7 Best Restaurants in Venice… to Eat Like a Real Venetian!

Ciao beautiful people, welcome back on the road with us!

Today we will bring you back to one of our favourite Italian cities (and one of the most unique in the world too!): the gorgeous Venice!

Venice is a city that carries a long history on his shoulder, and during the centuries it gave birth to a massive amount of curious customs, traditions and cultural improvements that have been exported all over the world!

Few of the things born in Venice is the Italian word for greeting “ciao” for example (deriving from an old greeting “S’ciavo vostro” or “am I your servant”), but also the concept of “quarantine” (boats arriving to Venice where isolated for 40 days to dismiss the chance of bringing the plague), and then again the words “Ghetto” and “Arsenal”.

For goods and arts, Venice gave to the world the luxurious arts of Murano glass, the tradition of wearing masks during Carnival (which were used to erase social class differences!) and well… talking about art we cannot talk about Venetian food!

Yes, because Venetian food is an art of itself (we could also call it an “art within an art”, if you consider that Venice is in Italy, which already for food it is a masterpieces-making factory! 😉 ), and one the main reasons – in addition to the gorgeous canals – to travel for a couple of days to Venice! 🙂

As the story goes, for centuries the city of Venice ran its own trading empire between Europe and the East, and Venetian cooking still carries that legacy: spices, saltwater fish, and flavors from Byzantium and beyond, folded into dishes you won’t find anywhere else in Italy:)

In this article, we decided to focus exactly on this: 7 incredible Venetian eateries, from fine restaurants to pizzerias and street food, where it is possible to enjoy real Venetian food away from the -unfortunately- many tourist traps that took over the city in the most recent decades (to serve the over 20million people that visit the city every year by now!).

No matter what you’re into, with these 7 you will surely find what you need to stuff yourself to death and then go to paradise enjoy a memorable meal while visiting the Serenissima (this is a nickname of Venice, which means “the most serene city” 🙂 ).

Let’s dive right in! 😀

BEFORE WE START: if you’re still planning an complete Italian trip, be sure to check out our 40 essential Italy travel tips from an Italian and our 10-day Italy itinerary 🙂

Also, If you love collecting travel memories, Venice’s canals have their own spot on our Italy scratchmap, and for more curiosities about the city, don’t miss our Venice fun facts article too!:)

1. La Piazza:

Traditional Venetian Food,

Right by St Mark’s Square

Walk two minutes off Piazza San Marco, and you’ll spot the historical restaurant of La Piazza (in English “The Square”), before you even reach the door: tables spilling onto the street, waiters moving fast, and a dining room clearly built to handle a full house every night.

La Piazza holds a 4.6/5 rating on Tripadvisor across more than 3,400 reviews (not an easy score to keep up in a neighborhood frequented by so many different and variegated people)… but once you try it it’s easy to get the secret of its success: simplicity and tradition!

The restaurant is open non-stop from 11am to midnight (you can show up whenever hunger hits), and you will find a menu that is proper Venetian, without shortcuts: traditional risottos, hearty hand-made pasta, fresh Adriatic seafood and meat mains, plus wood-fired pizzas and gluten-free or vegan options if you’re travelling with someone who needs them!

Worth ordering in our opinion?

The Spaghettoni alle Vongole (thick spaghetti with clams), a Shrimp Purple Risotto with Burrata that is a Venetian Classic which became something of a signature dish here, and the royal seafood platter if you want to go all in 😉

As for prices, if you order whole fish, expect it priced by weight, quoted to you at the table before it is cooked (standard practice in Venice, but worth knowing so the final bill doesn’t surprise you).

Overall, expect to spend upwards of €50 per person for a full seafood dinner with wine, less if you stick to pasta or pizza.

Last but not least, expect a lively atmosphere: this first place on the list is not a quiet romantic dinner spot, but a proper “Venetian trattoria” doing big volume well.

Notice: Reservations are recommended, especially for dinner, since the location alone (two minutes from the Basilica) means it fills up fast with locals frequenting this place well, and travellers who just wandered in off the square 🙂

2. Antico Forno:

Cheap and GOOD Pizza by the Slice at Rialto

Looking for something cheap, fast and memorably tasty?

Then look no further!

