We got a late start today, as Tali still is quite jet-lagged - she woke up at 2 in the morning, and didn't get back to sleep for more than four hours! So by the time we did even a brief meditation and got ready to leave, it was already about 1:30pm.
Nevertheless, our plan today was to spend the day on the island of Burano, and possibly also Torcello or Murano. We walked out of he apartment into St. Marks, and couldn't resist photographing some of the fabulous costumes we saw people wearing, so by the time we made it to the ticket booth for the ferry, it was already a bit after 2:00pm.
For some reason, we blindly decided to go ahead with the ferry ride to Burano today, despite the fact that the trip takes more than an hour each way, and we have a concert to go to tonight at 8:30. We got on the ferry at 2:15, and we were to change ferries after about 45 minutes' travel. We got off our ferry, and quickly went to the toilet, but by the time we returned, the ferry to Burrano had already come and gone!
The next one wouldn't arrive for another hour, so we decided to scrap our plan, and immediately head back to St. Marks. Close to 4:00pm, we were back in the square, photographing people wearing great costumes, all over again!
We began a leisurely stroll towards San Vidal Church in San Marco sestiere, where the concert was to take place, with the idea of finding some where to eat along the way. We headed towards a Hosteria I had read about, that was in a very quiet, local neighborhood with very few tourists. We managed to find the restaurant after a bit of searching, but they didn't open for dinner until 8pm, and we'd arrived here at 4:30! There was an excellent coffee shop right nearby, so we did have a spot to sit and talk while we decided what to do.
We headed on towards the church, now planning to stop somewhere else along the way for dinner. Unfortunately, our casual choice for dinner turned out to be only mediocre by Venetian standards, but that was still all right for us. We walked over to the concert after dinner, and enjoyed the performance of Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons", by Interpreti Veneziani, a string ensemble of very professional local musicians, even though it felt a bit like just another day at the office for these talented players.
Our attempts to do something special for Valentine's Day hadn't worked out totally as we planned, but it was a good lesson about how easy it is to feel disappointed when we hold on to plans and expectations, as if they possess some magic potion for happiness. The present is fluid and changing constantly, and it's better not to put too much store in any rigid mindset or plan - whether during our travels, or just in our day-to-day lives at home.
Monday 20 February 2012
Sunday 19 February 2012
The day begins with a delicious lunch...then it gets interesting!
Because we have nothing planned for today, until a baroque music concert tonight at the Chiesa (Church) San Vidal, we decided to begin our day outdoors by eating lunch at one of the many excellent restaurants in our Castello sestiere. We chose Trattoria Da Remigio, which is just a few steps from our apartment, and well known for both its "frittura mista," mixed fried seafood and shellfish, and for its very reasonable prices, which keep it busy most of the time. When we walked over, we could see that every table was filled with happy lunch goers, except for one, a table for two right by the window that had just been cleared and reset. We happily entered and took the table that seemed to be waiting just for us.
Instead of the signature fried dish, we opted for a lighter alternative, the mixed grilled fish for two, which included filets of John Dory, sea bream, sole, and monkfish, all expertly grilled and served with lemon and olive oil. I had a vegetable soup, and Tali a mixed green salad, to go along with our main courses. The grilled fish we were served was of excellent quality, perfectly fresh, and very well prepared. It made for a delicious, light lunch, costing a little less than eighty euros including tip, that we capped off by having cappuccinos at our local bakery, just down the street from the restaurant.
We had planned to walk through San Polo and Santa Croce sestieres today, ending up at the San Vidal Church at concert time this evening, but the presence of Venezia carabinieri (police) at almost every bridge and intersection, who were there to direct the huge number of people making their way to and from the Piazza San Marco, alerted us to just how busy a day today was in Venice. This is the last weekend of the Carnevale, and today, we saw the same high level of street traffic that we saw last night in Canareggio sestiere, except that today, the crowds were everywhere!
Almost everyone wore at least a mask today, and there were many levels of costumes on display, from the very simple and homemade, like painted faces or a colorful item of clothing, to very elaborate Baroque period costumes, to guys who had made themselves up to look like robots - the variety was phenomenal! I noticed that those who had worn more elaborate costumes considered themselves worthy of being photographed - they would stop and pose whenever someone picked up his or her camera to shoot them - while those wearing something simple wouldn't stop to be photographed, even if someone (like me) wanted to take their picture...it was like they couldn't believe that anyone would want to photograph them. I wondered, do they feel that way all the time about themselves, or is it just today? Because, really, everyone is so very photo-worthy, all the time...it's the human drama, in all its simplicity and complexity, and in all its blessedness, that makes everyone worth their own documentary, whatever they're wearing!
