Back to Italy and to Padua. We’d spent most of our first full day in Padua not in that city but in Venice, taking the train out in the morning and back in the evening. We ate cicchetti for lunch in Venice on that day (and dinner back in Padua at Ai Scarponi). We ate cicchetti again for lunch on our second day which we actually spent entirely in Padua. In the morning we walked in the rain to the Scrovegni Chapel where we took in the famous Giotto frescoes. It’s a pretty regimented experience (make sure to arrive at the time printed on your reservation) but it’s quite something to behold. You’d think that well into our third week in Italy we’d be frescoed out, but no. After the chapel we walked over to Frascoli, a popular bacaro, for lunch. It’s a much larger establishment than Bacaro Risorto, and they serve a larger menu beyond cicchetti. It’s the cicchetti we focused on though.

There are a number of tables, large and small, in a number of dining rooms. We sat, however, at the bar and quickly got down to business. The cicchetti selection was not vast and, unlike at Bar Risorto—and also the next place we ate cicchetti at—was not labeled. Some things we recognized (and/or could figure out from the chalk menu) and the for the others we figured we couldn’t go very wrong by just pointing and asking for things. So it proved to be. It does mean though that I’m not positive about the names and composition of every single thing we ate. The boys opted to eat a large slice of lasagna each.

I will say that we had some twinges of regret after placing our order for cicchetti. This because everyone seated at tables was ordering large seafood platters—either mixed fried seafood of the kind we ate at Enotavola on our first night in Padua or mixed grilled seafood. And it all went by us on the way from the kitchen to the tables and it all looked very good. I am pleased to say though that the cicchetti were also very good, and indeed somewhat better than at Bacaro Risorto the previous day (though our third cicchetti lunch would prove to be even better still).

Highlights included the baccala mantecato (we ate a lot of baccala in our four days in Padua/Venice), the octopus, the boiled eggs with anchovies and the polpette, the one non-seafood selection. You can see what else we ate by launching the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it all cost and what’s coming next on the food front.

The boys had soft drinks, I had an Aperol Spritz, the missus had coffee. With everything we ate and drank the total came to a very reasonable 69 euros and we were quite full. Thus refueled we set out for some more hectic tourism, to the Basilica di Sant’Antonio and other more secular attractions—but that need not occupy us here.

Alright, only one more restaurant report left to go from the Veneto and then it’ll be up to Milan for a couple more reports. And then I’ll finally be done with this Italy trip. I hope to have those all out in the next two weeks and to then finish the Ireland reports by the end of November. And I do have a few New York City reports to go as well. I’ll get started on those this Tuesday—no Twin Cities report this week either as we did not go out to eat this weekend. I do hope to have all of 2023’s trip reports done by the end of the year. We’re set to head out of the country for three more months at the beginning of January and it would be good to start the new year with a clean slate.