Eating in Venice is one of the most contested experiences in European travel, because the city has a fragile real cuisine (lagoon fish, the Veneto’s vegetables, 700 years of Adriatic trade routes) coexisting with one of the densest concentrations of tourist-trap restaurants on the continent. The food is excellent if you know where to go and unforgivably bad if you don’t. This guide is a hosts’ shortlist by sestiere, with the bacari we send guests to for lunch, the trattorie we book for dinner, and the dishes that signal whether the kitchen is paying attention.
The short answer
Two meals a day in bacari (the city’s wine bars, with cicchetti) at €18 to €30 per person, one dinner a day at a neighbourhood trattoria at €35 to €60. Avoid anything on the main calli between San Marco and Rialto. Book serious dinners three weeks ahead. Order sarde in saor, bigoli in salsa, and risotto di gò to test the kitchen. The five best bacari cluster around the Rialto market.
How Venetians eat
The Venetian eating day has its own rhythm. Breakfast is small: an espresso and a brioche standing at the bar, €3 total. Lunch is light: a couple of cicchetti and a glass of wine at a bacaro on the way through the day. The serious meal is dinner, eaten between 20:00 and 22:00, ideally on a neighbourhood square.
The bacaro is the institutional unit of Venetian eating. A tiny wine bar (the name comes from Baco, the Venetian for Bacchus), with a marble counter, ten bottles of regional wine open by the glass, and a glass case of cicchetti made that morning. You stand at the bar, you order un’ombra (a small glass of wine, €2 to €5) or a Spritz Select (€3 to €6) and three or four cicchetti (€1.50 to €3 each). You stay for 20 minutes, you pay, you walk on. A serious bacaro crawl visits four or five in an evening; the locals call it andar per ombre, going for shadows.
The trattoria is the family restaurant. Smaller than a ristorante, more formal than a bacaro, with two or three sittings per evening. A serious Venetian trattoria runs a short seasonal menu, mostly fish in the warm months, mostly fish-plus-game in the cold months. €35 to €60 per person for the full meal.
The ristorante is the destination restaurant. Five or six in Venice qualify as worth the €100+ per-person spend; the rest are the trap.
The osteria is anywhere on the slider between bacaro and trattoria. The name is ambiguous; the food can be either.
The bacari, by sestiere
The 10 best bacari in the historic centre, by neighbourhood. All have been open at least 20 years; most have been open over 50.
San Polo, around the Rialto market
All’Arco. Calle dell’Ochialer 436. The most photographed bacaro on the Rialto, and it deserves it. Father-and-son operation, an immaculate glass case of the most carefully constructed crostini in Venice. Specialties: the raw sea bass with mint and pink pepper, the prosciutto with truffle. Open 09:00 to 14:00 only, lunchtime; arrive at 12:00 for the first round.
Cantina Do Mori. San Polo 429. The oldest bacaro in continuous operation in Venice (1462). Dark wooden interior, copper pots hanging from the ceiling, a wine list that includes Veneto natural wines. The famous francobolli (postage-stamp sandwiches, €1.50 each) are the order; the wine to go with them is the house Soave or Prosecco. Standing room only. Open 08:00 to 19:30.
Cantina Do Spade. Calle delle Do Spade, San Polo 859. Near the market, a step back from the tourist route, with a small wine bar at the front and a 30-seat dining room behind. Lunch sit-down for €25 to €40 per person; cicchetti at the bar from €2. The fried meatballs (fish, vegetarian, beef) are the signature.
Al Mercà. Campo Bella Vienna 213, San Polo. A standing-room-only bar pressed against the wall of the Rialto market arcades. Glasses of wine €1.50 to €3, the cheapest decent wine in central Venice. Crostini €1.50. Open 10:00 to 14:00 and 18:00 to 21:00. The Venetian afternoon glass.
Cannaregio, north of the Strada Nuova
Antica Osteria alla Vedova. Calle del Pistor, Cannaregio 3912. Famous for the polpette di carne, the small meatballs that come three to a plate (€6). The trattoria dining room at the back serves a serious sit-down dinner (book three days ahead, €40 per person). One of the warmest rooms in Venice for a winter evening.
Al Timon. Fondamenta degli Ormesini 2754, Cannaregio. A canal-side bacaro with outdoor seating on the fondamenta in summer. The aperitivo crowd starts at 18:30; cicchetti from €1.80. Excellent fritto misto (fried lagoon fish, €12 plate) for an early dinner sitting out on the canal. The best evening sit-out in Cannaregio.