Every bridge, every narrow alley, every street, all were packed with people, some so crowded that it was impossible to pass at all, and the police were directing people to take other streets instead. If today served as a glimpse of how crowded Venezia could be during the peak summer months, it might be best to visit here in the winter off-season alone. I tried to photograph some of the wonderful costumes I saw today, ranging from traditional Baroque period dresses to The Simpsons, but it was tough going at times, since it was hard to get anyone stop in the crowded streets, even for just a few seconds.
We finally resolved to go back to the apartment, rather than continue to be stuck in the human gridlock that was Venice today. After a break of a few hours, we headed back out to San Vidal, to hear "Interpreti Veneziani," a group of about eight masterful string players, enthusiastically rip their way through short pieces by Vivaldi, Bach, and Purcell. I joked to Tali that this was actually a two hour concert, but the pieces were played at such breakneck speed, that they finished in just about an hour! It felt to me almost as if they were playing these pieces at such fast tempi in order to make it more challenging for themselves...to me, their intonation, their technique, and their ensemble playing seemed spot on, even at warp speed!
We started the walk back to our apartment after the concert, and soon it started to rain steadily, and it got a bit chillier as well. After a small snack and a glass of lightly sparking white wine (vino blanco frissante), we made it home, a bit damper, but still in good spirits.
Instead of the signature fried dish, we opted for a lighter alternative, the mixed grilled fish for two, which included filets of John Dory, sea bream, sole, and monkfish, all expertly grilled and served with lemon and olive oil. I had a vegetable soup, and Tali a mixed green salad, to go along with our main courses. The grilled fish we were served was of excellent quality, perfectly fresh, and very well prepared. It made for a delicious, light lunch, costing a little less than eighty euros including tip, that we capped off by having cappuccinos at our local bakery, just down the street from the restaurant.
We had planned to walk through San Polo and Santa Croce sestieres today, ending up at the San Vidal Church at concert time this evening, but the presence of Venezia carabinieri (police) at almost every bridge and intersection, who were there to direct the huge number of people making their way to and from the Piazza San Marco, alerted us to just how busy a day today was in Venice. This is the last weekend of the Carnevale, and today, we saw the same high level of street traffic that we saw last night in Canareggio sestiere, except that today, the crowds were everywhere!
Almost everyone wore at least a mask today, and there were many levels of costumes on display, from the very simple and homemade, like painted faces or a colorful item of clothing, to very elaborate Baroque period costumes, to guys who had made themselves up to look like robots - the variety was phenomenal! I noticed that those who had worn more elaborate costumes considered themselves worthy of being photographed - they would stop and pose whenever someone picked up his or her camera to shoot them - while those wearing something simple wouldn't stop to be photographed, even if someone (like me) wanted to take their picture...it was like they couldn't believe that anyone would want to photograph them. I wondered, do they feel that way all the time about themselves, or is it just today? Because, really, everyone is so very photo-worthy, all the time...it's the human drama, in all its simplicity and complexity, and in all its blessedness, that makes everyone worth their own documentary, whatever they're wearing!
Every bridge, every narrow alley, every street, all were packed with people, some so crowded that it was impossible to pass at all, and the police were directing people to take other streets instead. If today served as a glimpse of how crowded Venezia could be during the peak summer months, it might be best to visit here in the winter off-season alone. I tried to photograph some of the wonderful costumes I saw today, ranging from traditional Baroque period dresses to The Simpsons, but it was tough going at times, since it was hard to get anyone stop in the crowded streets, even for just a few seconds.
We finally resolved to go back to the apartment, rather than continue to be stuck in the human gridlock that was Venice today. After a break of a few hours, we headed back out to San Vidal, to hear "Interpreti Veneziani," a group of about eight masterful string players, enthusiastically rip their way through short pieces by Vivaldi, Bach, and Purcell. I joked to Tali that this was actually a two hour concert, but the pieces were played at such breakneck speed, that they finished in just about an hour! It felt to me almost as if they were playing these pieces at such fast tempi in order to make it more challenging for themselves...to me, their intonation, their technique, and their ensemble playing seemed spot on, even at warp speed!
We started the walk back to our apartment after the concert, and soon it started to rain steadily, and it got a bit chillier as well. After a small snack and a glass of lightly sparking white wine (vino blanco frissante), we made it home, a bit damper, but still in good spirits.
Friday 17 February 2012
The Reluctant Lunch and The Noble Collector
A bit after noon, we left our apartment and headed straightaway to explore the area of the Rialto Produce Markets, as we had gotten to the Rialto Bridge several times so far in our walks, but had not yet crossed the Bridge and gone any further, into the San Polo and Santa Croce sestieres. We discovered a vibrant, busy section of Venice, but both the fish and the vegetable markets were already closing down for the day, so we will return to see and photograph them on Saturday or Monday morning.
Even though Tali mentioned that she wasn't at all hungry for lunch, I somehow didn't register what she had said - perhaps I was listening more to my own desire to eat something than I was to her! - and so we went anyway to Vecio Fritolin, just a few streets from the Rialto Markets.
