Review :
A friend sent me to the Firenze Trattoria website and I was surprised to discover you really can book reservations on line. If it weren't for that, we probably would have stayed closer to central San Diego. The place is a gem, much more elegant than your typical strip-mall trattoria and extremely romantic both in its location and d�cor. It's in Encinitas, just south of Olivenhain, where you can pretend you're dining in the Florentine countryside.

We were so taken with the place that we tried to make an entire Italian dinner of it -- antipasti, pasta course, meat course, and dessert -- but we wound up sharing everything and still didn't have room for dessert. Their wine list, while not overly long, is nonethess good enough to have won Wine Spectator's Award of Excellence (another reason why we went there) and its best feature is that most of them can be ordered by the glass. So we changed our wines with each course.

We started with an insalata dell'orto and a zuppa di verdure with a pinot grigio from San Angelo. The salad pairs fresh Italian greens with apples and pine nuts and the soup is a rich pur�e of fresh garden vegetables. We followed that with portobello ravioli in a gorgonzola cream sauce, an inspired dish, accompanied by an Italian sangiovese.

Then one of the house specialties, pollo e gamberi rosmarino (chicken and shrimp in a white wine sauce with fresh rosemary) with a glass of Silverado chardonnay and, finally, scampi alla fresca (garlic shrimp in a light tomato sauce over linguini) with a Carmel Road pinot noir.

We'll have to come back to try their dessert cart. As it was, we spent more than two hours at the table!