> SlowTrav > Italy > Restaurants > Reviews > Veneto

Chioggia: Bella Venezia

51, calle Corona , Phone: 041.400.500

Closing day: Thursday

Reviewed by: Bill Thayer from IL, review #889

When: 2004

Best restaurant in 3 months in Italy. Excellent seafood (Chioggia is a fishing port) in beautiful surroundings. Small portions, so expensive. Good wine list.

Indoors rooms, but also a "garden" — a very pleasant red-walled courtyard with potted plants, vines, ficus and a flowering rhododendron.

First dinner: Antipasto: the cicchetteria chioggiotta, all fresh locally caught fish. A mix of shellfish, some of them recognizable, baccalá mantecato looking for all like a kind of tartar sauce, sarde in saor (some kind of salted fish with onions, tasting much like rollmops, but with raisins — excellent, A+), mussels, shrimp, polenta, something like crayfish, etc. All of it very good, an A. A second plate of antipasto: carpaccio of some unidentified fish with red peppercorns — a very good idea — and four raw shrimp: the whole plate good, but no more than a tablespoon of food. Primo: tortelli all rombo allo zafferano, another A. Secondo: grilled eel — at last here was a hunk of something I could sink my teeth in — a semi-disappointment, fatty on the inside and charred on the outside (I would have traded some of the char for grilling the inside and getting rid of the fat), C+ Dessert: tiramisú, B.

Second dinner the next day (why eat somewhere else if this was good?) 2 antipasti: shredded granseola (spider crab), mollecche (soft-shelled crabs) with polenta Secondo: risotto agli scampi al profumo di arancio: if they hadn't said anything about orange I'd have called it an A, but since I could taste no orange, it has to be a B+ instead.

Overall rating: A- Value for money: C

This review is the opinion of a Slow Travel member and not of slowtrav.com.

Restaurants/Cafes

Car Rental	Hotel Booking	Flight Booking	Train Tickets	Books, Maps, Events
Europe Cell Phones	Long Distance Cards	Luggage, etc.	Travel Insurance	Classifieds

* Advertise on Slow Travel | Post your travel questions on the Slow Travel Forums

Chioggia: Bella Venezia

Restaurants/Cafes

Restaurant Reviews

About Restaurants

About Cafes

Wine Notes

Restaurant Lists

Diana - Under €40 Crowd

Giuanin - Where the Locals Go