Ciaohound in Venezia
Venice can be very expensive, but there are places to eat that don't cost a fortune. Here are some of our favorites...
Alle Testiere (Calle del Mondo Novo 5801, tel/fax 522 7220)
One of Portland's best Italian chef was in Venice a few years ago to study with Marcella Hazan. Hazan tipped her to this little spot, and she passed it on to us. We started with appetizers of tiny clams steamed with ginger and grilled scallops (capesante) basted with brandy, then split a plate of tiny gnocchi with baby calamari and sauce of seppie, the mild sweet ink of cuttlefish. Judith had swordfish cooked with olives and capers and flavored with hand-gathered fennel flowers called pollinea di finnochio, and I had what the Venetians call anguela, a sand smelt cooked with radicchio rosso di treviso, a different variety of the bitter red lettuce than we get in the US. With a bottle of the house red, mineral water, and a caffe, this lunch cost about $80, our most expensive meal but a bargain for Venice.
The rest of our meals we ate at bacari, wine bars that serve cicchetti, the Venetian version of tapas, and the Venetian sandwiches called tramezzini, with a variety of fillings, from tuna and olive oil to calf's liver, on triangles of soft white bread. Each little plate cost about $2.
Osteria Al Portego (Castello San Lio 6015, tel 522 9038)
Close to the Rialto Bridge but tucked away on a quiet back street, this bacaro offers a nice selection of cicheti. With a glass of novello rosso, we ate green olives stuffed with proscuitto, rolled in bread crumbs, and fried in olive oil, sweet crab legs (also breaded and fried), whole tiny crabs--think of a soft shell the size of your thumbnail-- called massenete, boiled shrimp tails, marinated artichoke bottoms (you see tubs of these in brine in the vegetable markets), sauteed eggplant, the tender cooked salami called cotechino, squares of polenta topped with gorgonzola, and slabs of grana padano, a hard cheese similar to parmigiano reggiano.
Osteria da Toni (Dorsoduro, 1642, tel 528 6899)
Wandering through the less-touristy Dorsoduro neighborhood (sestiere, as the sections of Venice are called) near Campo San Sebastiano, we found this little wine bar after noticing the crowds of students outside, usually a good bet for cheap food. It had the usual cicheti, including butterflied crispy-fried fillets of sprat, the salt cod called baccala mixed to a fluffy consistency with olive oil and milk and spread on bread, and whole sardines in saor, a Venetian marinade of layered onions and white vinegar with a sweet-and-sour flavor that's unbelievable.
Trattoria Due Torre (Dorsoduro, 3408, tel 523 8126)
On our last day in Venice we wanted to eat a big lunch to hold us for the train ride back to Tuscany, so we headed back to Dorsoduro. We poked into a few places around the big Campo Santa Margherita, looking at menus and checking out the cicheti. When we opened the door to this unassuming trattoria, we knew we'd found the spot. It was packed with working men, complete with dirty coveralls and boots, all eating big bowls of pasta and slurping wine. Judith was the only women in the place and everybody stopped eating for a second to check her out; we later learned that 12-1 is traditionally the workers' lunch break and everyone else comes afterward. We huddled on a couple of stools waiting for a table, drank prosecco, and ate the sweetest crab I've ever tasted, big boiled legs called cheli di granchio. We had plenty of time to check out the cicheti, and before we sat down we pointed at a platter of boiled tiny shrimp and picked crab meat. It was so good we ate another, followed by penne bolognese, more sardines in saor, and the traditional finish, a nice chunk of grana padano. We ate like pigs, and with wine and caffe this meal only cost about $45.
Plan your own trip to Venice after a week in one of our Tuscan villas