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| Cannaregio by day is proof that summer in Venice doesn't have to be packed with tourists! |
Venice gets this bad rap for their food, which is confusing
to me. Am I the only person who wants to turn and run, shrieking, from any
place that puts a fat, greasy laminated menu bearing the flag of a different
nation on each page on a little stand in front of their restaurants when
instead you can make a dinner (or lunch) of fierce 1€ snacks and 1.50€ mini
glasses of wine? “A MEAL MADE OF DELICIOUS SNACKS?!” you may exclaim with excitement,
and I will just sit here nodding and wearing a smug smile.
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| *sigh* |
If you google “Venice Pub Crawl,” you will come up with all
sorts of lists of bacari, these tiny little places where you stand at a counter
and eat cheese or fish or meat or veggies on toast. Most of them serve wine
and/or spritzes, at which, let’s be real, I do not thumb my nose. But on my
most recent trip, my husband and I stumbled on a couple of awesome beer bars
that are within easy walking distance of each other in Cannaregio, and had a
magical, delicious pub crawl for less than the cost of a bowl of bad spaghetti
in the tourist hub of town.
But before we get to beer, an old school Venetian wine joint.
Al Timon is a restaurant that apparently serves a huge steak, if you’re into
that sort of thing. I am a vegetarian and there were no tables for dinner, so we
shouted our order for two spritzes to the bartender and ordered a plate of assorted
cicchetti. I speak zero Italian, but cicchetti is great for that, as it’s
usually displayed in a glass case like you might see at a bakery. Excellent for
pointing and nodding. We took our plates outside to the flat boat anchored in
the canal as a sort of floating patio. It was packed with hip young Venetians
and the burrata was excellent. Also, I looked up reviews on Yelp, and everyone
loves Al Timon except for this character named Bob B. Bob reports, “Avoid. This
is mostly a loud, local hangout. Lots of general drunkenness.” To me that
sounds like the highest recommendation you can give to a bar. I may have to organize
a tour of Bob B.’s other one star Yelp reviews.
Literal inches down the canal from Al Timon is a place with
no sign that is known as Da Aldo, which we had noticed earlier in the day
because of its dusty window full of interesting international bottles. It doesn’t
seem to open until after dark, but when the chain-smoking proprietor eventually
threw open the door and walk-up window, we rifled through the several packed
bottle fridges in the back and came up with a few interesting Italian offerings—a
decent IPA called Benaco 70 and an imperfect saison with a great name:
Violent Femme. We drank them sitting on a bridge over a canal, watching the
painterly lights cast on the water and listening to the music from Al Timon (I
told you they’re neighbors!)
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| Canals in deep summertime darkness |
A straight shot six minute walk from Al Aldo, Il Santo
Bevitore was our great triumph, and is my fave bar in Venice. We stumbled upon
it by day and then remembered how to find it again at night, an accomplishment
I believe merits some sort of academic honor.
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| Borrowed this photo from the Il Santo Bevitore website! |
Il Santo Bevitore has 20 taps, a bunch of bottles, excellent
ciccetti, and a canal-side terrace with tables and umbrellas. As we sat there,
a group of 20 somethings pulled up in their boat, tied it up, hopped out for a
beer, and then jumped back over the wall and sped away into the night. The
nights are so dark in Venice that this all looked like it had been painted on
velvet. They were the coolest people I have ever seen and every fiber of my
being was jealous of them. Bob B. would definitely hate Il Santo Bevitore.
Ps. There is apparently also a fancy restaurant called Il
Santo Bevitore, and while it is also supposed to be good, it is definitively not
what I am talking about here. Sorry, fancy restaurant.
Here's a map of the route!
Do you have beer recommendations for Venice? Am I missing anything?
Let me know in the comments!
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