Where to Eat in Venice, Italy

Try These Places to Eat in Venice, Italy

How do you decide where to eat in Venice, Italy with so many restaurants from which to choose? The adventurers among us, bashful or not, can pretend that we are heading to Venice for the art, for the calm influence of streets paved with water, to understand the complex mix of religion, and law, and commerce to be found in this place, but we are also there to eat and eat well.

Choosing where to eat in Venice, Italy needn’t be perplexing to be done well.

Yes, gushes about cicchetti (basically, tapas for Venetians) seem to permeate travel guides and newspaper travel sections right about now; in a year, though, travel writers likely will be chronicling some other new-to-them trend.

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If you try hard enough, it’s possible to make any vacation needlessly complicated and endlessly perplexing. Are you eating like an Italian, like a Venetian, like a traveler, like a tourist? Are you doing the right thing, the in thing, the cool thing? Why not just do what you want? When I want to eat in Venice, I want to savor Venice. Indeed, I head to Venice again and again to experience life in the slow lane, a passage that must be walked, usually in somewhat roundabout ways.

When choosing where to eat in Venezia, I seek, usually, calm, comfort, romance, and, yes, a flavor burst I might be able to find in cicchetti. Here are some of my recent picks and how I got there.

Restaurants in Venice near La Fenice and San Moisè

Ristorante Alla Borsa

This happens to be where we eat in Venice on night one of our stay, so let’s indulge a bit. I start modestly enough, somehow having fallen in love on this trip to Italy with a vegetable soup, which I pretty much order as my primi piatti everywhere on this stay. Light and soothing at the same time, vegetable soup makes me feel like I am opting for something a little bit healthful (and far more satisfying than a crunchy salad) before moving toward what I am really here for: pasta. And afterward, pastry.

I opt for a hearty papardelle with truffle and mushrooms before moving on to a very unusual cheesecake. It seems more like a deliciously buttery pound cake with a crust than like anything that would be served in New York City. I think it’s more than the mere difference between the cream cheese I would find in this dessert back home and the ricotta cheese I anticipate tasting here. Although there’s room in my life for both New York cheesecake and Italian cheesecake, in Venice I am partial to the latter.

The Brawny Sherpa goes for Italian surf-and-turf of sorts: zuppa di pesce (a fish soup that tends to require some highly participatory consumption), veal milanese (which leads one to wonder if there is a veal venetian), and some veggies.

Finishing with double espressos and limoncello, we then are surprised when we sleep listlessly. The chianti and after-dinner drink were supposed to override the caffeine.

We have eaten at Ristorante Alla Borsa before, just a few years ago, when we slipped inside on a rainy night because the downpour intensified and our umbrellas were absent. We like it as well now as we did then. I’ve seen some criticism of this restaurant in the blogosphere, but I think the negative comments are unfounded.

Ristorante Alla Borsa, Calle del Sartor da Veste, Venezia

Pizza at Ae Veste Bar in Venice, Italy.
Photo credit: M. Ciavardini.

Ae Veste Bar paninoteca wine bar

Also close to Teatro La Fenice as well as San Moisè is the unwieldily named Ae Veste Bar paninoteca wine bar. It might be a mouthful to pronounce, but it’s a perfect, casual place to stop in for a quick pizza and drink to keep you sustained for more cultural activities. Perfect for us, as well, is that it is conveniently located near Hotel Kette, too.

Ae Veste Bar paninoteca wine bar, Calle de Le Veste, San Marco 2013, 30124 Venice, Italy

Restaurants in Venice Between San Moisè and Ponte dell’Accademia

Tavernetta San Maurizio

By the time we slide into seats at Tavernetta Maurizio, the sweetness of being in Venice has made us yearn for some savory. Continually varying between restaurants that are more formal and those that are less so, we find a happy medium in Tavernetta San Maurizio. It’s just a subtle bit of denial on a trip geared toward indulgence.

On a chilly winter night, we order up some house red and, creatures of habit of sort, begin with veggie soup for me and zuppa di pesce (fish soup) for the Brawny Sherpa. It’s his own personal favorite however sloppily it manages to be consumed.

I like the closeness of the tables here, the boisterousness of the other diners, the low ceilings. I feel like I am in Venice of old, of a different age.

The Brawny Sherpa, tempted to bark out an order for baccalà (salted cod) as each of our grandfathers of Italian descent would have, instead makes a surprising choise: lasagna. I return to the present to savor my favorite Italian food of all: gnocchi. As it always is in Italy, my gnocchi with tomato sauce is perfect. We pretend we are on a budget by drinking house wine and foregoing dessert.

Between people-watching (okay, eavesdropping) and eating, we wonder whether there is a difference between a taverna and a tavernetta. We are delighted to learn that the former is a mere tavern while we are participating in a rumpus. Joy.

Tavernetta San Maurizio, Calle Zaguri, 2619, 30100 Venezia VE, Italy

Dining by candle light at La Caravella in Venice, Italy.
Photo credit: M. Ciavardini.

La Caravella

We choose Restaurant La Caravella because its main dining room resembles a ship (although, oddly, we refrain from seafood on this visit). La Caravella was named for the vessels that Christopher Columbus used. A caravel is a certain type of light sailing ship used by the Spanish and Portuguese around, oh, 1492.

The Nina and Pinta were caravels, but the Santa Maria was not.

The interior of La Caravella charms and romances. Dining by candlelight, I choose a vegetarian soup with pasta, here named pasta e fagioli alla veneta con past “mischiata” e lio al rosmarino (and more recognizable to many as paste e fagioli for short).

The Brawny Sherpa, ever a carnivore, opts for conchiglioni “Felicetti” con ragu d’ossobuco e fondente di cipolla, also known as pasta shells with ossobuco meat sauce and onion fondant. Yes, we wash all of this down with more chianti.

Dessert is warm sabayon with zaletti Venetian biscuits. Soon, I am in love with caravels, and, more particularly, La Caravella. This is one restaurant to which I will have to return.

La Caravella, Calle Larga XXII Marzo, 2399, 30124 San Marco, Venezia VE, Italy

Peggy Guggenheim’s palace in Venice, Italy.
Photo credit: M. Ciavardini.

Eating near the Accademia

Cafe at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection

Because appreciating art—and Peggy Guggenheim’s life—can be exhausting, we stop for refreshment at the cafe at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. It’s just oh-so-civilized to savor a cappuccino at Peggy Guggenheim’s palace. We don’t pretend for one minute that the place is ours or choose the room that would be our home office. It’s more like two hours that we pine for this very prime real estate.

We almost feel guilty for not having something substantial to eat, but patrons around us are. We really just need a place to come down from art overload for a bit. The cafe offers some quiet relaxation before we embrace more artistic intensity and passion.

Peggy Guggenheim Collection Museum Cafe, Dorsoduro 707, 30123 Venice, Italy

60/40

With a few minutes to wait before Basilica Santa Maria di Salute opens on a chilly winter afternoon, we slip into 60/40 for some cappuccino. Of course, the name of this bakery/deli begs greater contemplation. Is 60/40 just 24/7 in metric? Or is it like the 80/20 rule, where 20 percent of one’s efforts yield 80 percent of results?

Some say you should expect to get back 40 percent of any 60 percent you put into a project (although that doesn’t quite seem like a good return on investment to me), and others say this particular ratio refers to the fact that this place is part eat-in (or snack-in), and part takeout.

Either way, we appreciate the counterperson’s patience with our rudimentary Italian as we opt to snack-in. Although we clearly are hapless tourists, no one here treats us that way. We’ll be back.

60/40, Sestiere Dorsoduro 128, Rio Tera dei Catecumeni, 30123 Venice, Italy

Quadrino in Saint Mark’s Square, Venice.
Photo credit: M. Ciavardini.

Dining in Piazza San Marco

Quadrino

For our last evening in Venezia, we eat at the center of it all, in Saint Mark’s Square itself. We choose a pastel-colored confection of a bistro in Quadrino, where formal suited servers lead us to a softly lit dining room looking out to the piazza. Should I tire of people-watching within the restaurant itself, I need only glance outside to see fur-coated women wearing their hair in French twists glide by. I feel like I am in the ’60s, or an Audrey Hepburn film, but I’m live, in Venice, 2019.

Back to the food. Dining by candlelight, I try carciofini fritti con salsa di pistacchio (fried artichokes with pistachio sauce) and indulge a craving for some plain red spaghetti with tomato sauce. Words in Italian, British English, and German float by as conversations ebb and flow. The water in Venice is relatively low right now but spirits this night are high. I finish aptly with a torta venezia and an espresso.

Quadrino is on the first floor of Michelin-starred Ristorante Quadri. Philppe Starck led the renovation of the space, which now showcases stucco from centuries past. Quadrino is a blissfully romantic choice to dine in the best city on the planet.

Quadrino, Piazza San Marco, 121, 30124 Venezia VE, Italy

—Lori Tripoli

Planning where to eat in Venice? ‘

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