Back to northern Italy, for the first of two reports from Venice. We did not actually stay in Venice. There were not very many apartments available in our price range, and I didn’t have the best feeling about the listings I saw. Accordingly, we stayed in Padua and took two day trips to Venice. It’s just 30 minutes by train and very easy to do—it was a short walk from our flat to catch a bus for a short ride to the station. Padua itself is very much worth a visit—the Giotto frescoes at Scrovegni Chapel are jaw-dropping and well worth the hassle for the limited time you’re allowed to spend there, but there’s more to do in the city. And, of course, we ate a couple of very good dinners in Padua (I’ve reported on the first so far). Our first full day in the region, however, was spent in Venice. We did some of the tourist greatest hits and after a visit to St. Mark’s Basilica we stopped randomly at a bacaro in the vicinity for a light ciccheti-based lunch. Why so uncharacteristically restrained? Well, we’d eaten a big breakfast at a cafe after arrival in Venice in the morning, and we had a booking in Padua for early’ish dinner—and also, it must be said, there was a lot of gelato to eat as well during the course of the day. Our lunch at Bacaro Risorto may thus have been light, but it was very good.
A bacaro (bacari is plural), in case you’re wondering, is an establishment that primarily serves cicchetti (pronounced “chee-keh-tee”) and small glasses of wine (though you can also get spritzes and beer). Cicchetti, in case you’re still wondering, are small snacks, mostly in the crostini/open-face sandwich mold, that are very popular in Venice and the broader region. It’s a great way to eat—partly because it’s very casual, partly because you can very easily calibrate how much or how little you want to eat, and mostly because a good bacaro will offer a wide range of small tasty bites that will let you enjoy a nice variety of flavours and textures. Indeed, we ate cicchetti for lunch three days in a row: twice in Venice and once in between in Padua. Bacaro Risorto’s selection was at the bottom of our ranking of the three outings but that’s not to say that it was not very good in its own right.
It’s a small place, with a few indoor seats and a few more at the counter outside. It being a very hot day in Venice—as every day in Italy apparently was this summer, and probably will be for every summer to come—we opted to sit inside, away from the sun. But before we sat down, we placed our order at the bar. You don’t order cicchetti sight unseen at a bacaro. The available selection is displayed and you point and say how many of each you want. At Bacaro Risorto they helpfully write the names of the key ingredients of each of the cicchetti on the glass case in front of the relevant items and as long as you have a good sense of the names of Italian ingredients you’ll be fine. And if you don’t, you can ask; and if you’re feeling bashful you can google. But, if you’re omnivorous, you also cannot go very wrong by just pointing and hoping for the best.
What did we get? Well, as I said, we ate a light lunch. The missus and I shared six cicchetti (taking a big bite each of each) and the boys got a mini-sandwich each (one with bresaola, one with ham). Which cicchetti did we get? Baccala mantecao (mashed/whipped salt cod); gamberi in saor (shrimp with sweet-sour onion); tonno e olive (tuna with olives); melanzane, pecoroni e fichi (eggplant, pecorino and fig jam); sopresa e carciofi (salami and artichoke); and a little puff filled with more baccala. All were very good; the baccala mantecato and the tonno e olive were probably my favourites.
The boys washed their mini-sandwiches down with sodas; the missus and I joined most of the rest of the adults on the islands in drinking Aperol Spritzes. A big cliche, yes, but a) we were tourists and therefore committed to cliche; and b) it’s a very refreshing drink.
For a look at what we ate and drank, click on an image below to launch a larger slideshow. Scroll down to see how much the meal cost, and to see what’s coming next on the restaurant front.
Oh, I forgot to mention that the other great thing about cicchetti is that they are very cheap. The food cost was only 22 euros, with the drinks accounting for another 18. If you were not eating a light lunch you would, of course, spend more, but you’d have to try very hard to spend a lot. Service was friendly and welcoming. Not that I’ve mapped Venice’s bacari but I don’t think you’d be going very wrong if you were on this end of the city and chose to eat at Bacaro Risorto.
Okay, what’s on the horizon food-wise this week? There won’t be a Twin Cities report this week (the missus and I were away for the weekend). On Thursday you can expect another report from Dublin, and then you can expect at least another Italian report over the weekend.