Work through the list in order. Hide the notes when you know what to do.
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Do a bàcaro crawl for cicchetti
Small snacks on the counter of a wine bar: bread with cod purée, octopus skewers, meatballs, fried vegetables. You take one or two, drink a glass and move on.
A glass of wine is called an ombra, a shadow, from the habit of drinking in the shade of the campanile. You settle at the end by saying what you had.
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Try sarde in saor
Fried sardines marinated in vinegar with slow-cooked onion, raisins and pine nuts. A sailors' preservation method that became the city's signature dish.
After a day or two it improves markedly; freshly made it is sharper. The raisins and pine nuts are a trace of Venice's eastern trade.
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Try baccalà mantecato
Dried cod, soaked and whipped with olive oil into a pale, airy cream. Spread on white polenta or bread and eaten as a cicchetto.
It uses air-dried stockfish rather than salt cod, despite what the name suggests. A proper version contains no cream and no potato.
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Try squid ink risotto
Risotto coloured coal-black by cuttlefish ink, with pieces of the cuttlefish itself. The flavour is marine and deep rather than fishy.
The risotto should spread in a wave rather than sit in a mound. The same sauce goes with spaghetti, and then it is spaghetti al nero.
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Try risi e bisi
Rice with young peas, thicker than a soup and looser than a risotto, with parmesan and pancetta. A spring dish once served to the doge on Saint Mark's day.
The season is April and May, when the peas are young. The pods go into the stock rather than the bin; that is where the flavour comes from.
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Try fegato alla veneziana
Calf's liver flash-fried with a great deal of slow-cooked onion and a splash of vinegar, served with white polenta. There is more onion by weight than liver.
The liver should stay pink inside; overcooked it goes grainy. White polenta is the Venetian kind; the yellow one is used less here.
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Try moeche in season
Soft-shell lagoon crabs caught during the brief moult, fried whole in batter and eaten shell and all. The season lasts a few weeks in spring and again in autumn.
Out of season there are no moeche; offered in July they are frozen. The price is high and justified: they are caught by hand for a short window.
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Get fritto misto
Squid, prawns and small fish in a light batter, served in a paper cone to take away or on a plate. The street version is fried at canal-side stands.
Eat it immediately and hot; after five minutes the batter stops crackling. You squeeze the lemon yourself, and no sauce comes with it.
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Try bigoli in salsa
Thick rough-textured bigoli pasta with a sauce of slow-cooked onion and anchovies dissolved into oil. A lenten dish, invented for days of abstinence.
There are three ingredients, and everything depends on how long the onion was cooked. No cheese is served with it; fish and cheese are not mixed here.
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Try polenta
Cornmeal porridge, white in the Venetian tradition, served soft under fish or set, sliced and grilled under cicchetti. It stands in for both bread and a side.
The classic pairing is polenta e schie, with tiny grey lagoon shrimp. White polenta is softer and less sweet than yellow.
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Try tiramisù Desserts and pastries
Savoiardi soaked in coffee under a mascarpone cream dusted with cocoa. It comes from nearby Treviso, and the Veneto classic uses neither cream nor alcohol.
A real tiramisù is soft and does not hold a neat slice. It is spooned from the dish rather than plated as a rectangle.
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Try frittelle at carnival Desserts and pastries
Fried dough balls with raisins and citrus zest, or filled with custard, which appear only in the carnival season from January to February.
The classic Venetian version has raisins and pine nuts and no filling. Its seasonal neighbour is galani, crisp ribbons of pastry in icing sugar.
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Try Burano biscuits Desserts and pastries
Dense butter biscuits shaped as a ring or an S from the island of Burano, dipped in sweet wine. They keep for weeks and travel well.
They are dipped in fragolino wine or zabaione; on their own they are deliberately dry. Sold by weight in Burano bakeries and in the city.
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Drink a spritz Local alcohol
White wine with soda and a bitter liqueur: Aperol is sweeter, Campari and Select are more bitter. The Venetian aperitivo, drunk from six in the evening standing outside.
Locals more often take Select, the Venetian bitter, rather than Aperol. An olive comes with it, and sometimes a cicchetto.
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Drink an ombra from the barrel Local alcohol
A small glass of local wine poured from the barrel in a bàcaro. Cheap, everyday and designed to be drunk between cicchetti.
Ask for un'ombra de rosso or de bianco and that is enough. Barrel wine is called sfuso and is always local.
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Try regional prosecco Local alcohol
Sparkling wine from the Valdobbiadene hills north of Venice, dry and floral. A bàcaro pours it by the glass at the price of an ordinary white.
Brut is drier and extra dry slightly sweeter, contrary to what the names suggest. The prosecco on tap in a bàcaro is usually local and far better than a supermarket bottle.
