Venice in the kitchen

In Venice, the food is varied and tasty. Among the first courses, the bigoli, homemade dark spaghetti with durum wheat flour in anchovy sauce, risi con fenoci (risotto with flakes) should be highlighted; rice and savoy cabbage, risotto in cavroman, typical risotto with castrated pieces and tomato, and many other risottos: with tagio, with eel and prawns, de la vigilia, with beans, gudgeon and eel, and the famous black risotto, cooked with cuttlefish ink.

Fasioi sofegai: boiled, placed in an ovenproof dish and seasoned with salsa peverada (typical Venetian sauce based on chicken livers, sopressa, anchovy fillets, pickled peppers, parsley, lemon, vinegar); boiled and then browned radicchio with lard, oil and garlic, Venetian potatoes, cooked in small pieces with oil, butter and onion and flavored with chopped parsley at the end, are among the most common side dishes.
Classic, among fish dishes,  bacalà mantecato (stockfish): boiled, put on very low heat in a heavy pan and worked for a long time with a wooden spoon, adding oil little by little and finally perfuming with a chopped parsley and garlic , bisato su l’ara, eel once cooked on the stone used to temper the Murano glass; Venetian cuttlefish, with onion, parsley, garlic, white wine, tomato sauce, finally, the typical lagoon crustacean, spider crab, served boiled and then seasoned with oil, lemon juice, pepper and chopped parsley.

Taste the various meat dishes, including: stufadin (stewed mutton); milk pork, pork leg first marinated in vinegar or white wine, then browned in butter, flavored with sage and rosemary, then cooked in milk, Polastro in tecia, tasty chicken cacciatore. Baicoli, delicate thin biscuits to be soaked in the zabajon, fritole (pancakes) which in ancient times were served with Malvasia or with Cyprus wine, Venetian rosada, lemon-flavored milk pudding; Nicolotta cake, made with stale bread softened in milk with eggs and raisins, whose name derives from what was once the pious poor quarter of Venice, are the most typical sweets of the lagoon city.

Among the wines, the excellent reds Cabernet and Merlot of Pramaggiore and the whites Tocai of Lison and Bianco di S. Donà.

Today, the most famous drink is Spritz, exported in all the world.