In Italy, finding a good pizza is easy. But still, among the good ones, there are also the DAMN MEMORABLE ones, and here you can find one of those!

By taking a simple five-minute walk from the Rialto Bridge, Antico Forno is the pizzeria locals actually queue at!

While pizza isn’t originally Venetian at all (it is from Naples!), it arrived here through migration from southern Italy, and this place has been perfecting its own version since 2001!

The Antico Forno is a stand-up, grab-and-go kind of place, not a sit-down restaurant: you walk up to the counter, point at whichever tray looks best, and get your slice weighed and cut on the spot.

There’s barely room for ten people to stand inside, so most people end up eating on the move.

The base of the pizza you’ll find here is thick and “focaccia-style”, baked all day long in a wood-fired oven (which means there is almost always something coming out warm no matter when you show up – the turnover is also pretty high, given how popular is this tiny place!).

Toppings rotate with what’s fresh, but the classics stay on the counter: Margherita, Prosciutto Crudo (raw ham), and a handful of creative combinations that change through the day:)

Prices sit around €2.50 to €5 a slice depending on the topping and how big a piece you point at, genuinely cheap by Venice standards.

Last but not least, alongside the pizza, they also pour craft beer, wine, and soft drinks if you want to turn a slice into a proper little lunch break 😉

Definitely to check out!

3. Antica Locanda Montin:

A Historic Inn in Dorsoduro

Tucked away on a quiet canal in Dorsoduro, the Antica Locanda Montin is exactly what its name promises: a historic “locanda” (an Inn – in English) that has been feeding (and housing) travelers since the 1800s, once a haunt of writers and artists passing through the city.

It’s still family-run today, by two cousins: Luca and Giorgio Carrettin.

The kitchen also here, sticks to proper Venetian classics rather than chasing trends: mussels alla veneziana, a baccalà (salt cod) spread served with polenta, hand-made tortellini with arugula and tomato sauce, and the dish this place is genuinely known for, “fegato alla veneziana” (liver and onions), which regulars specifically come back for.

Prices here run around €15-20 for starters, €10-20 for a first course, €20-30 for a second, and €5-8 for dessert, so a full sit-down meal with wine lands in a pretty normal range for Venice: not a bargain, not a splurge!

The real reason to make the trip out here is the garden out back: a genuinely spacious courtyard by Venetian standards, strung with lights and about as far removed from the crowds around St Mark’s as you can get while still staying in the historic centre 🙂

4. La Piazza ZONE:

Modern Fine Dining on the Square

Remember La Piazza which we saw on top of this list?

Here we find it again: same family and historical Venetian tradition, but completely different vibe!

La Piazza ZONE is an elegant and modern restaurant run by Chef Marco Ferrari, offering Venetian dishes revisited using contemporary cooking techniques!

The ambience here is part of the experience: sculpted lighting, warm wood, and a dining room that feels closer to a design hotel than a restaurant!

And then of course, the main reason to come here is the kitchen!

Curated caviar selections, fresh salmon tartares, oysters plates, langostines, prawns, lobsters, Venetian risottos with cuttlefish ink, mussles, octopus tentacles and the classic “sarde en saor”… if you have the itch for something special, this might be the place to go! 🙂

Here portions are more composed than what you’d get in a classic osteria, so consider that to be full full, we would recommend to take the full journey from antipasti, to primo, secondo and dessert 🙂

Personally, I would say that La Piazza ZONE is a place that might work well as the “treat yourself” stop on this list: somewhere to book on your last night in Venice, or after a long day of museums, when you want to dedicate a GOOD amount of time to actually stop, and enjoy the fine Venetian cuisine without having to hurry to do something after!

Reservations matter more here than at most places on this list! This isn’t a walk-in-and-wait kind of restaurant, especially during high season. Be smart to book ahead, especially for dinner, it’s worth it 🙂

5. Dal Moro’s Fresh Pasta To Go:

Pasta Street Food…daaaaamn!

A few steps from St Mark’s Basilica, Dal Moro’s turned fresh pasta into proper street food.

This is something you rarely see even in Italy.

We normally eat pasta at home, or at the restaurant, sitting you know…

But this place, transformed the experience!

