start utazas

IT seems it's necessary to visit Venice every few years to reaffirm that a couple of things haven't changed. One, the world's favorite city hasn't yet sunk into the sea, and two, the food isn't nearly as bad as most “experts” report.

In fact, we remain aware of Venice's impending demise through reports, not observation, and the food is beyond a doubt the most underrated in all of Italy.

To many Americans, it's somehow seen as a shortcoming that all the good Venetian restaurants specialize in fish, and use less butter and garlic than in much of northern Italy, almost no Parmesan or prosciutto, and but a few spices. Yes, the cooking is limited in scope, intensely regional and seasonal; but Alice Waters has been proclaimed a genius for cooking this way.

It all seems strange at first, but then you remember that Venice was the seat of an empire, and is unusual even in a confederation of former city-states. They do their own thing there, and they do it so well that you can eat variations of the same dishes over and over and keep enjoying them.

And if Venice's good restaurants are expensive, there are swell places to stay that are not, and you can walk almost everywhere, saving tons of money on taxis. To eat well, you must go to the right places — not the pizzeria at the base of the Accademia, or any place in St. Mark's Square. And the right places are either the bacari (the neighborhood wine and snack bars) or the undeniably pricey old reliables and their imitators.

Time after time this year, I found the best cooking in Venice restaurants at the same places I'd found it during my last lengthy visit, more than 10 years ago.

The general recommendations are these: Avoid places with tourist menus, eat loads of fish and drink white. (That you can walk everywhere allows you to freely imbibe the excellent local wines, like Soave, which in general is like no Soave you'll get in the United States.) In the good places you'll be served shrimp — or prawns or any of the dozen or so local names for that family of crustaceans — that make you think no other shrimp should exist.

One place new to me, and serving my favorite version of slightly updated traditional Venetian food at a relatively reasonable price, is Osteria di Santa Marina (Castello, Campo Santa Marina 5911; 39-041-528-5239; www.osteriadisantamarina.it). It is a cute but not funky joint with rough-plank wood walls, glass-front dark wood cabinets, hanging metal lampshades, and windows overlooking the lovely campo.

I was interested in the 55-euro tasting menu (about $75 at $1.37 to the euro) but not in salmon carpaccio, so I asked the waiter for a substitution. After lengthy and intensely amiable negotiations, with many suggestions on his part, I wound up with a customized tasting menu, the majority of which was substitutions.

When I ate just half of every dish (I'd lunched at Da Fiore), they discounted the bill 25 percent. “It's just the way we do things here,” my waiter said.

This in a city widely considered to be filled with thieves.

What I ate was super: black sea bass ravioli in mussel-clam broth, beautifully hand shaped and pinched on top, like dim sum; perfect black barley risotto with mushrooms, zucca (pumpkin) purée, and a couple of first-rate grilled scampi; grilled octopus on a bed of potatoes mashed with olive oil, along with cold, slow-cooked tomato — a surprising touch that worked — and a garnish of lardo (cured fat) tangled with a wafer of black bread; zucca saor (saor is the local marinade, usually of raisins, pine nuts, oil, vinegar and onion) with thin fried slices of artichoke and soft shell crab.

Then there was the inevitable, ubiquitous, emblematic and wonderful fritto misto, served on greaseless brown paper and featuring the local tiny soft-shell crab, about the size of a silver dollar — crisp, light, hot, irresistible. I liked the desserts, too, especially the almond nougat with chantilly, raspberries and pistachio ice cream, and the lemon sorbet with licorice.

That was the most ambitious and perhaps most enjoyable meal I ate in Venice, but it was not necessarily the best. That honor would have to go to the popular, deservedly hyped Da Fiore (San Polo, Calle del Scaleter, 2002; 39-041-721-308; www.dafiore.net), which, despite its tuxedoed staff and expense (figure at least 100 euros a person for three courses plus dessert and a moderately priced bottle of wine), is friendly and not at all stuffy. From the moment I tasted the amuse-bouche — shrimp broth with orange peel — I was sold. The food restores faith.

This was followed by crostini with the most tender and delicately flavored shrimp, wrapped in thin slices of lardo with a little rosemary, and then a plate of lightly fried and ultra crisp vegetables: red onion, Treviso (the local radicchio, served everywhere in season), celery, broccoli, asparagus and zucchini. Was there lemon?

“We don't do that here,” I was told. “Maybe you'd like a little pepper?”

Did I say Venetians do their own thing?

With the exception of a few vegetarian items and a duck breast, the menu — which changes daily — was all fish. I next had bigoli, whole wheat pasta with sardines and caramelized onions, unfortunately in a slightly silly thin bread bowl.

