About us · Since 2017
i Fichi is
a former sixty-square-metre pizza-by-the-slice joint that became an enoteca, then a cocktail bar, then a catering outfit, then a team of fifteen.
Not a chain, not a copy-paste format, not a brand to license out. It's a way of working we stumbled into - and keep tweaking every season.
And it probably doesn't end here.
Nine years in eight stops
How we got here
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The start wasn't part of the plan
A shuttered former pizza-by-the-slice place, sixty square metres on a square that wasn't exactly the centre of the universe. Two twenty-somethings, a few summers waiting tables behind us, the drinks recipes scribbled on a scrap of paper. i Fichi Secchi opens with no grand vision: the one strong idea is that things can be done differently, even off the beaten trattoria track.
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The first big stride
The unit next door comes free. We get over the fear of biting off more than we can chew and double the place: a year after opening we build ourselves a new room, a new kitchen, twice the possibilities. We hire Elia, and together we learn to make the drinks.
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Aperitivo, dinner, late nights
We make our name as the right spot for an aperitivo, staying on for dinner and kicking on late into the night. We install a half-tonne spiral staircase smack in the middle of the room - one of those things people remember long after they've forgotten the rest.
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A proper bar at last
With Covid behind us, we use the last lockdown to do up the place. We needed a bar worthy of the name for cocktails, so we tear out the old one and turn the staircase ninety degrees. Now we're genuinely ready to make half a thousand drinks a night.
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Looks like the end. We don't fold
In a small town, working too hard and too well can be a problem. We face a tough, costly legal battle that ends with the tables pulled off the pavement and a council order banning us from serving drinks to anyone who isn't seated. It looks like the end, but we don't fold.
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All You Can Fichi is born
We're the only place in Tuscany where the local authorities applied noise-pollution law to the chatter of people standing in a public space. New, iron-clad rules that seem tailor-made to take us down, but we reinvent ourselves as a restaurant: the All You Can Fichi formula is born, and that's how we save ten people's jobs - ours included - serving tens of thousands of guests, once again our own way.
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Widening the conversation
Seven years after the first place. Vada feels tight, so: StraFichi in Marina di Cecina. An evening venue, a cocktail list that becomes the real playground, a more technical hand in the kitchen. Same DNA, attitude a notch cheekier. In February Elia joins the project as a partner. Together we take over a sandwich shop on the corner of the main street and lease the clothes shop to its left and the greengrocer to its right: three months of non-stop work to join the three commercial units, all done by us - no architects, no interior designers, pure Fichi style. StraFichi opens to the public at the end of May.
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Beyond the four walls
The idea had been kicking around for a while: take i Fichi to events without watering anything down. Mobile wooden stations, our own kit, a centralised warehouse in San Pietro in Palazzi. The catering arm launches and nails a full season first time out: from private dinners for forty to events serving hundreds of drinks an hour.
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Something's brewing
Next year there's one thing we'd like to grow and another we'd like to try. We're looking for the right people; the ideas are already there, a couple of them. We won't tell you what, because we don't yet know which we'll do first - and because we like keeping our options open.
Here we are,
in no particular order
Twelve people, twelve different ways of doing i Fichi. A team that came together one piece at a time, from Vada to Marina di Cecina. You'll recognise some of them if you've been to see us, others not. Every one of them has a story they'll tell you at the bar, sooner or later.
The Fichi game
Which fico are you*
Twelve faces. Find yours.
Ten questions, a few minutes, a card that comes out with your name on it - or rather, with the name of whoever on the team is most like you. You might even spot the one who's already served you at the bar.
Three places,
one family
Aperitivo, dinner, private events. Pick where you'd like to start - book directly from here, or dig a little deeper.
i Fichi Secchi
Restaurant & Enoteca
Vada (LI)
- Piazza Garibaldi, Vada (LI)
- Tue - Sun · 6:00 PM to midnight+
- Closed to the public on Mondays
- +39 371 359 6552
- info@ifichi.com
StraFichi
Cocktail bar & Kitchen
Marina di Cecina (LI)
- Viale Galliano, Marina di Cecina (LI)
- Tue - Sun · 6:00 PM to midnight+
- Closed to the public on Mondays
- +39 339 567 6289
- info@ifichi.com
Catering i Fichi
Food & Drink on the move
Private and corporate events
- Tuscany and the Etruscan Coast
- From 20 to 500+ guests
- By appointment · reply within 24h
- info@ifichi.com