Even though I had heard good things about this small restaurant, our first impression was that it looked a bit forlorn, with only one of its dozen or so tables occupied when we entered, and the interior looking like it could use a little sprucing up. The food, however, as we soon found out, was at the high end of traditional Venetian cooking - absolutely fresh ingredients, perfectly prepared.
The signature dish of Vecio Fritolin is a generous plate of fried fish and shellfish, served with vegetables and roast polenta. The fish and vegetables are selected fresh every day by Chef Daniele Zennaro from the nearby stalls of the Rialto Markets. The name of this restaurant comes from "fritolini," or "fryers," small Venetian inns that used to sell freshly fried fish, served in paper bags, and indeed the restaurant continues this centuries-old tradition by serving its fried fish on plates covered with brown paper, to absorb any excess cooking oil. The building housing the restaurant dates from the sixteenth century, and is where Caterina Cornaro, a descendent of a noble Venetian family who later became Queen of Cypress, was born in 1454.
After we were seated, Tali mentioned again that she wasn't very hungry, so we decided to share a first plate, of potato gnocchi stuffed with black olives, spinach, and raisins, served with a deep green spinach and herb sauce. The exquisite taste of this dish is what alerted us to just how good the chef was, and I immediately felt a pang of regret that I hadn't brought us here instead for dinner, or anytime Tali might be hungrier! The saltiness of the olives blended beautifully with the sweetness of the raisins, and both were well balanced by the earthiness of the spinach used in both the filling and the sauce - wonderful!
Next we each sampled the signature dish of fried seafood, vegetables, and polenta ("frittura mista di pesce con scampi, verdure e polenta"), which was artfully prepared, each of the eight or ten different varieties and sizes of fish, shellfish, calamari and octopus lightly dusted with seasoned flour and fried for just the right amount of time, which must have ranged from just a few seconds for the smallest shrimp to a few minutes for the larger fish - nothing either overfried nor undercooked, a true showcase of the chef's skill and delicate touch.
We also shared a house salad of the best tomatoes we have had in Venice so far, along with a lovely variety of greens, whose delicate flavors suggested that they were organic or biologic, with an aged balsamic vinegar that was both sweet and just a touch bitter.
Regrettably, we were too full to even tempt ourselves by looking at the dessert menu, but we might return to Vecio Fritolin sometime during the rest of our stay in Venice. Our lunch, including service, came to 84 Euros.
We then slowly made our way through the San Polo sestiere, north into Santa Croce, to visit Ca' Pesaro Galleria d'Arte Moderna, the Venice Municipal collection of art, which is housed in a beautiful baroque palace located right on the Grand Canal. Most of the paintings and sculptures on display were acquired by the city of Venice during its Biennale International Art Exhibitions, which date back to 1895, and have continued to this day as one of the most important exhibitions of cutting edge contemporary art in the world. The work on display at Ca' Pesaro forms a virtual survey of the major art movements, especially in Europe, of the last century, including sculptures by Henry Moore, and paintings by Chagall, Ernst, Dufy, Kandinsky, Klimt, and many others.
The top floor of Ca' Pesaro is devoted to an amazing exhibition of Oriental art, ranging far and wide in Asia, from Japanese swords and armor, to porcelain, musical instruments and lacquer ware, to Javanese shadow puppets. A Venetian nobleman went on an around the world trip with his wife and a small retinue, from 1895 to 1897, including stops in Japan, China, Malaya, Java, and India. During his travels, he somehow managed to acquire and ship back to Venice more than 30,000 pieces of all sizes, and many of these pieces are displayed here. This is an incredible exhibition that speaks to the intricate beauty and skill involved in the traditional arts of Japan and the rest of Asia, and of the energetic man who built this huge collection in only two years!
We stayed in Ca' Pesaro until closing time at 5:00pm, then stopped in a nearby cafe for cappuccinos. Did you know that the price of a coffee taken standing at the bar everywhere in Venice is about half what it is when you sit at a table (even if there's no real table service, just you, sitting down to drink, rather than standing up)? Coffees and teas are quite inexpensive if taken while standing, which is what most Italians do.
We slowly strolled through Santa Croce, window shopping and enjoying the relaxed pace of a city that has no cars, no motorcycles, no electric scooters (that you can't hear approaching you from behind!), not even any bicycles - what a pleasure, to wander down narrow streets and alleys, coming to beautiful piazzas or campos every once in a while, complete with cafes, shops, restaurants, schools and churches. This is not an experience to be rushed; it is to be savored and enjoyed at leisure.
We had reservations to eat a late dinner in a very out-of-the-way restaurant, in the western part of Dorsoduro sestiere. L'Avogaria, despite its location well apart from most tourist traffic, was very modern and creative in both its decor and cuisine, and the most vegetarian-friendly of all the places we've eaten in since we arrived in Venice. After a wonderful dinner, we had a relaxed and enjoyable late-night stroll through Dorsoduro, where several of the piazzas were crowded with Carnevale partiers enjoying live bands, and stalls selling snacks and drinks.
