Ristorante Casa Cappellari — Restaurant in Venice

We entered this restaurant with very high hopes and expectations based on the decor, atmosphere and welcoming by the waiter. However was thoroughly disappointed by the service and quality of food once sat down.

All of this stems from the one dish of spaghetti verrigni al peperoncino.

When it arrived, it looked fabulous. But upon tasting it was a disgustingly salty inedible mess. We queried with the Filipino waitress whether this dish was supposed to taste like this, as we had never had such a strong salt flavour throughout our three weeks of Italy. She assured us this was correct and confirmed the chef's views on this also.

We ate a bit more, but it was unbearable. We queried a different waitress and asked her to get the chef to personally try it, as if the chef disagreed then so be it.

This time, the waitress confirmed that it was not supposed to taste like this. The reasoning for the the salty taste was due to the clams which were "extra salty" today. Nothing else was done with the dish and no apology was made to us.

But it begs the question, did the chef even taste their food before presenting it for service? How can you blame the natural produce you relied upon, without tinkering with the taste - that's the whole point of a chef's role, which they failed.

Having been fully gas lit by the first waitress, we just wanted to get out, but no one was able to serve us the bill or provide any water to dilute our taste buds from ingesting salt water for the past half hour.

I do note they did decrease the overall bill, by about 13 euros. Which didn't cover the entirety of the cost of the horrible dish. I think this discount covered the service and cover charge? But funnily enough there was horrible service so we didn't want to pay the charge anyway.

I wouldn't recommend this restaurant to anyone. A deceptively unprofessional and unreliable restaurant that does not hold responsibility for it's food and actions.

Plenty of other restaurants and eateries to try rather than having your tastebuds abused here.

Edit: The restaurant response has proven my point exactly. Zero responsibility from the chef and restaurant in their response, despite the verbal confirmation from the kitchen and waitress that the dish was abnormally salty and not how it is...

A charming newish space that is not on the map of obvious restaurant choices that was recommended to us by our hosts. The restaurant had more locals than tourists and, seems like, this type of restaurants end up being filled up past 8pm which can be good or bad depending on whether you like eating in a crowded space or not.

The food at first seems unnecessarily fancy and decorations excessive but then I was quite happy that the tastes are actually classic and very correct. Also, while the prices are quite high, portions tend to be very generous so you won’t feel overcharged.

The “angry red” pasta with squid and its ink was the only dish which I was not overly excited about. The pasta itself, peppery and spicy and perfectly al dente was beautiful, the squid nice and tender, but the ink sauce was super salty and excessive so that the nuance of the other tastes on the place was lost.

The fish soup was wonderful, with a light and shellfish dominated taste, all the seafood inside quite perfect and tasty. It’s a classic and make sure you don’t expect that the pieces of seafood are thrown in at the last minute, so they’ve certainly given some of their goodness away. Lovely indeed.

The local eel with fried artichokes and sweet potato purée was gorgeous. Impeccably cooked fillet, nicely chewy and slightly sweet as eel should be is beautifully accented by the crunchy and earthy artichoke and comforted by light and sweet purée which is a much better company to the fish than the often bluntly sweet teriyaki you get in a multitude of sushi places.

Very nice overall. Neither an old school Osteria nor a super fancy place. A good choice...

This meal turned out to be quite disappointing. To the start the service was just … strange. On the one hand we had an overly pushy first waiter and then the second was silent and wouldn’t even meet our eyes l - instead plopping the plates onto the table without a word a scurried away. We ordered the tomato gazpacho which was quite delicious and refreshing. However, the mains were quite poor. The catch of the day was cooked well and a generous portion but was quite bland. On the other hand, the lemon, mussel and clam pasta was just drenched in salt. Unbearable to eat. To me this just speaks volumes with how it was prepared and obviously was salted at every state of preparation, which as anyone who knows anything about cooking, shouldn’t be done with seafood! Especially clams! Once the waiter came over to ask if everything was ok I did politely say the pasta was inedible and I could not eat it. He offered to replace it, I declined quite a few times. We thought all was settled and I’d asked for the bill but to my surprise he brought out another plate of the same pasta for me agreeing that the other plate was indeed inedible. Feeling guilty (perhaps the language barrier got in the way, I took a few mouthfuls and couldn’t finish anymore. This time it was devoid of any flavour whatsoever. Promptly asked for the check (again) and to my surprise once the check came there was no removal of the pasta or complimentary anything. Save your money and go somewhere else, there’s plenty of better...