Osteria Da nico — Restaurant in Venice

Stay away. On a five day trip to Venice I was finding out good Venetian food at a reasonable price was the exception to the otherwise long stretches of painfully expensive and exceedingly mediocre food, generally aimed at tourists in search of "authentic Italian", i.e. pizza, lasagna, pasta in various tomato sauces. Now with a little bit of research of what types of food are considered native to Venice, one can quickly surmise you should avoid all of those things in Venice. As the locals will recommend stick to the tapas-style ciccete, seafood and ink pastas. Thats what the locals eat. Despite my best efforts to avoid the subpar tourist traps that abound in Venice, I ran into a few. A dwindling local population makes it hard to get a good recommendation for a local spot and many trip advisor reviews and "best of Venice" led me to places that were mediocre at best and left me feeling extremely unsatisfied. That is until I dined at Osteria Da Nico. The day of my dinner at Osteria Da Nico, I participated in a free walking tour of Venice led by a local resident who expects nothing more than a non compulsory donation (excellent tour btw, I highly recommend the free Venice walking tour). She warned us about the tourist trap restaurants as she urged us to consider sustainable tourism. As she was mentioning things, I thought I had already dealt with the worst of the traps in one or two of my more unsatisfying meals. For example, she had suggested a spritz ( a tasty, refreshing local drink made with prosecco, campari/aperol, and a dash of club soda) should cost no more then 3.50 euros. I had paid that price exactly in a previous meal and felt like a chump, but such is life right? You live and you learn. Wrong, Osteria da Nico had yet to show me the side of Venice no one should ever have to experience. I had taken a recommendation to eat at 6342 A La Tole (literally doors down from Osteria da Nico) which required a reservation. We had none, so we wrote our name down for 1.5 hours later. What to do for that period of time? My friend and I decided to just get a spritz and hang out at this nearby tourist trap , but how bad could it be? I could handle paying a few euros for a drink +cover charge to sit and hang out in the beautiful campo until our reservation came up. Since we were just trying to kill some time, I didnt bother to check tripadvisor. I expected to be in and out for 5 euros a piece with no expectations of a scintillating Venetian dining experience. The waiter seated us and asked if we were doing dinner, and we said, "No, just drinks." He grimaced and shook his head disapprovingly. I quickly looked over the menu and saw a 13 euro Caprese salad. I regrettably ordered this to quell his concern. The menu had the food prices listed, which were pricey but it was in line with the average trap places we knew to avoid, so we thought of it as a tourist tax and decided to split the cost of the salad and just move on. Then the salad came with 5 slices of tomatoes, which if you do some quick calculation is 2.20 per slice of tomato. The salad was of decent quality, but that did nothing to appease the feeling that these tomatoes must be watered with the Pope's tears to warrant that price. But like I said I knew the price of the salad and expected nothing more from it. Then finally the bill came. We were charged 14 Euros for 2 spritz drinks, the equivalent of highway robbery. We were charged twice the price suggested as the maximum one should ever pay for a spritz in Venice. 14 euros for the drinks + 13 euros for 5 tomato slices + 4 euros cover charge ( 2 each) = 31 euros to kill about an hour. We decided to split the bill on our credit cards so we wouldn't have to face the music until later. Until the waiter decided we couldn't. Apparently , each card had to reach a minimum 25 euro limit before a bill could be split. At this point, we just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. We charged it on one card and quickly headed 50 meters down the block to our reservation...

I decided to give the place a chance despite the other reviews and I’m definitely glad I did. I observed many locals eating here and that’s usually a good indication of a quality joint.

First and foremost: you eat at a restaurant for its food, and the food was great. I had some spaghetti and a pizza. My wife had a smoked salmon fettuccine dish. All were fantastic. We also had bruschetta and a soufflé and again, fantastic. The taste was great. The quality was awesome. And the ingredients were very fresh.

Second, the service. I felt well taken care of. Since this seemed to be a critique of other reviewers, I really tried to pay attention. There were 5 waiters looking after 16 tables. That’s a great ratio in my book. Wait times and attentiveness were classic Italian restaurant times where they give you your food and let you eat, checking in with you after they see you’re done eating and had a chance to enjoy your meal. Again, typical Italian and not outside the norm in any regard. If you’re reading this review in English, I assume you’re visiting Venice as a tourist and need to keep in mind you’re visiting Italy for the Italian experience. This means you should be okay with a waiter not checking on you every 5 minutes. On a separate but related note, I should add they had the Brazil Switzerland World Cup game on the big screen and were thus pretty busy. And I still felt the service was dandy and I was well taken care of.

Third, prices. I felt they were very much in line with other Italian restaurants in the area. As far as the 12% service charge, it was less than other restaurants I’ve personally dined at in Venice. It isn’t out of the ordinary.

Overall impression: 5/5, would eat there again with...

To be fair, in Italy, pasta is supposed to be “undercooked” to US tourists, because in the US pasta is cooked in a way that is too soft. We went here despite the bad reviews because we were lost in Venice, the two other restaurants nearby that we wanted to try is completely booked. Everyone was hungry to the point that all we wanted was just food.

The reason for me to give a four star rating is the fried sea food dish. I can tell that the seafood was very fresh, they tasted very nice. Although the white paste (on the top left corner of the posted photo), is strangely salty and plain. The restaurant is supposed to serve homemade pasta, but I am not impressed with the two pasta dish ordered. However, my wife liked them, and they are much better than paste from another restaurant (with good reviews) we tried.

Service is a little slow but friendly.

Another note: we did not spend long enough in Venice to find good local restaurants. Maybe next time. I might be wrong, but locals may not really want tourists be around as I can see graffiti on the walls saying “too...