Even though Tali mentioned that she wasn't at all hungry for lunch, I somehow didn't register what she had said - perhaps I was listening more to my own desire to eat something than I was to her! - and so we went anyway to Vecio Fritolin, just a few streets from the Rialto Markets.
Even though I had heard good things about this small restaurant, our first impression was that it looked a bit forlorn, with only one of its dozen or so tables occupied when we entered, and the interior looking like it could use a little sprucing up. The food, however, as we soon found out, was at the high end of traditional Venetian cooking - absolutely fresh ingredients, perfectly prepared.
The signature dish of Vecio Fritolin is a generous plate of fried fish and shellfish, served with vegetables and roast polenta. The fish and vegetables are selected fresh every day by Chef Daniele Zennaro from the nearby stalls of the Rialto Markets. The name of this restaurant comes from "fritolini," or "fryers," small Venetian inns that used to sell freshly fried fish, served in paper bags, and indeed the restaurant continues this centuries-old tradition by serving its fried fish on plates covered with brown paper, to absorb any excess cooking oil. The building housing the restaurant dates from the sixteenth century, and is where Caterina Cornaro, a descendent of a noble Venetian family who later became Queen of Cypress, was born in 1454.
After we were seated, Tali mentioned again that she wasn't very hungry, so we decided to share a first plate, of potato gnocchi stuffed with black olives, spinach, and raisins, served with a deep green spinach and herb sauce. The exquisite taste of this dish is what alerted us to just how good the chef was, and I immediately felt a pang of regret that I hadn't brought us here instead for dinner, or anytime Tali might be hungrier! The saltiness of the olives blended beautifully with the sweetness of the raisins, and both were well balanced by the earthiness of the spinach used in both the filling and the sauce - wonderful!
Next we each sampled the signature dish of fried seafood, vegetables, and polenta ("frittura mista di pesce con scampi, verdure e polenta"), which was artfully prepared, each of the eight or ten different varieties and sizes of fish, shellfish, calamari and octopus lightly dusted with seasoned flour and fried for just the right amount of time, which must have ranged from just a few seconds for the smallest shrimp to a few minutes for the larger fish - nothing either overfried nor undercooked, a true showcase of the chef's skill and delicate touch.
We also shared a house salad of the best tomatoes we have had in Venice so far, along with a lovely variety of greens, whose delicate flavors suggested that they were organic or biologic, with an aged balsamic vinegar that was both sweet and just a touch bitter.
Regrettably, we were too full to even tempt ourselves by looking at the dessert menu, but we might return to Vecio Fritolin sometime during the rest of our stay in Venice. Our lunch, including service, came to 84 Euros.
We then slowly made our way through the San Polo sestiere, north into Santa Croce, to visit Ca' Pesaro Galleria d'Arte Moderna, the Venice Municipal collection of art, which is housed in a beautiful baroque palace located right on the Grand Canal. Most of the paintings and sculptures on display were acquired by the city of Venice during its Biennale International Art Exhibitions, which date back to 1895, and have continued to this day as one of the most important exhibitions of cutting edge contemporary art in the world. The work on display at Ca' Pesaro forms a virtual survey of the major art movements, especially in Europe, of the last century, including sculptures by Henry Moore, and paintings by Chagall, Ernst, Dufy, Kandinsky, Klimt, and many others.
The top floor of Ca' Pesaro is devoted to an amazing exhibition of Oriental art, ranging far and wide in Asia, from Japanese swords and armor, to porcelain, musical instruments and lacquer ware, to Javanese shadow puppets. A Venetian nobleman went on an around the world trip with his wife and a small retinue, from 1895 to 1897, including stops in Japan, China, Malaya, Java, and India. During his travels, he somehow managed to acquire and ship back to Venice more than 30,000 pieces of all sizes, and many of these pieces are displayed here. This is an incredible exhibition that speaks to the intricate beauty and skill involved in the traditional arts of Japan and the rest of Asia, and of the energetic man who built this huge collection in only two years!
We stayed in Ca' Pesaro until closing time at 5:00pm, then stopped in a nearby cafe for cappuccinos. Did you know that the price of a coffee taken standing at the bar everywhere in Venice is about half what it is when you sit at a table (even if there's no real table service, just you, sitting down to drink, rather than standing up)? Coffees and teas are quite inexpensive if taken while standing, which is what most Italians do.
We slowly strolled through Santa Croce, window shopping and enjoying the relaxed pace of a city that has no cars, no motorcycles, no electric scooters (that you can't hear approaching you from behind!), not even any bicycles - what a pleasure, to wander down narrow streets and alleys, coming to beautiful piazzas or campos every once in a while, complete with cafes, shops, restaurants, schools and churches. This is not an experience to be rushed; it is to be savored and enjoyed at leisure.