Here you don’t sit, you queue outside (queues can be very long, at least the last time I’ve been there!) until it’s your turn.

Then, you enter in the tiny shop and – marvel, marvel – you’ll witness the stunning world of Italian pasta, on steroids!

As if you were in a kebab shop or at a Subway, you are asked to pick the shape of your pasta, then pick your sauce, and then all you need to do is to watch it get tossed together right in front of you, before it is handed over in a paper cup within a couple of minutes!

The classics of course are all there: carbonara, a rich ragù, pesto, and a few vegetarian options, plus the chance to add extra toppings like olives, bacon, mushrooms, chicken sausage or mozzarella for a little more.

But as an Italian, I have to say that there are many pastas which are very unusual: the tartufata (with truffle), the Venetian (with garlic and shrimps) or the vegan “alioli” to name a few.

Prices for the pasta-to-go format run roughly €5 to €7.50, which for a full, hot, freshly-made meal eaten while walking around Venice is genuinely one of the better deals in the city!

All in all: no table, no menu to decode, no service charge – easy, fast and tasty! Pretty cool to watch how they cook so many types of pasta at the same time too! 🙂

6. Ca’ D’Oro alla Vedova :

Cicchetti and Ombra Like a True Bacaro

A “bacaro” is like a tapas bar serving drinks and little foods, but Venetian style 🙂

At the Ca’ d’Oro stop on the Grand Canal, you can find this tiny bacaro called “Alla Vedova” which is one of the last places in Venice still doing things the old way: cicchetti (Italian wine cups) lined up on the counter, and a glass of “ombra” (house wine) poured for a couple of euros while you decide what to eat.

The “cicchetti” (as we Italians call them!) here start from around €2 each, and the counter usually has sarde in saor, baccalà, and sépe roste (grilled cuttlefish) alongside the dish everyone actually comes for… the polpette!!

The polpette of this tiny place (fried meatballs) are surprisingly a Michelin-recommended, and have been written up by dozens of food critics (so yes, they’re worth fighting the crowd at the counter for xD).

If you want to sit down for a full meal instead of grazing at the counter, expect to spend around €20 to €30 per person (still very reasonable for central Venice).

Reservations are essentially mandatory for dinner, this bacaro is tiny and the regulars know it well, so tables disappear fast.

For lunch, or an early aperitivo around 5-6pm, you’ve got a better shot at just walking in 😉

7. Osteria alle Testiere:

Venice’s Best-Kept Seafood Secret,

for a splurge dinner!

We’re closing the list with the hardest reservation on it, and for good reason.

Osteria alle Testiere is a very tiny restaurant that has been open since 1997, and it seats just 20 people total.

The menu here is short, handwritten, and changes daily depending on what the boats bring back from the Rialto Market that morning.

Expect razor clams, local oysters, grilled octopus, grilled shrimp, and their signature linguine alle vongole, all built around whatever the market actually had that day rather than a fixed printed menu designed to look impressive…

Some of the vegetables even come from the restaurant’s own garden on the island of Sant’Erasmo, Venice’s own market garden out in the lagoon!

The place is cool, but it isn’t a budget stop: lunch alone runs €80 to €90 per person, oysters go for around €30, and a swordfish tartare can hit €28. Add a bottle of wine (€30 to €50) and you’re looking at a proper splurge meal, not a quick bite.

With a 4.4/5 rating on Tripadvisor and a Michelin recommendation, to access this restaurant you will need to email ahead, sometimes months in advance, to actually get one of those 20 seats (but if you’re in for a more “private” and “boutique” experience of Venice cuisine, this might be the fine dining place you are looking for!) 🙂

Conclusion

And here we come at the end of this delicious list! (my stomach is genuinely rumbling by now ahah)

Today we’ve seen restaurants of any kind, from traditional trattorias, to modern fine-dining table, cheap and excellent street food, pizzerias and more…all offering authentic and tasty Venetian cuisine!

Venice’s food story of course doesn’t stop here: every “sestiere” has its own bacari and family-run kitchens still waiting to be discovered (and also many many tourist traps xD); said that, we hope that our list will help you to navigate the sea of dining opportunities and bring you to taste something truly Venetian and remarkable 🙂

Before going, I would like to ask you: