bites abroad
Our intern Carly explored Florence's culinary scene and took us with her along the way.
Meet Carly
Meet Carly, our awesome Elon Dining Marketing Intern from Boca Raton, Florida! She is a Marketing and Entrepreneurship double major with a minor in Food Studies. This semester, she will be learning firsthand about the culinary world of Florence, Italy. She explored new restaurants and hot food spots each week and documented it right here for us to see. You can also stay updated on her journey by following along on the Elon Dining Instagram. We are excited to see how Elon Dining incorporates her discoveries into their flavors and menus!
Carly Tavares
Intro Journal
August 26, 2026
Hey everyone! I’m Carly Tavares, a marketing intern for Elon Dining! This semester I will be doing a Bites
Abroad segment as I travel around Europe and my home base: Florence, Italy.
On our first day arriving in Italy, my roommates and I decided to start off with the basics, which obviously entails pizza and pasta. For our very first meal we decided to walk around and see what we could find. We stumbled upon a cute little pizzeria which was a bit off the beaten path, about 10 minutes from the Duomo. We split pizzas and a mixed salad and sat for well over an hour chatting and enjoying ourselves. The pizza in Italy is a bit floppier and served uncut as you are meant to do it yourself at the table. Something I also found interesting is how relaxed the lifestyle is here. No one rushed us to get the check or take our food away, and in fact we were the last people in the restaurant by the end of our meal.
For dinner that night, we gathered a bigger group with some other girls from our sorority studying here and had dinner right in front of the Duomo. I believe this was more of a touristy restaurant as are most restaurants around the center of the city, but regardless, the food was amazing. We all ordered pasta, but everyone agreed that my pesto pasta was the best one. The pasta has a lot more of a bite than it does in America, which is considered ‘al dente’. The portions are much smaller as well, but pastas are meant to be a first course before a meat or fish dish. They also always offer espresso after your meal, which I am told is for digestion. As I continue along my study abroad journey, I am hoping to learn more about
certain food traditions and to taste new things!
Carly Tavares
Bites Abroad Week 2
September 14, 2026
For this week’s video I am taking on a new avenue: the local grocery store, Conad City. This supermarket chain is popular across Italy, with locations spanning all over the country. One is conveniently located just 5 minutes on foot from my apartment.
I went on my weekly grocery run and grabbed a few things for dinner. This grocery store sells my favorite yogurt, Fage 0% Greek yogurt, which is so nice as I like to have it for breakfast every day. Aside from that though, I have yet to find any other American favorites that I’m missing from home.
They have a very interesting produce system. You grab as much of a certain fruit or vegetable as you’d like, bag it up, and place it on one of the self-service weighing machines. You have to select the specific produce option on the screen and then it spits out a sticker for you to place on your bag. This makes the cashiers’ lives a lot easier as they can just scan it when you check out.
There are plenty of typical grocery store products, but one section I found particularly interesting is the eggs. They are not refrigerated as they would be in an American grocery store. They are just simply on shelves in the open air. But this is clearly a testament to the quality of their eggs as they must have never gone through a processing facility.
Another fun aspect of the store is that even in Italy, they sell frozen pizzas! I’m definitely curious if they’re better than the ones in America. They have an impressive prepared food section, with options like truffle pasta, bolognese, and other various dishes.
You bag your own groceries at check out and most people bring their own grocery bags. Luckily, our meal card works in some grocery stores which is extremely helpful for those of us who like to cook our own food.
Today I decided to cook salmon, zucchini, mushrooms, and put it over some salad mix consisting of lettuce and shredded carrot. This is a similar variation of dinner I eat most days. I’m eating the zucchini here very frequently because it’s in season at the moment. We have a gas stove in our apartment which has been fun to learn how to use. The salmon and vegetables come together very quickly which is part of why I’ve been recreating this dish so often. I’ve been enjoying using just salt and garlic powder to keep it simple like the dishes I’ve been eating in Italy. I put balsamic vinegar on my salad base. Funny enough, I didn’t like balsamic vinegar or tomatoes before arriving. Now I have been eating both almost every day. It’s really rewarding to shop for and cook my own food with the local ingredients. I have even been teaching my friends how to cook too!
Even though I’m living across the world, I get to keep a part of my familiar routine which has really made feel at home in Italy.