We had reservations to eat a late dinner in a very out-of-the-way restaurant, in the western part of Dorsoduro sestiere. L'Avogaria, despite its location well apart from most tourist traffic, was very modern and creative in both its decor and cuisine, and the most vegetarian-friendly of all the places we've eaten in since we arrived in Venice. After a wonderful dinner, we had a relaxed and enjoyable late-night stroll through Dorsoduro, where several of the piazzas were crowded with Carnevale partiers enjoying live bands, and stalls selling snacks and drinks.
Wednesday 15 February 2012
Dining to Die For, in Venice
Our first night in Venice - Located right up the street from our apartment in the Castello "sestiere," or quarter, the Osteria Oliva Nera was an obvious choice after our very delayed, late-night arrival in Venice, so we headed there just after our rental agent Silvia finished giving us a tour of our lovely studio apartment, home for the next ten days.
Despite the hour, well after 10pm, and its location on a very quiet street that is more for locals than tourists, the Osteria was still quite crowded, and the minute we entered, even though we were still a bit groggy from our twenty four hour fly-and-wait marathon from Colorado to Venice, we could see why - the atmosphere of this small, informal restaurant was incredibly welcoming, thanks to the very warm and gregarious owner/maitre d', Dino. We knew we were in good hands as soon as we were quickly shown to a small table and given the menus, and Dino came over to discuss EACH dish in detail, to help us make our choices!
This osteria is a small, informal place with perhaps a dozen tables, that features a Japanese chef, as we found out from Dino, who had come to Venice to perfect his skills in preparing the local specialities, and who had evidently brought along with him a Japanese waiter and waitress as well. Even though the kitchen and service staff were global, the cuisine was most decidedly local, making this a great place to try dishes that were developed in Venice centuries ago, and that still find their inspiration in what is available from both the sea and the earth close to Venice.
Since we had hardly eaten in the past twenty-four hours, because of the delays we had experienced on both American and Alitalia, we ordered a full dinner, despite the late hour. For our antipasti, we had two dishes - Soar, a very traditional dish of fresh, local sardines delicately fried, and then prepared sweet and sour - with marinated and stewed onions, raisins and pine nuts - and also a creamy, soft polenta served with boiled local fish, minced and formed into an oval patty. We shared our first course, an amazing fresh pasta prepared in octopus ink and accompanied by heavenly langoustines. For my second course I had turbot prepared with shredded ginger and carrots, which gave the taste of the white flesh of the fish real depth and complexity, while Tali had sea bream, with fresh roasted, grilled artichokes which were then puréed into a thick, aromatic sauce. We shared a dessert of perfectly prepared Crete brûlée, chosen from a menu drawn freehand on the spot by Dino, in the shape of a flower, with each petal representing a dessert offering! To complete our meal, we sampled small glasses of Dino's homemade orangecillo and lemoncillo, offered without charge, which tasted and smelled of the fresh fruit peels from which they were made. As if that weren't enough, before we left, Dino presented Tali with a gift of a bottle of his own olive oil!
Our dinner came to about seventy Euros each, but priceless was the ongoing conversation we had with Dino and his wife Isabella, throughout our meal - conversations with those we buy services from are always a big source of what we learn about how people are actually living and feeling as we travel around the world, and tonight the main subjects of our chat were the Italian economy, and the state of the tourist trade in Venice. Dino felt that while business seemed a bit better in Venice than it was a few years ago, Venetians were still "standing, arms crossed, at the window," watching and waiting to see how the economy fared this year, under the policies of the new, post- Berlusconi government. He also felt that local restauranteurs needed to be more hospitable towards tourists in order to survive, and that the high exchange rate of the Euro was hurting business in Venice, as his costs for fresh ingredients continue to rise ever higher.
After such a day of flight delays, both in Colorado and Rome, followed by the loss of our baggage somewhere along the way, a great meal was just what we needed to improve our attitude about having made this mid-winter trip to begin with, and we were very grateful to the Osteria for having provided one that exceeded our expectations in every way!
At our trip's beginning, we stay close to home - So far, we are sticking to our local neighborhood in Castello... our apartment is perhaps only a five minute walk from St. Mark's Square, but very un-touristy in feeling, with very little foot traffic, and stores that seem to cater more to natives than to tourists. There are also many wonderful restaurants here in Castello, some of the very best in all of Venice, and most are just a few minutes walk from where we are staying!
We selected one of the finest, Il Ridotto, for our second dinner. This is a small, elegant restaurant, with just eight or so tables set in a very modern decor - unadorned walls, exposed brick, and sleek contemporary chairs, very unlike the rough-hewn post and beam look of most traditional Venetian restaurants.
