Rifugio Giovanni Santi La Vetricia

Exceptional food, not just for Barga, where the food is everywhere good to excellent, but in a lifetime of eating Italian food cooked by Italians all over Italy, starting with my Nonna in Rome. We've eaten here four or five times. I usually stick to a plate of pasta because, here, it's cooked to perfection and miraculously suffused with the flavours of porcini mushrooms, or game, or whatever it might be, something I've not been able to pull off in nearly forty years of trying. When I've tried other stuff it's been just as good: a beefy, **** sirloin steak; a cut of pork cooked with parmesan; a whole mushroom dabbed in egg and flour and flash fried (as Domenico, the cook, told me) to obtain (as I told him) the texture of chicken breast. I can certainly recommend the carafe table wine; and they do an excellent Chianti Classico for 12 euros, a bargain treat. The service is of the old school nothing-is-too-much-trouble kind, and then some: we came up on foot, a 2-3 hour walk from Barga, and Barbara offered to drive us down! You get knockout views from the path from Renaio (a bit steep and scrambly in places, but absolutely fine if you're sober and wearing decent shoes) so it seems a shame to drive up there but, if you do, take a short walk up from the Rifugio because those views really are a knockout.

We found a warm welcome and delicious food, in a beautiful place. A short wander up the hill gave us spectacular views. The staff were helpful and charming: they roasted chestnuts especially for us over an open fire as a treat! I couldn't praise it highly enough.

Bellissima passeggiata, circondata da faggi e funghi.

La nuova gestione fa schifo.

Il ristorante è chiuso.