Dario Cecchini, the Dante-Spouting Tuscan Butcher

“[…] My first day of work was gray and windy, and few people were out. But the macelleria was in a frenzy. It was a ‘production day.’ I would learn this later; then I understood only that I was always having to get out of the way of people moving very quickly. In the front was Dario, standing on a raised platform behind a display case. The day before, a Sunday, when I’d dropped by to say I’d arrived, the shop had been packed with people. There had been loud music and free red wine and plates of creamy white lardo (raw pig fat). Dario was a towering figure in his late forties—overdeveloped shoulders, gigantic hands, and monstrous fingers—and very much the master of ceremonies. He had a crewcut, and around his neck wore a pink bandanna that matched the pink in his cotton shirt and his clogs. On seeing me, he stopped what he was doing and started declaiming the Inferno from memory: he crouched low; then he thrust himself upright; he made his eyes big; he made them small; he wagged his finger; he brought his hands together in prayer. It was possibly the most melodramatic performance I’d ever witnessed. The crowd loved it and erupted in uproarious applause. But now Dario was in a silent fury of productivity. […]”.   –Bill Buford, “Carnal Knowledge: How I Became a Tuscan Butcher,” The New Yorker, April 24, 2006.

See also Buford’s book, “Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany.”

Learn more about Cecchini on Wikipedia. In addition to owning and operating the Antica Macelleria Cecchini, the Cecchini family also operates two restaurants and a food truck.

Related Sighting

Chef Bolek, “The Inferno Steak” (2013)