Guida di Fam. Pasini

Fontego dei Tedeschi A visit to Venice would not be complete if you do not see it from above. The Fontego dei Tedeschi, the German warehouse, has a new rooftop, added to it when it was restored. From here you have a spectacular view over Venice, the Grand Canal and the Rialto bridge.

In Venice you can choose among different kinds of places where you can eat great local food from restaurants to more cosy and friendly osterie and bacari. Taverns and wine bars, located mainly around the Rialto market, are preferred. Venetian cuisine and its typical dishes based on fish. It is hard to make a choice among the many different recipes that you can eat at home or at a local restaurant. Some of the most famous ones are based on fish such as: Sarde in saor: marinated sardines Baccalà mantecato: Venetian salted cod Risotto al nero di seppia: risotto and black ink stew Risi e bisi: rice and peas Bigoli in salsa: whole-wheat bigoli pasta, onion and salt-cure fish Fegato alla veneziana: Venetian liver Moleche: lagoon crabs

Local people prepare it very often at home, but for special occasions they eat it at the restaurant. When they meet their friends they prefer to go to simpler places, the so-called ‘bacari’, taverns or wine-bars, that serve for this purpose. Around the food market there are a lot of them, where you can try Venetian specialities and snacks. In the local dialect they are called ‘cicchetti’ and are the equivalent of finger food. Among the most requested are hard-boiled eggs topped with herring fillets, vinegar marinated anchovies, grilled baby squids, small bread rolls filled with local salami. The Venetian enjoy eating fried meatballs, creamed codfish, sardines in an onion and vinegar sauce, just to name a few others. The’cicchetti’ are eaten accompanied by a small glass of wine called ‘ombra’, as wine was sold in the shade of the bell-tower in St. Mark’s square. The ideal wine for this kind of tasting is Prosecco, the light sparkling wine. Your guide will recommend some ‘bacari’ where you can have a tasting or a restaurant where you can eat some typical dishes of the Venetian cuisine. Do not forget that Venetian cuisine is a succession of pastas, risottos, fried and roasts.