Where to Eat in Venice: Cicchetti Guide
Venice has a reputation for expensive, mediocre food, and it is entirely earned if you sit down at the first place with a laminated photo menu. Eat the way Venetians do instead and you get one of the best-value cities in Italy.
Cicchetti and the bacaro
The heart of Venetian eating is the bacaro, a traditional wine bar, and its cicchetti: small bites laid out on the counter, EUR1 to 3 each. The classics are baccala mantecato (whipped salt cod on toasted polenta), sarde in saor (sweet-and-sour marinated sardines with onions, pine nuts and raisins) and folpetti (tiny boiled octopus). You order a few, point at what looks good, and wash them down with an ombra, a small glass of wine (EUR1.50 to 3) drunk standing at the bar.
A proper bacaro lunch or early-evening crawl, five or six cicchetti plus a couple of ombre, runs about EUR12 to 18 a head. Move between two or three bars rather than filling up at one, which is half the pleasure. The bars around the Rialto market and through Cannaregio and Castello tend to be more local than those on the main tourist drags.
The Rialto market
The Rialto market is where the whole city’s seafood starts its day. The pescheria (fish hall) and the erberia (produce stalls) run Tuesday to Saturday, roughly 7am to early afternoon, closed Sunday and Monday. Go between 7:30 and 10:30am, before the tour groups and before the fish stalls begin to close, and you see live scallops, glossy squid and lagoon vegetables changing hands among people actually cooking that night.
Lagoon dishes worth ordering
The lagoon shapes the menu. Look for risotto or spaghetti al nero di seppia (cuttlefish ink), bigoli in salsa (thick pasta with an onion and anchovy sauce), and, in spring and autumn, moeche, the soft-shell lagoon crabs that are a true seasonal specialty. These run a little pricier than inland Veneto cooking, but they are the reason to eat here rather than anywhere else.
Reading the bill before you sit
Two legal charges catch people out. The coperto, a per-person cover, must be printed on the menu and runs EUR1 to 5, trending higher near San Marco. Servizio, a service charge of around 10 to 12.5 percent, is a separate add-on at many touristy spots. Both are legal only if disclosed, and standing at the bar for a coffee or cicchetti avoids both. Restaurants are required to post their full menu outside, so check it before sitting down.
The tourist-trap tells are consistent: a laminated multilingual photo menu, a tout waving you in from the street, a prime spot on the Lista di Spagna between the station and Rialto or right on Piazza San Marco. Walk two streets back from any of those and prices drop while quality rises.
Read more: fit meals into a plan with the Venice travel guide , or turn a day into a route with the 3-day itinerary .