As it is a much more formal dining place than the Osteria we visited last night, there was none of the friendly chat in Il Ridotto that we had enjoyed yesterday, although the quality of the food was just as superb. We each had the chef's choice of four plates plus an amuse bouche, a very good value at sixty euros per person - the chef selects four dishes from his menu, fish, meat, or both, sometimes serving couples the same dish, sometimes not.
We were given two different antipasti - the first was a plate of several small octopi prepared in a stew of fava beans and turnip tops, the second, langoustines served in a thick cream of cauliflower with crunchy slivered almonds. I had never tried octopus before, and I was surprised to discover that it tasted nothing like squid, as I had thought it might resemble - in the skilled hands of the Il Ridotto chef, the octopus was soft, not chewy, with a clean, vaguely crustacean flavor - delicious! The langoustines were also perfectly prepared, with the cauliflower cream making this appetizer quite substantial.
The first course was the same for both of us, tubetti pasta served in a stock reduced from cooking a local fish, called "Go," along with tiny pieces of the fish itself, which had a similar taste and consistency to calamari, and aromatic herbs from the lagoon. Delicious, but not quite as stunning as the first course of fresh pasta in octopus ink at Osteria Oliva Nera.
We also each had the same second course, Branzino (sea bream), skillfully and deliciously prepared with celeriac and green mustard. It is fascinating to see how different chefs start with exactly the same fresh ingredients, and come up with such different preparations!
We had the opportunity to sample two different desserts, what Il Ridotto calls "our idea about tiramisu," dense and richly flavored with coffee and cacao, and a thick chocolate soup, with a cocoa biscuit that had a hint of raspberry filling, and a generous scoop of ricotta and saffron ice cream.
Everything at Il Ridotto was prepared perfectly and served beautifully on oversized white porcelain plates. Half bottles of a very good chianti were an excellent value at just nine euros, and there was also a nice selection of wines by the glass.
After we dressed back up again in all of our layers, we took a late-night stroll around San Marco Square where, under the auspices of Carnevale, a very good jazz group with an excellent chanteuse were performing jazz and popular standards live, despite a very small audience willing to brave the bitter cold to listen.
Contemporary art beckons, but first, we eat traditionally - French billionaire businessman Francois Pinault owns, among many other ventures, both Christie's auction house and Samsonite Luggage, but he is best known in Venice for having amassed one of the largest collections of contemporary art in the world. He has housed part of it in a 1749 neoclassical palace, Palazzo Grassi, which he had minimalist architect Tadao Ando retrofit to display large paintings, sculptures and films. We visited the Palazzo today, and we'll visit Pinault's second, even bigger art museum, also renovated by Tadao Ando, the 17th century customs warehouse building, Punta Della Dogana, in a few days.
Our spirits were buoyed this morning by a call from our apartment agent Silvia, who let us know that, finally, our previously- lost luggage was to be delivered in an hour! We waited in the apartment for it to arrive, and it was like Christmas when it finally did - so many gifts, neatly folded and ready to wear, and all just for us??!!! We unpacked and put away our clothes and then, much more warmly dressed, we headed out for a walk to the Palazzo Grassi, to feast on some very exciting art, collected with quite a discerning eye, with money no roadblock at all!
But first, along the way to the Palazzo, in the San Marco sestiere, we feasted on a terrific lunch at Trattoria da Fiore. This is a family run restaurant that is divided into two parts - on the left side of the entrance way is a traditional wine bar, where locals stop in for a spritz, a prosecco, or an ombra, which they enjoy with homemade cicheto, Venetian tapas. We went to the room on the right side of the doorway, which is a seafood restaurant specializing in traditional Venetian dishes.
We began with a medley of seafood and vegetable cicheto, perhaps half a dozen or so different "small plates" artfully arranged on one larger plate. In addition to sardines, which are served lightly fried almost everywhere in Venice, there were grilled vegetables, including artichokes and eggplant, marinated scallops with tomato and peppers, and several other small pieces of fish - all perfectly prepared and delicious!
We shared a fresh radicchio salad next - we had seen some beautiful heads of radicchio displayed for sale in a fruit and vegetable store close to our apartment, and we were eager to taste the Venetian version, quite different from the radicchio we can get in the U.S. - here in Venice, it's almost a cross between endive and Boston lettuce. In any event, with some balsamic vinegar and salt sprinkled over it, it was delicious!
I next had a fresh pasta in a light and flavorful tomato and seafood sauce studded with pieces of lobster, while Tali had the mixed fried fish assortment, including Adriatic Sea favorites sea bass, bream, sole, molecche, and schille. Both plates reflected Trattoria da Fiore's skill at sourcing the freshest daily ingredients, and preparing many different types of seafood at once, each type cooked for exactly the right amount of time. Including aqua minerale and cappuccinos, and delicious Carnevale pastries served without charge, our bill came to about thirty five euros each.