Bacareto da Lele. Campo dei Tolentini 183. Technically Santa Croce, but on the Cannaregio walking route from the station. Standing-room sandwiches at €1.50 each, wine at €1, the morning stop for Venetian students. Open 06:00 to 14:00 and 16:00 to 20:00.
Castello
Osteria al Portego. Calle Malvasia, Castello 6014. Hidden in a calle near Campo San Lio, a working bacaro with serious trattoria dishes at the back (book ahead). The cicchetti at the bar from €1.50, the bigoli in salsa at the table for €14.
El Refolo. Via Garibaldi, Castello 1580. In the easternmost residential part of Castello, where eastern Castello’s Biennale crowd mixes with local Venetian families. Wine-bar cicchetti and an excellent fried calamari served standing.
Dorsoduro
Cantinone già Schiavi. Fondamenta Nani, Ponte San Trovaso, Dorsoduro 992. The standing-room cicchetti palace on the Rio di San Trovaso, opposite the squero (the boatyard where gondolas are built). 60 different cicchetti on the counter, baccalà mantecato spectacular, glasses of wine €1.50 to €4. Open 08:30 to 20:30; no seats, no table service.
Osteria al Squero. Fondamenta Nani 943, Dorsoduro. Directly across the rio from Schiavi, less famous, smaller queue. Excellent cicchetti, a more confidential atmosphere. The Dorsoduro alternative.
The trattorie
Six trattorie that we send guests to, when the trip needs a sit-down dinner that does not embarrass the city.
San Polo and Santa Croce
Trattoria alla Madonna. Calle della Madonna, San Polo 594. The reliable Venetian classic, a step from the Rialto. Three large dining rooms, a working kitchen, a menu that has not changed materially in 30 years. Sarde in saor, granseola (spider crab), fritto misto, fegato alla veneziana (liver Venetian style with onions). €40 to €55 per person without wine. Closed Wednesday. Book five days ahead in season.
Trattoria da Fiore. Calle del Scaleter, San Polo 2202a. A Michelin-starred destination restaurant for a serious anniversary dinner. €120 to €180 per person. Book a month ahead.
Castello
Corte Sconta. Calle del Pestrin, Castello 3886. The standard-bearer of Castello, in a small calle north of the Riva degli Schiavoni. Tasting menu (€75) is the right order; serious fresh fish from the morning market. Closed Sunday and Monday. Book three weeks ahead minimum.
Osteria di Santa Marina. Calle Madonna 5911, Castello. Behind Santa Maria Formosa, a small modern dining room with a chef who came up at the Locanda Cipriani on Torcello. Inventive Venetian dishes, €60 to €90 per person. Closed Sunday. Book two weeks ahead.
Local. Salizada dei Greci 3303, Castello. The newer Castello option (opened 2015), one Michelin star, the contemporary Venetian kitchen. €110 to €160 per person tasting. Book three weeks ahead.
Cannaregio
Trattoria Ca’ d’Oro alla Vedova. Calle del Pistor 3912, Cannaregio. The same building as the bacaro listed above; the dining room at the back serves a proper trattoria dinner with the same kitchen. €35 to €50 per person. Closed Thursday and Sunday lunch.
Vini da Gigio. Fondamenta San Felice 3628, Cannaregio. A 30-year Cannaregio institution, family-run, three small dining rooms. Excellent wine list. Lagoon fish in season; risotto di gò exemplary. €55 to €85 per person. Closed Monday and Tuesday. Book two weeks ahead.
On Burano
Trattoria al Gatto Nero. Fondamenta della Giudecca 88, Burano. The reason to plan a half-day on Burano. Three generations of the same family running the kitchen; the risotto di gò is the dish of the trip, the lagoon fish is fresher than anywhere on the main islands. €60 to €90 per person. Closed Monday. Book at least a week ahead. The vaporetto from Fondamente Nove takes 45 minutes; the return after dinner is the prettiest journey in Venice.
What to order
Three dishes that signal whether the kitchen is a real Venetian kitchen:
Sarde in saor. Fried sardines, marinated in onions, vinegar, pine nuts, and raisins. A 13th-century preserved-fish dish from the lagoon’s fishermen, now eaten as an antipasto or a cicchetto. A good version balances the sweetness of the raisins against the acidity of the vinegar; a bad version is either too sweet or too sharp.
