Restaurants in Venice
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Trattoria Corte Sconta
The Biennale jet set seeks out this vine-covered corte sconta (hidden courtyard) for imaginative housemade pasta and ultrafresh, visually striking seafood. Crustaceans are arranged on a platter like dabs of paint on an artist’s palette, black squid-ink pasta is artfully topped with bright orange squash and tender cappesante (scallops) sticking out their red feet, and roast eel loops like the River Brenta on the plate with a drizzle of balsamic reduction.
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Antiche Carampane
Hidden in the once-shady lanes behind Ponte delle Tette, this culinary indulgence is a trick to find, and you may wonder who you have to, erm, know to get a reservation. The sign proudly announcing ‘no tourist menu’ signals a welcome change: say goodbye to soggy lasagne and hello to lagoon-fresh crudi, asparagus and granseola (lagoon crab) salad, bottarga pasta, and filetto di San Pietro (fish with artichokes or radicchio trevisano).
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Gam Gam
Gam Gam is great for your taste buds if you like Israeli-style falafels (around €5.50) and other Middle Eastern delicacies. This place is fully kosher and presents a diverse menu, from Red Sea spaghetti to couscous (with choice of meat, fish or vegetable sauce).
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Taverna Del Campiello Remer
Off the tourist routes and close to any Venetian bargain-hunter’s heart, this vaulted cavern opens onto a secluded square along the Grand Canal. Buffet-style lunches come fully loaded with affettati (especially Trevisana sausages and cured meats) and pasta for about €20 – but the best deal is in the afternoons before 7.30pm, when a cicheti buffet and drink runs from €5 to €7. At dinner, abundant primi are served family-style with about a pound of pasta for two, and specials are recited rather than written down. As the sign says: menú turistico non ghe xe (there’s no tourist menu).
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Conca d’Oro
Pizza is not a local speciality, in case you hadn’t guessed from the cardboard pies you’ll find at most pizzerias around San Marco – but this place is the exception. This local joint brought pizza to Venice in 1960 and has been slinging generous thin-crust pies (€7 to €10) with creative toppings ever since, though the nonpizza items are better avoided. Service is not especially quick on busy days, so relax and enjoy the sun in the piazza. Note: the restaurant sometimes closes on Tuesdays in low season.
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Naranzaria
East meets West in this hip corner bistro with sushi and Venetian-style cicheti, along with light summer dishes. Swilled down with fine local and Friuli wines, this microscopically sized locale with cool ambient music adds a metro touch to the Rialto market bustle. Grab a table upstairs in winter or a canalside position in summer. (The Naranzaria was long the orange market. Oranges were prized by mariners not for making juice but as a preventive measure against scurvy while at sea.)
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Osteria Alla Vedova
Culinary convictions run deep here at one of Venice’s oldest osterie, which is why you won’t find spritz or coffee on the menu or pay more than €1 for a bar snack of Venetian meatballs. Enjoy superior seasonal cicheti and ombre with the local crowd at the bar, or call ahead for brusque, pricey table service and strictly authentic Venetian pastas.
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Al Nono Risorto
Manifesto or menu? At Al Nono Risorto, pizzas are listed alongside urgent action alerts: ‘No abandoning animals!’, ‘More rights for gays and domestic partners!’ Prices are left of centre, radical-chic servers graciously indulge petty bourgeois pizza orders, and on sunny days, all of Venice converges on the garden for squid with polenta, the bargain house prosecco, and cross-partisan bonding.
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Hostaria Da Franz
Known in Venice as home to one of the best tiramisus in the world, Da Franz is also a phenomenal seafood stop (trying to get a table here during the Biennale is impossible). Two dishes spring to mind: the melt-in-mouth seppie (cuttlefish) prepared in black ink, and the anguila (eel), prepared according to grandma's secret recipes as a grilled fillet - surprising and delicious.
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Ae Oche
Architecture students and budget-minded foodies converge here for a choice of 70-plus wood-fired pizzas and ale at excellent prices. Extreme eaters order the lip-buzzing mangiafuoco (fire-eater) with hot salami, Calabrese peppers and Tabasco sauce, while Palladio scholars stick with the classic white estiva with rocket, seasoned Grana Padano cheese and cherry tomatoes.
reviewed
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Osteria Mocenigo
Times and dining habits have changed since dogi strained waistcoat buttons across the street at the Palazzo Mocenigo: here you can make light meals of cicheti at the bar, including an upstanding sarde in saor, or sit down to a casually elegant meal of grilled local asparagus and scallops, with homemade pastas including ravioli stuffed with radicchio and whitefish. Dishes ranging from €7 to €12 are plentiful enough for lunch and you can wash them down with Veneto wine by the glass.
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Tre Spiedini Da Bes
A classic osteria where you can crowd in for no-nonsense food. Choose from several broths and pasta for the first course and then dig into, say, a slab of sole for the main. It's a typically cramped Venetian locale, with ponderous timber ceiling beams and all sorts of paraphernalia hanging on the walls.
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Pasticceria Tonolo
Dire B&B breakfasts with packaged croissants are corrected at Tonolo, which serves flaky apfelstrudel (apple pastry) and oozing pain au chocolat (chocolate croissants). Chocolate-topped beignets are filled with hazelnut mousse as rich as a Venetian doge at tax time.
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Da Nico
Gelato to go is half-price at the bar, but sunny days are meant for lazing away dockside with Da Nico’s gianduiotto, a slab of hazelnut gelato submerged under panna (whipped cream), or panna in ghiaccio, frozen whipped cream sandwiched between cookies.
