Eating in Venice
Finding a convenient place to eat Venetian food in Venice may be hard job, so here,as an old habituée, I'll try to give some hints.
The Venetians between twelve and one o'clock p.m. are used to take a glass of wine with a snack, the best of it you may find in places called "bacaro".
These are halfway between a wine shop and a small restaurant, there you will find “cicchetti”, it is to say a snack made of tens of tasty typical hors-d'oeuvre, varying from place to place, from fish to all sorts of vegetables, meatballs, mixed fry, etc.. washed with a glass of wine or with a “spritz” (a highball with white wine and bitter), delicious in summer days. The ideal thing to break a wandering day.
You'll find many of them along the Fondamenta della Misericordia, but there are some spread all over the city. Ask some native.
There are also some original inns, where to eat traditional dishes, chiefly seafood, but it isn't easy to find them, and it's also easy, getting there the following year, to discover they have changed into tourist fast food or
Chinese restaurants.
A good way to detect them is to peep in at twelve o'clock in places that look like inns: it's the lunch time for workers and technicians busy in the many restoration works going on in the city.
If they are full of men animatedly speaking Venetian, you should definitely try them.
For dinner good non-tourist restaurants where the price is proportioned to the offer are really few, and also if you have Venetian friends the trend is to keep the secret.
It happened to me to say to a Venetian friend "this evening I'll have supper at such and such restaurant", and be looked at with a mixture of reverence and suspicion, the unsaid question being "How did you find it?"
If you've rented a flat and you intend to prepare meals at home, mind that grocer's shops have very different prices according to the different areas of the city: somewhere they are really jewel shops.
The best place is Rialto's Market and shops nearby, where you may also find excellent cooked foods, as for instance roasted duck (not to lose horse "sfilacci"), then the Via Nuova in Cannaregio area and the Via Garibaldi in Castello area.
Quite reasonable prices you'll find nearby Campo S. Margherita.
You also may have a day trip visiting the various islands of the Lagoon, ending at sunst to Le Vignole.
When there don't stop at the first inn, but walk along the channel until you find a poster pointing out “Trattoria le Vignole”, turn right and walk between the vegetable gardens as far as the bank.
The inn is a sort of self-service, you pay and carry out your meal in the garden, quite a folksy place, but pleasant.
The motorboat will carry you back to Venice.
Another trip may bring you to Lido and then, with a bus, to a ferry that will land the bus at Santa Maria del Mare, from there the bus will go on as far as Pellestrina, touching on the way several other fishermen villages.
In any of them you will find a fish restaurant, the most renown being Celeste, in Pellestrina.
You can also walk for a portion of the way, along a very pleasant pedestrian path running over the “Murazzi”, a long mighty wall between the sea and the lagoon, built after the first world war to prevent strong sea storms from sweeping away the fishermen villages.
Beside seafood cooked in in a great variety of ways, some Venetian very typical food specialities are:
Sarde in saore - fried pilchards marinaded in vinegar with onions (delicious!)
Bigoli in salsa - all wheat spaghetti with a sauce of anchovies and onions.
Bigoli con l'anara - spaghetti as above with a sauce based on goose meat.
Sfilacci - dried horse meat made in very thin threads seasoned with lemon, hot pepper and olive oil.
Pasta e fasoi - sliced tagliatelle with beans.
Risi e bisi – rice with green fresh peas.
Baccalà mantecato - creamy dried salt-cured cod.
Fegato alla venziana - veal liver with onions.
Moecche – (only in springtime) fried young crabs.
In the Ghetto, the area on the right side of Cannaregio Channel you can also find inns with cosher food and shops selling cosher specialities.
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