Hotel dining in Venice

After celebrating Christmas with your family, make the most of the bubbling activity in the Lagoon to hunt for romanticism and tasty bites. Venice, a gourmet town? Well, put this way, it may seem a laughable statement for the enjoyment of those who, spending little time here and being unable to avoid commonplaces, continue to see it as a tourist-trap, with very bad quality food and extremely rare decent establishments.

On the contrary, the list of places you can count on (at all levels: restaurants, inns, bacari) is much longer than one would imagine: from Ridotto to Covo, from Carampane to Vecio Fritolin, from Santa Marina to Vini da Gigio, from the Wildner to the brand new Centrale – just to name but a few, without including the starred restaurants – the list is long. But there’s an interesting phenomenon that is getting a foothold: the great attention paid by the hotel industry to restaurants, the desire to put food at the centre of their project, entrusting young, passionate and driven chefs.

In Italy, hotel restaurants are always looked at with suspicion: very often with reason, other times by mistake, the food in hotels is considered bland and banal. Except, right in the Lagoon, the desire to heighten the level of the cuisine seems a pleasant virus contaminating the most prestigious establishments, as if the “Corrado Fasolato effect” – already two Michelin stars at the Metropole – had bequeathed a remarkable desire for emulation, even now that he is back to the native hills of Schio.

The owners of the Met, for example, reacted to parting with the chef from Vicenza by entrusting Luca Veritti, a 32 year old chef from Friuli, with the task of carrying forward the Tracontemporaneo menu created by Oscar Cavallera, a list with some Italian classics in their traditional version, and a parallel one, with the same recipes but reviewed, starting from the truly Venetian sarde in saor: in the contemporary version, the sardine appears in a geometrical shape, paired, but not blended, with the onion, while the vinegar perfumes of raspberries and the raisins are softened with Verduzzo.

Even the spectacular and brand new Centurion Palace, a five star luxury hotel overlooking Canal Grande and a short walk from the Peggy Guggenheim foundation, has chosen to invest in the kitchen of the Antinoos and in Massimo Livan, a prophet in his own home (he is a pureblood Venetian). He is modern but respectful of tradition (his forte are risottos) and of the seasonality of products, without following trends, and with tasty dishes that have a limited use of butter and flour.

Even the luxurious Londra Palace, recently included in the Relais&Chateaux list, believes in the strength of food and of Loris Indri, another young chef from Friuli, who has full scope to give vent to creativity and concreteness. Alberto Fol, instead, is a young chef from Veneto (he’s half from Treviso and half from Belluno), who has spent the past 6 years at the Europa & Regina – another classic, with a splendid terrace overlooking Canal Grande – and at the restaurant La Cusina, where he creates tasty, fascinating and healthy high-quality dishes.

It’s nice to notice, also, that all these important establishments have focused on chefs from Veneto and Friuli. Except one, namely De Pisis. After starting with Giovanni Ciresa, the fascinating restaurant of hotel Bauer, with a spectacular view on the basilica of St. Mary of Health, has chosen Japanese chef Hiraki Masakazu, an apprentice, amongst others, of Gualtiero Marchesi, in the old establishment of the master in Kobe.