When in Venice, Eat Like a Venetian (Published 2019) (2024)

Each year, 20 million tourists visit Venice. The vast majority will pay too much for indifferent food eaten mostly in the company of other tourists. But there’s one way to eat great Venetian food that’s thrilling, filling and authentic. You’ll find it at a place where you’re almost certain to rub and bend elbows with locals. Visit a bacaro.

Like Spain’s tapas bars, the bacaro serves infinitely varied, kaleidoscopically colorful small plates at prices even a budget traveler can afford. What makes the Venetian version unique is that the menu changes not only seasonally (you’re in Italy after all), but day by day and hour by hour.

Venetians call these small plates cicchetti (pronounced “chi-KET-tee”) — said to derive from the Latin “ciccus,” meaning “little” or “nothing.” The term embraces a broad range of dishes: polpette (fried meatballs), crostini (small open-faced sandwiches), panini (small sandwiches on crusty rolls), tramezzini (triangular white bread sandwiches) — and a scintillating array of pickled, baked, stuffed or sauced seafoods and vegetables.

You find cicchetti at a bacaro (wine bar), but also at a botegòn, cantina, cicchetteria, enoteca and osteria — confused yet? And likely at your neighborhood bar. Depending on whom you ask, bacaro comes from the Venetian word for “wine” or “a good bar,” or even from the ancient Roman god of wine, Bacchus.

Venetians eat cicchetti at breakfast time, for lunch, dinner and a midnight snack — mostly with their fingers. It’s look-and-point food: no special mastery of Italian required. And you don’t need to wait to be seated to enjoy it. (That’s not even an option at some bacari.) Cicchetti are cheap, costing on average a couple of euros — or dollars, for that matter — apiece (a bit more for more substantial seafood or meat cicchetti). Six to eight make a meal, and the local wines served by the glass are affordable, too. There are few ways more delectable or fun to get to know La Serenissima than by embarking on a bar crawl. Here are some of my favorites.

Cantine del Vino già Schiavi