Bigoli in salsa. Thick fresh spaghetti, traditionally hand-rolled, with a sauce of slowly-cooked white onions, anchovies, and a touch of olive oil. The simplest Venetian primo; impossible to fake. Order it whenever it appears on a menu.
Risotto di gò. Risotto cooked in a broth of gò, the small black goby that lives in the lagoon. The most labour-intensive Venetian risotto; a serious kitchen serves it once or twice a week. The texture should be loose (all’onda, like a wave), the flavour deep and slightly salty.
Beyond these, the cicchetto staples to look for at any bacaro: baccalà mantecato (whipped salt cod on a polenta cracker), nervetti in salsa (cold veal cartilage in vinaigrette), polpette di carne (small fried meatballs), folpetti (boiled baby octopus), sarde in saor on a small crostino.
The Venetian wines to order: Soave (the dry white from the Veronese hills), Prosecco (the dry sparkling, ordered as a glass, not in a bottle), Tocai or Pinot Grigio del Collio (white from Friuli), Valpolicella (red from north of Verona), Refosco (red from Friuli, harder to find). The local fortified wine for after dinner is Fragolino (strawberry flavour, sweet).
The five rules for avoiding tourist traps
The historic centre has hundreds of restaurants that exist solely on day-tripper traffic. The five rules that filter most of them out:
1. No multilingual photo menu. A menu with the dishes photographed on it, in five languages, is uniformly a sign of bad food. The serious kitchens write the menu in Italian on a small card and change it weekly with the market.
2. Not on the main tourist routes. Specifically: not on Piazza San Marco, not on the calli directly around Rialto, not on the Mercerie between them, not on the Lista di Spagna at the train station. The bad restaurants saturate these strips; the good ones survive one or two calli back.
3. No touts outside. A waiter standing in the calle calling tourists in is the signal of a restaurant that cannot fill its tables on quality. The serious places fill from reservations.
4. Short seasonal menu. Eight to fifteen dishes, written in Italian, changing with the market. A 50-dish menu of every Italian regional cliché is a microwave kitchen.
5. Locals at 20:30. Stand outside at 20:30 on a Tuesday. If the dining room is two-thirds tourists in identical demographic, the food is targeted at them. If the dining room is mixed (Italian families, Venetian couples, a couple of foreigners), the kitchen is doing its work.
The five rules together filter out roughly 90 percent of the failures in the central tourist zone. The remaining 10 percent of central restaurants worth eating in are mostly the ones listed above.
The bacaro crawl, planned
The classic Venetian bacaro evening, andar per ombre, planned for a couple in San Polo and Cannaregio:
18:00. Start at All’Arco for the first crostini and a Soave, while the kitchen is still constructing the late-afternoon round.
18:45. Walk five minutes to Cantina Do Mori for the francobolli and a glass of Prosecco. The historical room.
19:30. Cross the Rialto bridge to Al Mercà for the standing glass at the wall, looking at the market arcades.
20:00. Walk through San Marco to Cannaregio via the Strada Nuova (15 minutes) and stop at Antica Osteria alla Vedova for the polpette and a half-litre of the house wine.
21:00. End at Al Timon on the Fondamenta degli Ormesini, sit outside if the weather allows, order fritto misto and a final glass.
Total cost for a couple, including wine: €60 to €90 for the evening. A full restaurant dinner equivalent would run €120 to €200.
What this means for your stay
Three meals a day, three days, in a city this small, means nine eating decisions that shape the trip. The decisions to invest in are the dinners (book three serious ones ahead) and the bacari you discover by walking through Cannaregio and Castello in the evening. Lunch can be casual, almost anywhere with cicchetti.
A reasonable food budget for two adults over three days in Venice: €350 to €600. €60 to €90 for three lunches at bacari. €240 to €390 for three serious dinners. €50 to €120 for coffees, glasses of wine, casual stops. Less than this works (sandwich lunches and one nice dinner) but loses one of the principal reasons to be in Venice.
For the wider 3-day shape, see 3 Days in Venice. For the practical questions, Practical Venice. To stay walking distance from any of the bacari above, the full apartment catalogue is the next step.
Authoritative external sources: Eating Around Italy’s Venice cicchetti shortlist and Walks of Italy’s introduction to cicchetti corroborate most of the bacari listed here; the Wikipedia entry on cicchetti covers the cultural and historical context.
