Venice for first-time visitors

Best restaurants

Venice does not do restaurants the way other Italian cities do. The kitchens that matter are wedged into ground floors of buildings older than most countries, addressed by four-digit sestiere numbers that mean nothing to satnav and everything to a postino, and they close on days that would look eccentric anywhere else. What follows is twelve places worth the walk — a mix of trattorie holding a regional line, an osteria off a busy calle, a pizzeria that has kept its ovens on for decades, and one or two rooms that lean toward the historic. They are grouped by neither cuisine nor sestiere but by the editor's ranked judgement, and the addresses are given as Venice gives them: a number, sometimes a street, sometimes just a postal code. Bring the number, ask for the calle, and expect the door to be smaller than the reputation.