After this lunch feast and our visit to the Palazzo Grassi, we had a wonderful stroll through the streets of Dorsoduro finishing up at the second part of Pinault's Collection, at Punta Della Dogana, which we will visit the day after tomorrow. On the walk back, we stopped in at the Coop, a busy grocery store, and bought the ingredients for a salad, some pasta, and fruit, as we were too full from lunch to eat a full dinner. We carried the bags from the Coop back to the apartment with us, and had a late dinner to complete a wonderful day.
Despite the hour, well after 10pm, and its location on a very quiet street that is more for locals than tourists, the Osteria was still quite crowded, and the minute we entered, even though we were still a bit groggy from our twenty four hour fly-and-wait marathon from Colorado to Venice, we could see why - the atmosphere of this small, informal restaurant was incredibly welcoming, thanks to the very warm and gregarious owner/maitre d', Dino. We knew we were in good hands as soon as we were quickly shown to a small table and given the menus, and Dino came over to discuss EACH dish in detail, to help us make our choices!
This osteria is a small, informal place with perhaps a dozen tables, that features a Japanese chef, as we found out from Dino, who had come to Venice to perfect his skills in preparing the local specialities, and who had evidently brought along with him a Japanese waiter and waitress as well. Even though the kitchen and service staff were global, the cuisine was most decidedly local, making this a great place to try dishes that were developed in Venice centuries ago, and that still find their inspiration in what is available from both the sea and the earth close to Venice.
Since we had hardly eaten in the past twenty-four hours, because of the delays we had experienced on both American and Alitalia, we ordered a full dinner, despite the late hour. For our antipasti, we had two dishes - Soar, a very traditional dish of fresh, local sardines delicately fried, and then prepared sweet and sour - with marinated and stewed onions, raisins and pine nuts - and also a creamy, soft polenta served with boiled local fish, minced and formed into an oval patty. We shared our first course, an amazing fresh pasta prepared in octopus ink and accompanied by heavenly langoustines. For my second course I had turbot prepared with shredded ginger and carrots, which gave the taste of the white flesh of the fish real depth and complexity, while Tali had sea bream, with fresh roasted, grilled artichokes which were then puréed into a thick, aromatic sauce. We shared a dessert of perfectly prepared Crete brûlée, chosen from a menu drawn freehand on the spot by Dino, in the shape of a flower, with each petal representing a dessert offering! To complete our meal, we sampled small glasses of Dino's homemade orangecillo and lemoncillo, offered without charge, which tasted and smelled of the fresh fruit peels from which they were made. As if that weren't enough, before we left, Dino presented Tali with a gift of a bottle of his own olive oil!
Our dinner came to about seventy Euros each, but priceless was the ongoing conversation we had with Dino and his wife Isabella, throughout our meal - conversations with those we buy services from are always a big source of what we learn about how people are actually living and feeling as we travel around the world, and tonight the main subjects of our chat were the Italian economy, and the state of the tourist trade in Venice. Dino felt that while business seemed a bit better in Venice than it was a few years ago, Venetians were still "standing, arms crossed, at the window," watching and waiting to see how the economy fared this year, under the policies of the new, post- Berlusconi government. He also felt that local restauranteurs needed to be more hospitable towards tourists in order to survive, and that the high exchange rate of the Euro was hurting business in Venice, as his costs for fresh ingredients continue to rise ever higher.
After such a day of flight delays, both in Colorado and Rome, followed by the loss of our baggage somewhere along the way, a great meal was just what we needed to improve our attitude about having made this mid-winter trip to begin with, and we were very grateful to the Osteria for having provided one that exceeded our expectations in every way!
At our trip's beginning, we stay close to home - So far, we are sticking to our local neighborhood in Castello... our apartment is perhaps only a five minute walk from St. Mark's Square, but very un-touristy in feeling, with very little foot traffic, and stores that seem to cater more to natives than to tourists. There are also many wonderful restaurants here in Castello, some of the very best in all of Venice, and most are just a few minutes walk from where we are staying!
We selected one of the finest, Il Ridotto, for our second dinner. This is a small, elegant restaurant, with just eight or so tables set in a very modern decor - unadorned walls, exposed brick, and sleek contemporary chairs, very unlike the rough-hewn post and beam look of most traditional Venetian restaurants.
As it is a much more formal dining place than the Osteria we visited last night, there was none of the friendly chat in Il Ridotto that we had enjoyed yesterday, although the quality of the food was just as superb. We each had the chef's choice of four plates plus an amuse bouche, a very good value at sixty euros per person - the chef selects four dishes from his menu, fish, meat, or both, sometimes serving couples the same dish, sometimes not.
