An audience with beef's Michelangelo
By Mike Cassell
Published: FT - Oct 20, 2006
Along the scenic Chiantigiana, the road that runs due south from Florence to Siena, you will reach Panzano, a medieval village that the guidebooks tell you is best known for its embroidery. In truth, however, its main claim to contemporary fame is tucked away a few metres up the Via Luglio, behind a bead curtain hanging limply across an open door.
High on the stone wall above the entrance is a bull's head moulded in terracotta. To one side is a marble memorial tablet mounted with a ceramic plaque on which, instead of the face of some dear departed, is a portrait of a bloody beefsteak. There is a single red rose and an inscription that reads: "In Memoria della Bistecca Alla Fiorentina."
Welcome to Antica Macelleria Cecchini, not so much a butcher's shop as a Tuscan drama in which there is room only for one actor and a small audience of customers who are as likely to be intimidated as entertained. Tuscany is not known as one of the great culinary regions of Italy, its sun-kissed citizens called by fellow countrymen mangiafagioli - or "bean eaters". Try telling that to master butcher Dario Cecchini and be prepared to leg it up the Via Luglio unless you fancy feeling the sharp end of his meat cleaver.
Cecchini, a big man who could have been carved out of Carrara marble, has a booming voice that insists you pay attention; he is a Michelangelo among Italian butchers. He is said to recite Dante's Inferno while carving up a cow, or sing "O Sole Mio" as he arranges skewers of steak tartare behind a sparkling glass counter.
His mission is to get the whole world eating bistecca Panzanese, a monumental cut carved from the thigh of Tuscany's finest beef cattle. It is, in his own words, "not only a food but an emotion" that can fill the stomach, encourage the consumption of Chianti Classico and even "awaken the affectionate senses". His shop, he declares, is a temple to red meat and poetry. Inquire within for half a chicken and expect no quarter.
The plaque on the wall outside marks what he would like to think was the premature death in 2001 of the market for Florentine beefsteak, brought low in that year by an outbreak of foot and mouth disease. Cecchini has always claimed Panzano beef is better and when his rivals up the road hit hard times he showed no fraternal sympathy; instead he organised a funeral procession, complete with coffin, to consign the inferior meat to its grave.
His small shop is clean and uncluttered, though most unlike any butcher's shop I have ever entered. One side is dominated by an ornately framed oil painting that would look more at home in the Uffizi than surrounded by neatly stacked mustard jars; close by is a lurid, plaster effigy of a half-bovine, half-human beast that no high street butcher's chain would entertain for fear of turning its customers vegetarian. Close to the door are some bookshelves, stacked with a variety of culinary bibles written in different languages. On the other side of the shop, beneath two sinister hooks and chains mounted in the ceiling, is a modest meat counter displaying little else than sausages, a tray of cut steaks and titanic chunks of vacuum-packed beef.
As I part the bead curtains to enter, a young Australian girl pushes out on to the street. "Life is too short", she mutters as she dons a hat to shield her from the blazing sun. Inside, a slight, wiry man stares at me from a stool in one corner, his standing compatriot likewise. It is as though they have grabbed the best seats for the matinee performance. The Maestro is behind the counter, arranging slices of orange around the edges of a small wooden tub filled with fat, black olives; apprentices come and go from the back room. At once it is clear that you do not speak until you are spoken to.
I mumble in an amateurish mix of tongues something creepily complimentary about the steaks and I am instantly betrayed. The show begins. I am told that I am in Tuscany, I am not in America, that Italian is the only currency that counts in his shop; for good measure, he points out that he is no ordinary butcher and this is no ordinary butcher's shop. This is not a place for chipolata-seeking tourists, but for home-bred red meat eaters. I protest that I am English, not American,as though this will make some sort of difference. It does.
He has been to England but never, ever, anywhere found a steak worthy of the name. Harrods? His face turns the colour of seriously undercooked topside.
I switch to French, which seems to blunt the edge of his busy tongue, but only slightly. In protesting that English beef is as good as any in the world I am still not showing the degree of deference required. The Maestro sweeps across the room to the bookshelf where I spy a copy of Heat, the best-selling book by Bill Buford, in which our hero features. He flicks open a Jamie Oliver tract to show his own photograph; next a book in which he is pictured alongside the Prince of Wales.
I have long had a photograph of myself alongside the heir to the throne but have always been too embarrassed to wield it in order to gain the social high ground. I vowed in that moment to organise a wallet-sized copy of me and HRH.
He returns to the meat and holds up a lump big enough to fill the back of my 4x4. But I want steaks, I explain. His patience is exhausted. I am instructed to cut it into steaks once it is cooked, a concept which he implies even his cows might grasp. With that, he heads for the back room, ordering a helpful and charming underling to hand us some information sheets on how best to cook his beef.
The instructions are all printed - strangely, for an enterprise that has no time for tourists - in English. So if you ever get your hands on a chunk of Panzanese beefsteak (because it is vacuum-sealed it can be stored for a month), remove it from the fridge 12 hours before use, cook on a grill placed low over hot coals, five minutes on each side and 10 minutes standing on the sides.
The Maestro insists you never use metal utensils; turn the meat with a wooden spatula or with your hands. Splash some olive oil on it, add a dash of Profumo del Chianti - a mixture of sea salt and aromatic herbs - and down it with copious amounts of Chianti Classico.
I bought a fillet of beef and a leg stuffed with its own marrowbone and handed over €104. The meat was sublime. As for the price, it may be utterly outrageous. But, then again, you would pay much more for a decent ticket at La Scala.