Wine and Food Diary of Giles MacDonogh

Eating in Venice

Written by Giles MacDonogh

Eating in Venice

Posted: 16th August 2016

Looked at from the bottom up, the offerings of Venice’s shops and taverns can seem very similar: the same trinkets: commedia dell’arte masks, Murano glass and beads, Burano lace; the same chunky cakes; the same snacks – pot-bellied tramezzini sandwiches and dried-up cicchetti (the local form of tapas) on roundels of baguette … so that you might reach the uncharitable conclusion that they were all made in the same factory. When I advanced this theory to a colleague in Venice recently, and proposed they might all be supplied by the same outfit in Calabria, he slapped me down: the factory, he said, was in China.

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He could have been right about the commedia dell’arte things and possibly some of the Murano and Burano artefacts are not what they seem, but the food (I presume) comes from a little nearer home. Venice has a permanent population of just 75,000 people and the bulk of the population at any given time is formed of tourists who stay a couple of days at the most. In some cases it is just a few hours. The food offered by most restaurants is essentially the same, and there is remarkably little innovation. Apart from a few restaurants often harnessed to luxury hotels, not much stands out. A generation ago, for example, La Corte sconta in Castello was considered a hot property, and so it remains. When I first went to Venice 23 years ago, there was much talk of Ai Gondolieri in Dorsoduro. Walking past it recently it still looks pretty swish. Both are in the current Michelin Guide. It takes a long time to tarnish a reputation in Venice.

We were lucky enough to have a little shopping street near our B&B, with a couple of bakers providing various forms of croissant (best with apricot jam or crème patissière) plum or apple cake and organic bread at €7 a kilo. There was a greengrocer and a fruit and veg stall with a witty proprietor (me: ‘are the peaches ripe?’ Him: ‘no, but if you keep squeezing them like that they will be’) and a couple of little supermarkets. The butcher was temporarily closed.

nov061242As always, quality starts in the market and the Rialto, across the famous bridge, is still a proper market. The late Marcella Hazan, who had a cookery school in Venice, used to wax lyrical about all the different forms of artichokes and asparagus she used to find there. Fresh courgette flowers are often stuffed with bacala (died cod), a dish I had at the restaurant Vinaria near the Accademia last month. Even in the afternoon, once the market traders have mostly gone home, the price of fruit from the few remaining stalls in the Rialto can be half what you pay elsewhere in the city. We bought some lovely ripe white peaches there (they were the purest poetry!) and ate them on the Campo San Polo on our way to the Frari. I remember the fish stalls best: the sight of the sea bass still buckled in rigor mortis. I assume the trawlers take their loads to Chioggia at the bottom of the lagoon, but it doesn’t take long for small boats to bring the fish up the Grand Canal to the Rialto.

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Giles MacDonogh

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