We were given two different antipasti - the first was a plate of several small octopi prepared in a stew of fava beans and turnip tops, the second, langoustines served in a thick cream of cauliflower with crunchy slivered almonds. I had never tried octopus before, and I was surprised to discover that it tasted nothing like squid, as I had thought it might resemble - in the skilled hands of the Il Ridotto chef, the octopus was soft, not chewy, with a clean, vaguely crustacean flavor - delicious! The langoustines were also perfectly prepared, with the cauliflower cream making this appetizer quite substantial.
The first course was the same for both of us, tubetti pasta served in a stock reduced from cooking a local fish, called "Go," along with tiny pieces of the fish itself, which had a similar taste and consistency to calamari, and aromatic herbs from the lagoon. Delicious, but not quite as stunning as the first course of fresh pasta in octopus ink at Osteria Oliva Nera.
We also each had the same second course, Branzino (sea bream), skillfully and deliciously prepared with celeriac and green mustard. It is fascinating to see how different chefs start with exactly the same fresh ingredients, and come up with such different preparations!
We had the opportunity to sample two different desserts, what Il Ridotto calls "our idea about tiramisu," dense and richly flavored with coffee and cacao, and a thick chocolate soup, with a cocoa biscuit that had a hint of raspberry filling, and a generous scoop of ricotta and saffron ice cream.
Everything at Il Ridotto was prepared perfectly and served beautifully on oversized white porcelain plates. Half bottles of a very good chianti were an excellent value at just nine euros, and there was also a nice selection of wines by the glass.
After we dressed back up again in all of our layers, we took a late-night stroll around San Marco Square where, under the auspices of Carnevale, a very good jazz group with an excellent chanteuse were performing jazz and popular standards live, despite a very small audience willing to brave the bitter cold to listen.
Contemporary art beckons, but first, we eat traditionally - French billionaire businessman Francois Pinault owns, among many other ventures, both Christie's auction house and Samsonite Luggage, but he is best known in Venice for having amassed one of the largest collections of contemporary art in the world. He has housed part of it in a 1749 neoclassical palace, Palazzo Grassi, which he had minimalist architect Tadao Ando retrofit to display large paintings, sculptures and films. We visited the Palazzo today, and we'll visit Pinault's second, even bigger art museum, also renovated by Tadao Ando, the 17th century customs warehouse building, Punta Della Dogana, in a few days.
Our spirits were buoyed this morning by a call from our apartment agent Silvia, who let us know that, finally, our previously- lost luggage was to be delivered in an hour! We waited in the apartment for it to arrive, and it was like Christmas when it finally did - so many gifts, neatly folded and ready to wear, and all just for us??!!! We unpacked and put away our clothes and then, much more warmly dressed, we headed out for a walk to the Palazzo Grassi, to feast on some very exciting art, collected with quite a discerning eye, with money no roadblock at all!
But first, along the way to the Palazzo, in the San Marco sestiere, we feasted on a terrific lunch at Trattoria da Fiore. This is a family run restaurant that is divided into two parts - on the left side of the entrance way is a traditional wine bar, where locals stop in for a spritz, a prosecco, or an ombra, which they enjoy with homemade cicheto, Venetian tapas. We went to the room on the right side of the doorway, which is a seafood restaurant specializing in traditional Venetian dishes.
We began with a medley of seafood and vegetable cicheto, perhaps half a dozen or so different "small plates" artfully arranged on one larger plate. In addition to sardines, which are served lightly fried almost everywhere in Venice, there were grilled vegetables, including artichokes and eggplant, marinated scallops with tomato and peppers, and several other small pieces of fish - all perfectly prepared and delicious!
We shared a fresh radicchio salad next - we had seen some beautiful heads of radicchio displayed for sale in a fruit and vegetable store close to our apartment, and we were eager to taste the Venetian version, quite different from the radicchio we can get in the U.S. - here in Venice, it's almost a cross between endive and Boston lettuce. In any event, with some balsamic vinegar and salt sprinkled over it, it was delicious!
I next had a fresh pasta in a light and flavorful tomato and seafood sauce studded with pieces of lobster, while Tali had the mixed fried fish assortment, including Adriatic Sea favorites sea bass, bream, sole, molecche, and schille. Both plates reflected Trattoria da Fiore's skill at sourcing the freshest daily ingredients, and preparing many different types of seafood at once, each type cooked for exactly the right amount of time. Including aqua minerale and cappuccinos, and delicious Carnevale pastries served without charge, our bill came to about thirty five euros each.
After this lunch feast and our visit to the Palazzo Grassi, we had a wonderful stroll through the streets of Dorsoduro finishing up at the second part of Pinault's Collection, at Punta Della Dogana, which we will visit the day after tomorrow. On the walk back, we stopped in at the Coop, a busy grocery store, and bought the ingredients for a salad, some pasta, and fruit, as we were too full from lunch to eat a full dinner. We carried the bags from the Coop back to the apartment with us, and had a late dinner to complete a wonderful day.
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