Muro San Stae — Restaurant in Venice

It is hard to just think about writing the review for this establishment as I had to relive the nightmare experience all over again. But I felt obligated to warn others of what could happen here. Wish Google would allow zero to negative stars rating... We visited this restaurant around 4:00PM on 6/25/2023( Not a rush hour but not many dining options for us at the time due to majority of restaurants are closed 3:30~7:30 in Venice or elsewhere in Italy...) While plenty of seats available outdoor, the waiter took us inside claiming those outdoor seats are reserved for the evening party group. That should be the early sign of the level of service we are about to receive and MORE serious hazards to come. Pizzas, seafood risotto and 3 lasagnas were ordered by our group of 7 plus a takeout order. When food arrived, the most disappointing items are the lasagnas. Soggy and pale with hardly much flavors in them contrary to waiter's claim, duh. I asked if we could get some tomato sauce to add to the lasagna, the same waiter said flatly "No!" Finally, we asked for red crushed pepper after he mistakenly brought whole clove black peppers. We noticed that the red pepper delivered to us was a little finer than the typical red peppers you would see in other places. After the first few bites into the food sprinkled with it, we quickly realized that this pepper is quite different -- way spicier than we've tried before which says a lot since we ALL are, to various degrees, experienced spicy foodies. We picked up the square glass jar and shocked to read the "Carolina Pepper" label on the jar. While I did hear about Carolina pepper's name being thrown around a few times throughout the years during spicy food conversations with acquaintances back home in U.S., I have never tried it. We quickly stopped ingesting more of this nasty stuff; alas, it's a bit too late as it started working it's way into our system just about 10 minutes later. while we were still waiting for takeout being ready. My niece in her 20s needed to run back to the apartment ASAP to nurse her stomach pain. Soon after, it hit me; when it did, it immobilized me with numbing fingers and palms, agonizing stomach pain and profuse sweating on my upper body. My family told me how helplessly they all felt watching me going through this. While all this is happening, the other wait staff ( not the perpetrating waiter ) were coming nearby and commenting "If it is spicy, why did she kept on eating it?", "She asked for the most hot spicy pepper!" Sadly, neither is true. When I finally recover from this ordeal enough to reject those unsubstantiated accusations made against us, one of the waiters brought a tin-can pepper jar telling us that they DO have what we asked for in the first place. When we questioned why the waiter brought the pepper in question, he could not respond other than reiterating falsehood mentioned above. To us, that pretty much explained how intentional the action of the perpetrating server was.

Fortunately, whatever ill intentions that particular waiter harboured against us ( other than possibly the fact that we are Asians which we can't help ) it did not kill me, although, I shall admit at the height of all that agony, I DID imagine all sorts of unfortunate outcomes that might have happened including death since I had never encounter that kind of pain before in my 63 years of life. Sidenote: I did Google this pepper and found out that the adverse reactions include stroke and even death in rare occassion; so I should count myself quite lucky in the face of prejudicial harm inflicted by this establishment.

No paying visitor should EVER deserve this kind of...

Fresh and friendly place to have a meal here. We all knew there’s a lot of tourist trap restaurants in Venice, I guess some of travelers are just like us, read reviews and asked locals for picking the best restaurants.

Fortunately, we found Muro San Stae for first evening. Ordered Mussels with tomato sauce and toasted bread, it tasted really nice, mussels were very fresh, could even tasted the sweetness of tomatoes. And Spaghettoni with squid in black ink sauce is one of the best I’ve ever had, incredibly rich sauce (not too salty and heavy). * The dessert called “ mojito sorbet, it’s magnificent, just melted in my mouth.

At the second day evening, the restaurant we supposed to go didn’t open, and our plan B restaurant’s food didn’t look that good (went there and saw what people ate), so we went Muro again 😂 this time we had grilled vegetables, seafood risotto and Formaggi.

Vegetables were small portions, but flavor was good.

Seafood risotto it’s so flavorful, rice wasn’t not too soft or hard, mixed very well with garlic, cheese and seafood sauce,properly cooked and seasoned! One of the problem of risotto was kinda small portion, it’s not so much, that’s why we did ordered pizza after risotto haha.

If you like creamy and cheesey taste, highly recommended Pizza fromaggi.

Overall every dishes we ordered was delicious, not too oily and salty, btw waiters and waitresses here were so friendly, hope we could visit...

Venice is a tale of two cities, and two pizzas.

During the night, the mysterious, narrow corridors of the City of Masks reveal cozy pizzerias where small batches of all-star pizza are baked and served a la cheap.

During the day, come to Muro San Stae.

A refreshing bruschetta bursts with dedication to the simplicity of good ingredients. The tomato explodes in your mouth and the lightly toasted bread crunches and cracks, introducing calculated hints of olive oil. Zen!

The host here may be either the mussels or the bombastic bowls of pasta, but the stupefying variety of expertly-crafted pizza stands out as the guest of honor. Our San Danielle was crispy, gooey and perfectly baked, with just the right amount of tomato sauce and cheese. Bits of burnt crust complemented an almost neurotic attention to detail, in cleverly proportioned slices. I’m picky about my pizzas. I will judge future slices by what I’ve experienced today.

Finish your meal with a Sgroppino con gelato al limone if you’re over the legal drinking age. Or if you’re not; nobody’s asking.

Phenomenal attention to quality here, with memories...