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Bacaro Risorto
Just a footbridge from Piazza San Marco, this shoebox of a corner bar offers quality wines and abundant cicheti, including crostini heaped with baccalà mantecato, grilled vegies, soft cheeses and melon tightly swaddled in prosciutto. Note that opening times are ‘flexible.’
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Met
Michelin stars don’t mean much in Venice. In fact, the last French critic Venetians took seriously was Napoleon himself, and he had an army backing him up. Still, locals who would not normally patronise a hotel restaurant concede that Met chef Corrado Fasolato certainly earns his starry reputation. Moonlit lagoon panoramas and mesmerising blown-glass constellations recede once the food starts to arrive. Confident and playful takes on local game and seafood dishes might include savoury pheasant cannelloni or decadent eel-stuffed pasta that makes foie gras seem trifling. One main arrives with red wine and horseradish transformed into sorbet and gelato. Bring a hot date, a…
reviewed
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Il Ridotto
From an open kitchen the size of a closet comes a parade of tasty small plates: a dollop of savoury Tuscan bread pudding, Venetian crudi composed into a glistening mosaic, a silky pistachio flan. Mains are comparatively anticlimactic and pricey, but antipasti like the lobster-nectarine salad and inventive primi such as gnocchi stuffed with wild herbs make an inspired meal. There are only five tables, set close together, which makes reservations essential and haphazard service puzzling – but ever-present chef/owner Gianni Bonaccorsi is warm and attentive, and the decor of exposed brick and gossamer veils sets the scene for modern Venetian romance.
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Fiaschetteria Toscana
A classic that has long maintained quality, the Fiaschetteria Toscana has sought-after super-Tuscan options on the menu of 600 wines, but it’s Venetian where it counts: the wild-caught lagoon seafood menu, especially the crudi, seafood risottos and frittura della Serenissima (a haul of lightly fried seafood). But you can also choose to rebel against the city’s pescatarian impulses with proper cuts of meat, including lagoon game and Chianina steak that makes pampered Kobe seem tough. Leave room for Mariuccia’s rovesciata, a Venetian take on caramelised-apple tarte tatin, and don’t miss lunch specials.
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al Covo
Featuring all the markings of a classic Venetian trattoria – low-beamed ceilings, exposed brick wall, regulars installed in the corner – but with twists on the typical dishes. Caprese salad gets the Covo treatment with basil and mozzarella di bufala served with a heavenly cherry tomato gelée. Squid-ink pasta is served with clams and squash blossoms. And Adriatic tuna swims in no fewer than five sauces – at once. Prices are understandable given the top-quality, lagoon-fresh ingredients, and are offset by reasonably priced, limited-production wine.
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Osteria di Santa Marina
Don’t be fooled by the casual piazza seating and simple dark-wood interiors: this restaurant is saving up all the drama for your plate. Given the à la carte prices, you might as well go for the €55 fixed-price menu or the all-out adventure of the €75 tasting menu, where each course brings two bites of reinvented local fare – a prawn in a nest of shaved red pepper, black squid-ink ravioli stuffed with branzino (sea bass), artichoke and soft-shell crab with squash saor (Venice’s tangy marinade). Dessert is a must, especially the house-made gelati and hot chocolate pie.
reviewed
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Trattoria da Pampo
Even though this restaurant is opposite a park in the quietest end of the city, this place boasts ‘dal pampo non c’é scampo’ (there’s no getting away from Pampo) with reason – the ombre and cicheti are irresistible happy-hour lures. During the Biennale, flocks of American performance artists and German gallerists descend on outdoor seating, attack plates of seafood risotto and polenta con seppie in umido (with squid in a tomato-onion stew), and fly off to openings in a cloud of gauzy black crêpe.
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Sangal
Venice by way of Manhattan, with daring cuisine that rocks the proverbial gondola, magazine-ready leather and marble decor, and romantic lighting that gives diners a certain glow…or maybe that’s the food. The menu winks at Venetian culinary history with classic dishes like tripe with polenta, but raises eyebrows and expectations with Venetian wheat pasta stuffed with raw scallops and sea urchin and pineapple ‘carpaccio’ with olive oil ice cream. Dine under the stars on the terrace in fine weather, and line up for lunch specials.
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All’Arco
Maestro Francesco and his son Matteo invent Venice's best cicheti daily with Rialto Market finds, and if you ask nicely and wait patiently, they'll invent a seasonal speciality for you. On Mondays when the Pescaria is closed, Francesco might wrap wild asparagus in rare roast beef with grainy mustard; when Saturday's seafood haul arrives, Matteo might create Sicilian tuna tartare with mint, Dolomite strawberries and aged balsamic. Even with copious prosecco, hardly any meal here tops €20 or falls short of five stars.
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Trattoria alla Madonna
A classic restaurant a stone’s throw from the Pescaria, with diners packed in like anchovies, waiters in white jackets and black tie expertly navigating narrow channels between tables, and a menu that hasn’t changed much since the restaurant opened in 1954. Traditional seafood offerings range from straightforward grilled fish through seasonal specialities like capelonghe (razor clams) in a white wine broth to the more obscure uova di seppia (cuttlefish eggs) which tastes like sturgeon caviar.
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Pasticceria Rizzardini
‘From 1742’ reads the modest storefront sign, and inside you’ll find irresistible cream puffs and doughnuts that have helped this little bakery survive many an acqua alta – in a peculiarly Venetian boast, samples of waters bailed from the store floor over the years are preserved in bottles on the top shelf. Troll the biscuit section in search of wagging lingue di suocere (mother-in-law’s tongues), suggestively sprinkled pallone di Casanova (Casanova’s balls), and other dolci tipici venexiani (typical Venetian sweets) – but act fast if you want that last slice of tiramisu.
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