With what are arguably the best panini in Florence, Antico Noe is an inexpensive gem that quickly registers on the radar of students, both Italian and foreign. To get there, head down Borgo degli Albizi until you reach Piazza San Pier Maggiore. Antico Noe is just past The Lion's Fountain pub on the left.

If you stumbled across it by accident while exploring the Santa Croce neighbourhood, you might be tempted to give it a wide berth. The dark, covered passageway where Antico Noe has been feeding Florentines since the early 16th century is the preferred hangout for a dozen or so (mostly) men who spend the day and evening consuming large quantities of beer and wine straight from the bottle.

Don't be put off. They're quite harmless and keep themselves to themselves. I was living in an apartment in the tiny Piazza San Pier Maggiore overlooking Antico Noe, and while the police dropped by a few times a day for a friendly chat with the winos, there was no trouble in the two months I lived in the neighbourhood.

So visit the hole in the wall and choose from a sandwich menu posted on the wall outside. Or choose whatever you want, because they'll make you a delicious and seriously large panino with whatever ingredients you select.

My first time there I chose from the menu. Grilled chicken stuffed with mortadella and prosciutto and topped with buffalo mozzarella and roasted red peppers. Heaven for just Euro 3.60! I can also highly recommend the roasted porchetta. Ask them to add whatever looks good. There is a fine selection of Tuscan red wines, but the vino della casa is a perfectly good accompaniment for your panino, as is an ice-cold beer.

Locals tend to lean on the bar and gossip with the patrone and his wife, while students and such tourists as get down here tend to spill out onto the pavement.

The owner's jovial wife, a Canadian, is often asked how she ended up here. "Well," she smiles, "I came here for a sandwich one day and liked it so much I married the owner."

Appetite whetted? Vivoli, Florence's most celebrated gelateria, is only a five-minute walk, but even closer, some twenty yards down Borgo degli Albizi, is Vestri, a real chocolate maker serving everything chocolate, including ice cream to rival the very best.

If you're aching for American deli-style (but GOOD American deli-style) this is the place. I call it fast food because it's take-it-and-run food, but I don't mean to imply that it is unhealthy in any way. In fact, it's one of the healthier places to get a meal becuase you can tell them exactly what you want on it. All the subs/sandwiches are delicious and it's a good social scene- all the American students sort of congregate just ouside of it every afternoon grubbing and talking. Therefore, it'd be especially worth finding it (it IS pretty hidden) if you are younger and traveling and maybe want to meet some people that you could go out with later that night. Oh, and you don't have to eat your food right there, it's not really that pretty of a spot. Walk to Sante Croce, a really cute piazza not 5 minutes from there.

This little deli is like nothing that I have ever experienced. It is located in a safe but sketchy area commonly refereed to as heroine alley though I have never seen any drugs in the area. There is an old man making sandwiches to order in this little shop that you really cannot stand in because there is no room for more then three people inside. The sandwiches which are large and made with fresh ingredients are as good as you will find anywhere in the world. You can pick your own fillings, but you are better off with one of the eight or nine varieties listed on the chalkboard. It is rare that you can bring someone to a resturant to get lunch who lives on the other side of town and come back the next day and see him there with three of his friends for lunch again. It is even rarer to come back two days later and see his friends eating lunch there with more of their friends. This is the most addictive lunchtime place I have ever seen. Antico Neo is the kind of place that you go back so often you end up ruining it for yourself. The only problem is you never get tired of it.