Next up was fried eel with celery and blueberries. I thought this, too, might be contrived, but I wanted the eel. It didn't disappoint: the fish was gorgeously filleted, with its deep-fried and edible skeleton around the outside of the plate like a necklace. The sweet, perfectly cooked fish was so hot and crisp I nearly burned my mouth; the celery was shredded, lightly drizzled with good olive oil and salt; and I had to admit the blueberries found a place there, their sweetness offsetting the bitter celery.

A hot-and-cold Roman-style dish of puntarelle with anchovies underneath and striped bass baked with bread crumbs on top was nearly as dazzling.

Another perennially highly rated spot is Fiaschetteria Toscana (Cannaregio, 5719; 39-041-528-5281; www.fiaschetteriatoscana.it), abundantly decorated with Venetian glass lamps, amusing prints and painted plates from restaurants all over Italy's north. Upon entering this overly bright, elegant and relatively small place — there might be 40 seats — you see a refrigerator case with the offerings of the day's fish.

But, as I learned chatting with the waiter, there are often other options. “We have a few monkfish cheeks in the kitchen,” he told me, as if I'd be a fool not to seize all of them.

I ordered a plateful, and they were served, not unexpectedly, perfectly fried and about 30 seconds out of the oil. I next sampled the tiny, sweet razor clams, like most of the food there ungarnished and served as if they needed nothing else, which was indeed the case.

A fine salad, made on the spot, featured tiny arugula and Treviso; grilled white polenta was as good as it can be; and, finally, there was intensely flavored fresh black pasta with local lobster. I drank a full-bodied, fat, rich Soave (Pieropan La Rocca, 2004), which I finished with a fantastic selection of cheese, all from northern Italy.

Nor could I resist the custard fried in butter and sugar, which is prepared in the dining room and scents the air with such a strong aroma that I'm quite sure 10 customers a night who normally forgo dessert cave in and order it. (It's worth the splurge.)

At Toscana as well as elsewhere, most customers arrived between 7:30 and 8 p.m. — Venice is known to be an early-eating town, to the delight of many Americans — and by 8:15 the refrigerator case was emptying out, and the waiters were suggesting fewer dishes, certainly not the monkfish cheeks. There were maybe five minutes between courses; it's all completely understated, efficient and minimalist, if not cheap (like Da Fiore, around 100 euros a person).

In each of these restaurants, the waiters had been friendly, English-speaking and helpfully suggestive. That trend continued at Al Covo (Castello, 3968; 39-041-522-3812), where I nearly fell in love with the gentleman who served me, initially because he sold me on a cheaper bottle of Soave than my first choice, 8 euros instead of 30, and then because he told me exactly what to order. And he was right.

Al Covo is venerable and much loved, a funny little place with tables outside, a pink terrazzo floor, cushioned benches lining the walls, leather chairs, gauzy curtains and, in lieu of flowers, various vegetables in vases on the tables. I seem to remember it being inexpensive when I was there in the mid-90s, but now, like everything else, the price has ballooned to around 75 euros a person. (The exchange rate, obviously, is working against Americans; a restaurant this good for $75 a person including wine, anywhere in the States, would be unique.)

I started with a tasting of stockfish (dried cod) dishes, all very sweet and mild, with lovely textures: a kind of brandade on polenta; a light stew with tomatoes and peppers; another with anchovies. I then moved on to pasta with shrimp sauce, made with local shrimp and very intense. (It was between this and a plate of mixed seafood, which looked equally fantastic, but I was on a pasta roll.)

The salad was of arugula, radicchio and celery, a nice combo; it was mixed by the waiter, and I swear when I asked for salt he scoffed. It was followed by local sole, simply grilled, with olive oil; this he boned for me. Dessert was a kind of nut-crumb-spice cake, with a not-overly-sweet caramel sauce; I liked it.

Finally, there was Osteria Vecio Fritolin (Rialto, Calle della Regina, 2262; 39-041-522-2881; www.veciofritolin.it), supposedly the last of the original fritolin, fry shops specializing in (what else?) fish. It's an unpretentious little place (you can eat well there for about 50 euros a person), with an appropriately small menu that presumably procures its fresh fish from the nearby Rialto.

I had been sent there with this message: you will eat fritto misto all over Venice, but you won't eat it better than you will there. This turned out to be the truth.

The fritto misto comprised tiny whole cuttlefish; whole baby sardines; a triglia (red mullet, known as rouget in much of the world); several sizes of shrimp, some whole, some not; nicely fried zucchini; and fried polenta. All the frying was expert, and in olive oil. That the rest of the food didn't measure up was more a comment on the high quality of the fritto misto than on the deficiencies of everything else.

If all this doesn't appeal to you, you either don't like fish, vegetables, pasta and polenta, or combinations of the above, or you don't like fried food (which can, with effort, be avoided, though why you'd want to I can hardly imagine). If it does appeal to you, go — there's a pretty good city to look at while you're walking to the restaurants.