Food & Drink

Cicchetti and an ombra

The Venetian way of eating cheaply and well is the bacaro: a small bar with a counter of cicchetti — single mouthfuls on bread, or fried, or on a stick — which you eat standing up with a small glass of wine called an ombra. A couple of euros a piece, several places in an evening, and it is both the cheapest and the most enjoyable dinner in the city.

The name ombra means shade: the wine sellers in Piazza San Marco used to move their stalls round the campanile to stay in its shadow.

What is actually Venetian

Sarde in saor, sardines with onions, vinegar and raisins — a sailor's preserving dish. Baccalà mantecato, whipped salt cod on grilled polenta. Fegato alla veneziana, liver with onions. Risi e bisi, rice and peas, in spring. And moeche, the soft-shell crabs caught for a few weeks in spring and autumn.

⛔ Not in Venice: spaghetti bolognese, and anything with a photograph next to it.

How to avoid the bad meal

Three tests, and they are reliable. A menu in six languages with pictures is aimed at people who will not come back. A menù turistico at a fixed price near a major sight is the same signal. And anywhere with someone standing outside inviting you in is not a place that needs to.

Walk two streets back from anything famous. The rents drop and the cooking improves.

The bill

Coperto — a per-person cover charge — is normal, legal and printed on the menu. Service is often included; look for servizio incluso. Standing at the bar is always cheaper than sitting, everywhere, for the same coffee.