The Venice Restaurant Where the Gondoliers Still Eat

There are two types of restaurants in Venice.

There are the ones designed for tourists, where the menu has been translated into six languages, the waiter has the emotional warmth of an airport security officer, and somewhere in the kitchen a frozen pizza is being quietly defrosted.

And then there are places where actual Venetians still eat.

These are considerably harder to find.

Venice has become so spectacularly overwhelmed by visitors that finding a restaurant genuinely used by locals can feel like finding a functioning parking space in central London. You know it must exist. You just don't know where.

But a short walk from Piazza San Marco, hidden beneath a bridge, is Trattoria La Rivetta.

And this is not some newly invented "authentic Venetian experience" created last Tuesday by a marketing consultant.

It has been here since 1973.

More importantly, it has been serving gondoliers for generations.

Now, if a gondolier chooses to eat somewhere, I tend to take notice. These are people who spend their working lives navigating Venice's canals while tourists shout "Ciao!" at them every eleven seconds. They don't have time for nonsense.

La Rivetta was founded by Lino, known as "el Peoco", and is now run by his family, with the third generation involved. So this is not a restaurant pretending to have history. It has actually survived long enough to acquire some.

And you can see it.

The interior isn't trying to win a design award. There are wooden walls, old-fashioned light fittings, straw chairs and the sort of ceiling fans that appear to be fighting a losing battle against the Venetian summer.

There is a white tablecloth, straightforward service and none of the polished theatrical nonsense that has infected so many fashionable restaurants.

Then you notice the clientele.

Tourists, yes. But the interesting ones.

And gondoliers.

They sit there in their striped shirts, talking loudly, laughing and behaving like people who have come to eat rather than photograph their food.

This is generally a very good sign.

Then the food arrives.

And this is where La Rivetta stops being merely an interesting old restaurant and becomes something rather more important.

The menu reads like a greatest-hits album of Venetian cooking.

Baccalà mantecato.

Sarde in saor.

Black cuttlefish with pasta.

Venetian-style liver.

Fried prawns and squid.

Fish pasticcio.

And, depending on the market, whatever else the kitchen has managed to get its hands on.

The sarde in saor arrive dressed up considerably more elegantly than you might expect. This is essentially sardines with onions marinated in vinegar, which sounds simple until you realise that Venetian cooking has spent centuries perfecting the art of making simple things considerably more interesting.

Then there are the moeche — soft-shell crabs — fried and served with sauce and asparagus.

And this is where things get slightly ridiculous.

Because you are sitting in Venice, surrounded by buildings that look as though they were designed by someone with an unhealthy obsession with marble, eating a soft-shell crab that has been deep-fried.

Life, occasionally, gets things exactly right.

The black cuttlefish is classic Venetian fare, dark, salty and gloriously unapologetic.

The fried seafood is another highlight. Properly fried fish should be crisp, light and not leave you feeling as though you have swallowed a bucket of cooking oil.

La Rivetta apparently understands this.

And then there is the eternal restaurant test.

The bill.

The meal described came to around €65 per person, although note that ordering more moderately could bring it closer to €50. 

For Venice, particularly somewhere this close to San Marco, that isn't outrageous.

In fact, it may be one of those increasingly rare situations where you can spend money in the centre of Venice and feel that you have actually bought something rather than merely paid a tourism tax.

La Rivetta isn't perfect.

It doesn't need to be.

It doesn't have to pretend that every plate is a work of conceptual art. It doesn't need a chef standing beside your table explaining why a pea has been placed at precisely 37 degrees from a piece of cod.

It is a trattoria.

It has been there since 1973.

The family is still running it.

The gondoliers are still eating there.

And the food is still recognisably Venetian.

Which, in a city increasingly built around the business of selling Venice to people who have come to see Venice, is actually quite refreshing.

So if you find yourself in Venice, wandering around Piazza San Marco while being slowly crushed by several thousand other tourists, walk away from the obvious places.

Find the bridge.

Find the little entrance.

And look for La Rivetta.

Because if the gondoliers are still eating there, there's probably a reason.

And frankly, I'd trust a gondolier's lunch choice before I trusted a man carrying a selfie stick and wearing a fedora.