WineTraveler’s Weblog

Eating in Venice, Day 1

Ah, Venice. We have developed something of a habit of visiting Italy at least once a year. My in-laws are Italian and I have come to love Italian food, Italian wine, and Italy in general. And, being a reformed geek engineer, I have become fascinated with Venice. Beyond its overwhelming beauty and uniqueness, there is also the sheer impossibility of it. Imagine the effort it took hundreds of years ago to sink all those wood pilings and to build the city, one little island at a time, and link them all with bridges. Fascinating.

We’ve been to Venice about five or six times now, including once for Carnivale when we rented costumes, attended a grand ball, etc. Usually, however, we try to go right before or right after Carnivale to avoid the maddening crowds but to try to catch it “all cleaned up.” A few years ago, I took my S.O. there the week of her birthday, in early December, and that worked well so we tried to do that again this year. Well, my company had just been acquired and the first week of December turned out to be very busy with transition activities so we pushed it off to December 10-14. Since we live in Boston, an extended weekend in Venice is actually a possibility and so that is what we did, leaving Thursday night and returning the following Tuesday.

Our main goal was to eat and it was a goal achieved. Over all our visits, we have accumulated a list of favorite restaurants that we try to visit on every trip. With the growing number, that task has become more difficult. During peak tourist season, you always need at least two back-up choices for each meal unless you are very disciplined about making reservations ahead of time. This trip, we made only one reservation, for Sunday pranzo (brunch) at Della Marisa in Cannaregio. We knew Marisa’s was pretty small and that it has gotten quite popular, getting “discovered” and listed in more and more culinary guides (and after this last visit, it will probably come off our own “must visit” list but I’ll get to that in a bit).

We decided to stay at a new-to-us place, the 3C Bed & Breakfast, just a block or two east of Piazza San Marco. We did some debating between ourselves on the best place to stay. We usually stay at small bed and breakfasts though we have also rented flats on several occasions. We like having a kitchen available in case we want a simple, stay-in meal of something nice we find in one of the markets. But this trip was only four days long so we figured we’d be out and about most of the time and, thus, a bed and breakfast would work ok for us.

The next thing to decide was the location. We have stayed in four of the six Sestieres so far, from way out in Castello off Garibalidi, to Cannaregio (a few times), Dorsoduro and San Polo. We had gotten to know San Marco pretty well when we stayed in Castello but had never stayed there so we decided to try it. Also factoring into our decision was that in early December, Venice was hit with a very high Acqua Alta. We didn’t like the idea of needing to wade to get to restaurants so we tried to pick some place that was centrally located. 3C was right up the street from and very close to the San Zaccaria vaporetto stops (at which most of the different lines stop) so we went with that. Since it was off-season, we secured a decent four-day rate.

We flew American Airlines through London to British Airways, with a not-too-bad layover of about 2 hours in Heathrow. We did have to connect between Terminal 3 and Terminal 5 going and coming but that wasn’t too painful. We arrived in Venice about 11:30am and took the Alilaguna water shuttle toward San Marco, getting off one stop before, at San Zaccaria.

3C turned out to be in a great location for us. The place itself was nice but the room was a bit disappointing. I thought we had reserved a superior room and the rooms shown on the web page all had some rock facades along one wall and interesting beams along the ceiling. Our small room (Room 2) was all white plaster, with a flat white ceiling and rather “busy” Venetian glass chandelier and nothing really superior about it. Oh, well…we wouldn’t be spending much time in it anyway… I was just a bit disappointed. (That is a common thing for me when traveling. I try to get a choice of rooms when I check into an unfamiliar place because I am often disappointed by the room I get assigned. When staying at The May Fair Hotel in London recently, I looked at no fewer than three rooms. Two were disappointing small, box-like and boring. The third was better — it was longer and got good sun.)

Having checked in, we started our mission: to eat. We walked over to San Polo to one of our favorite simple open most of the time place, Vini da Pinto. We had discovered da Pinto several years (and trips) ago when we rented a flat two floors above the restaurant with two of our friends. That was the year we attended Carnivale and finding a B&B turned out to be impossible. Anyway, da Pinto has wonderful food and good wine (as the name implies). They don’t close for the afternoon “siesta” (what is the Italian equivalent word?) like many restaurants do so we felt safe heading there at 2pm. We ordered a few of our favorite dishes: sarde in saor (sardines and onions marinated in vinegar), pasta with vongole veraci, and pasta with sepia in ink. And we went with a 1/2 litre of the house white wine. Ah, heaven…great food, simple but good wine.

After our late lunch, we wandered back to the hotel to rest a bit before dinner. We hadn’t slept well on the flights over so we were a bit beat. That night we went by a place recommended by the owners of 3c, a wine bar in Santa Maria Formosa called La Mascareta. It was rather crowded so we backtracked just a hundred feet or so to an old favorite, Osteria Mascaron. There was some live music (looked like the owner or one of the workers had taken some time off from his duties to sing…American songs like “Hotel California”). We went fish again, with a mixed seafood assortment and an order of Seppie Nere Alla Veneziana (cuttlefish in ink sauce with fried polenta).

We shared a tiramisu for dessert and then headed back to our room for a very good sleep. There would be more good eating the next day…

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