Part One:Back in the Saddle of Venice

[robert brown]

We opened in Venice, we next played Verona, but instead of on to Cremona,

our next jump was to Milan and after backtracking to Bergamo, we finished in

Piemonte and Trecate. That was our trip; me, my wife, her cousin Rick, his

wife Barbara and, after they left for home, Vedat and Linda, the Sultanic

couple of dining. What a trip it was, too. Ten days of exciting, if

sometimes imperfect, eating and drinking from the humble local trattoria to

the heights of luxury in Italy’s newest Relais Chateau-Relais Gourmand, and

all manner of restaurant in-between.

The themes of the journey that jump into my head with the least effort are

“The Revenge of the Sea Urchin” and dining volatility. The prickly-shelled

creature showed up in four restaurants, always finding itself incorporated in a

sauce. When added to spaghetti along with coffee at Milan’s quasi-avant-garde

two star Cracco-Peck, it resulted in the dish of the trip as far as my wife

was concerned.

As for the more significant dining volatility factor, I can best sum it up

by saying that restaurants that thrilled us in the recent past let us down

this time, while others provided some nice bits of unexpected delights. For

our first dinner in Venice, we took a tip from the cellist-turned-impresario

Julian Fifer, co-founder of Orpheus and the man behind the new Venice Music

Festival. In an e-mail he told me that Osteria Santa Marina was one of the

two or three best restaurants in Venice. As a result, we asked the concierge

to cancel us out of Al Covo, which may have been a good thing to

have done. The Santa Marina appears to be a laggard in terms of recognition,

but undeservedly so. This is Venetian dining at the top echelon. Nothing

fancy here in terms of décor; just a tastefully understated trattoria with

mostly fish, even though we thoroughly enjoyed guanciale in a soupy

polenta. (Here I should note that we took no notes on our trip, not wanting

to interrupt the social dynamics and conviviality of our meals. Diner’s

notes are less important than overall impressions anyway, as the primary

purpose is to sort out the good restaurants from those not so good). We had

no whole fish dishes, but a tuna carpaccio was magnificent, maybe the best carpaccio of any kind we ever had, and my wife was bowled over the soft-shell crabs from the lagoon in a sweet and sour sauce. Most of the other dishes we had, including octopus and a couple of pastas, were wonderful..

Rarely would I do anything that made it impossible to go to a good

restaurant, but given the opportunity to go a performance of the

rarely-performed opera La Juive at the recently put-back-together Teatro La Fenice, I made an exception. Because of the late exit time, the concierge booked a table at Le Bistro de Venise. I need say nothing more than to avoid it at all cost regardless of its guidebook citations. It tried to play every tourist restaurant trick known to man. We sensed enough at the outset to limit the damage, but if I had it to do over, we would have gone to a nocturnal pizzeria or cafe instead.

Once again we took the 35-minute vaporetto ride from San Zaccheria to Ponte

Tre Arche to visit Marisa, the First Lady of Venetian Cuisine. We did it

with the hope of recapturing one of our favorite dining experiences of this

past summer, a meal at dalle Marisa. We had no inkling, and no guidebook or

report ever mentioned it, but at midday out of season, the place is akin to a canteen for laborers. With a fixed meal without dessert for 15 euros, (half the price of dinner) the trip out there and back was a total loss. Two preparations of

commercial penne (a ragu sauce and zucchini, cream and Parmesan) and thin,

bone-dry slices of roasted meat with very overcooked vegetables were

barely edible. Lucky for me I’m not Japanese and didn’t have to live with loss of face, especially after the splendid recovery that evening with a dinner that was a true highlight of our trip.

Nothing would delight me more than to find a restaurant outside of Italy

that can provide as intense an encounter of eating seafood than does alle Testieri. No restaurant in New York comes remotely close, nor do the seafood

palaces I have visited in Europe. Alle Testieri is tiny, holding about two

dozen diners and a kitchen barely bigger than a lobster trap. Yet, we surely

dined on a par with Barnacle Bill the Sailor in what was a virtually perfect

meal that was slightly marred by an over-cooked branzino. One

restaurateur told me this past summer that November was the peak period for

Venetian seafood, a situation we took advantage of by being in the hands of

alle Testieri’s main man Luca. From the lagoon we had fried soft shell

crabs, razor clams and that remarkable delicacy schilie, the tiny grey

shrimps that were in a linguine with the ubiquitous artichokes of our

journey. Nullifying the overdone sea bass of the main course was a thick,

long piece of monkfish that was the best one could imagine. The only dessert

my wife recalls was the only one that didn’t appeal to her, a persimmon tart.

I kept my three convives waiting at the door while I chatted with Luca in

order to pick his brain about which other restaurants served impeccable

local fish acquired on a daily basis. He grabbed the brochure of the loose

association of Venice restaurants alle Testieri is a part of and circled Al

Covo, Corte Sconta and Vini da Giglio.

We went on to dine at several less-humble and more expensive restaurants in

the week following, but to my thinking our dinner here may well have been

the closest to a flawless meal of our ten days of dining.

(Part Two: Verona, Milan, etc.)

[Marco_Polo]

Excellent, Robert. You've made me want to head up to Bristol Airport first thing tomorrow morning and jump on an Easyjet flight direct to Venice (only a couple of hours, after all). It's been far too long since we've been there. Every now and then it is essential to recharge one's life batteries by sampling the electrifying and mysterious delights of the lagoon.

[docsconz]

The themes of the journey that jump into my head with the least effort are

“The Revenge of the Sea Urchin” and dining volatility. The prickly-shelled

creature showed up in four restaurants, always finding itself incorporated in a

sauce. When added to spaghetti along with coffee at Milan’s quasi-avant-garde

two star Cracco-Peck, it resulted in the dish of the trip as far as my wife

was concerned.

←

Excellent report, Robert.

Sea urchin has always reminded me a little bit of coffee yoghurt. Thinking of this dish is making me salivate.

[Kevin72]

That's too bad about dalle Marissa; I really enjoyed your enthusiastic writeup of it last summer. Was it just the lunch crew do you think?

And another enthusiastic review for Testiere. That one really slipped my radar when we went a few years back. Reading these reviews of yours' really makes me want to do a return trip, particularly this time of year.

[docsconz]

That's too bad about dalle Marissa; I really enjoyed your enthusiastic writeup of it last summer.  Was it just the lunch crew do you think?

←

This was how Ed Behr described it when he wrote about it in The Art of Eating. That is to say he described as a working class restaurant catering to locals.

[robert brown]

Doc, there is a qualitative (and price) difference between lunch and dinner at dalla Marisa. I don't know if it's the same in the high season. It was more working class this time. I think we and a couple who translated our questions to Marisa were the only middle-class people I noticed in the two seatings. Book for dinner is my advice, just to be safe. Thanks for the kind words and to Marc as well. Yes, the sea urchin spaghetti was wonderful, the little I managed to take from my wife. But there was really bad service at Cracco-Peck which I'll detail in the next few days. And Marc, your meal at Cesare sounded better than mine, though I still love it there. I think my report will be after the one with Cracco-Peck.

Doc, where and when did you first meet up with sea urchin sauce? It sounds modern Spanish.