Lenzi Tuscan Kitchen

The story

Crafted with passion, served with love

A Family Table from Pisa to Bangkok

Lenzi Tuscan Kitchen is a family-run restaurant rooted in Pisa, Tuscany, and that origin is not merely decorative — it shapes every plate that leaves the open kitchen. Executive Chef and Patron Francesco Lenzi built the restaurant around a straightforward conviction: genuine ingredients, old-school preparation methods, and the kind of unpretentious warmth that makes a guest feel, in his own words, "like eating at a friend's house." That ethos has earned the restaurant recognition in the Gambero Rosso guide, one of Italy's most authoritative voices on Italian cuisine worldwide.

The Kitchen as the Heart of the Room

The dining room is arranged around a show kitchen where the brigade works in full view. Nothing is prepared in advance and held: every dish is cooked to order, from the pasta to the meat and seafood. Extra virgin olive oil is used throughout — in cooking and as a finish — and butter is largely absent from the kitchen. Chef Francesco has spoken openly about calibrating portion sizes and caloric balance, a philosophy that found its way onto the cover of a Bangkok healthy-dining guide, where a signature dish of New Zealand salmon in sesame crust with porcini mushrooms and beetroot mayonnaise was featured.

The menu runs to more than sixty dishes and covers the breadth of Tuscan cuisine alongside broader Mediterranean classics. Dishes from the gallery give a sense of the range: cacciucco alla Pisana — the hearty Tuscan fish stew of squid, baby octopus, rock lobster, prawns, sea bass and cod, served with grilled bread — sits alongside ravioli ripieni di foie gras in salsa di tartufo, spaghetti ai gamberi rossi del Mediterraneo, tagliata three ways, and tordelli, the stuffed pasta native to Lucca.

From Ghivizzano, with Chestnuts

The supply chain behind the menu has a story of its own. In 1945, Chef Lenzi's uncle established L'Antica Norcineria in Ghivizzano, near Lucca — a traditional pork butchery that remains part of the family operation today. The free-range pigs are raised on seasonal feed including sweet corn, bran, soy, barley, and — as has been the custom in Tuscany for centuries — sweet chestnuts. Animals are kept until they reach between 180 and 240 kilograms, and the cured products they yield are imported directly to Bangkok for the restaurant's use. It is the kind of provenance that cannot be replicated by sourcing from a catalogue.

Setting and Services

The atmosphere in the Ploenchit dining room is elegant without being stiff — private enough for a business dinner, relaxed enough for a long lunch. Beyond the restaurant itself, Lenzi extends to catering, private chef engagements, and food delivery across Bangkok, making the Tuscan kitchen accessible well beyond the dining room walls.