done space and guidance throughout. Matteo and his lovely staff have created something really special here, and entering the space feels a lot like entering the home of a friend would...a friend who really really really knows how to prepare food. :) No overlooked- or overdone- details. I cannot wait to go back. This is a NOT-TO-BE-MISSED spot in Florence.

I'm not sure how everyone else had such a wonderful experience here! I almost feel like I somehow got jilted, because MY experience was far from wonderful. I will say that the service was incredibly friendly, so that was really nice. The food, on the other hand, was just not my cup of tea. A little too modern for what I wanted. Stark. Bare. Small portions. I told my host about how bummed I was when I got home that night and she was very surprised, since her friends had eaten here the day before and loved it. I feel like I ALMOST need to go back to give it another shot the next time I'm in Florence...

I am so happy we stumbled upon this place. Really wonderful modern cooking. Everything was delicious, creative, and beautiful. It was one of the best meals I have had -- especially given the consistency of how good everything was. The chef here is a real star! The amberjack with celery was awesome -- cold, crunchy, and a lot of flavor from the spices. The artichoke starter was amazing...the polenta was done 2 ways and it was lovely. The octopus was beautifully cooked and had a bright, lemony flavor. And the cod was also really lovely. I want to cancel the reservations I have for the rest of the week and come here every night!!

This restaurant was fabulous. We had the 4 course tasting menu and everything was perfectly executed. Inventive flavour pairings and perfectly cooked. I particularly loved the zucchini flowers stuffed with burrata ...omg, heavenly. The wine was also to die for and we've just spent a week drinking incredible wines in the Tuscan countryside. The atmosphere, service, and decor was also awesome. Bottom line: go here, get the tasting menu, you will not be disappointed.