Having fun (i.e. sharing food with new friends) in Venice

We are really having a bloody good time in this crazy place.

It is sunny and hot in the daytime, and dark and hot at night.
We have made some new and wonderful friends.
It's totally fun, and pretty damn delicious.


(We are coping well with the heat due to the fact that we can retreat every night to our lovely cool air conditioned apartment, and sleep soundly. Away from the air con it's all very very sweaty.)


First, of course, there was saying goodbye at the farm. On out last night Pino, the real estate agent living in the room upstairs from ours, brought us delicious presents. He was all dressed up for his weekly tango class, hair freshly blow dried (I'm really sorry I didn't get a pic of him), and he came out with a bottle of prosecco and a jar of those anchovies wrapped around capers that I never really knew what to do with before. Well, Pino tells us, as he loves to do. 'The perfect combination', he exclaims, pop a wrapped up salty-fishy-vinigarey bundle in your mouth, a few chews, then wash it down with a glug of prosecco. And so we do, a few first with Pino before he rushes off in a cloud of aftershave, and then the rest alone, when we should be packing but it's really too nice just sitting one last evening out on the veranda.

Finn savours the salty delights of anchovy wrapped capers.

Osloo, the floating pavilion-offshoot out at San Servalo was totally fun, before Finn pulled it down. It was a bar / radio station / public space installed by FOS, one of the Danish artists.  But it came to an end at the beginning of the month, that was as long as it was scheduled to run, sadly. Except that it meant Finn got a few days work helping Thomas to dismantle it, that was good. Maybe you've seen this first pic already, maybe not.

Biennale buddies.
Actually, all we ate on this night were potato chips and peanuts. But it was fun!

Finn and Svetislava eating mozzarella and giant green olives.
(Finn managed to inherit this table and the bench they're sitting on, so we can recreate
the scene outside our place on the edge of the canal.)

One of the views from Osloo.

Helga, the organising force behind the whole Danish show, was around during the opening but way too busy to get to spend much time with. She is lovely though, and when she came back for T. Killper's workshop at the end of June, she took me out for an amazing lunch. 'We both deserve it', apparently. Well I wasn't going to argue, that's for certain.
Hostaria da Franz is a fairly posh establishment, specialising in traditional Venetian cuisine. We had Sarde in Saor, Baccala Mantecato, and Risotto al Nero di Seppia. And mirtillo panacotta to finish. Very delicious.

Hopefully we'll get to enjoy a wintery version of this scene when Helga
returns to Venice in November for the end of the show.

A wee while back we partook in the local festivities at San Pietro, the first of what we have been promised will be a steady stream of sagra celebrated throughout Venice. (Apparently each area has their own saint, and the community comes together - with the excuse of celebrating that saint - for a summer festival lasting a few days and involving much food and drink, music, games, and general merriment.) We were there for the last night and it was really nice. When we arrived after work, there were children playing a piñata-type game in which a rope holding a number of terracotta pots had been strung between two trees. Blindfolded children (wearing hardhats) took turns swinging a broomstick at the pots until one smashed and a prize fell out. It really set the tone of the whole event, not the smashing, but in the low-key, organised-by-someone-down-the-road sense.
The bar served €3 litre wine as well as patate fritte and quesadilla-type things with brie and spec. Finn opted for the meat plate from the enormous bbq stand - a selection of barbecued meats with a couple of slices of grilled polenta on the side for good measure. Happy man.
Entertainment for the evening was provided by some Italian pop star cover band.
For a busy festival in this strange tourist-filled city, it really felt amazingly community based and oriented. An unexpected sense of community spirit for what the rest of the time feels like a city without much of a local population, certainly not a community, more like a few standoffish oldies determined not to budge. Maybe that's a bit extreme, but we were impressed all the same.



A couple of weeks ago we made an unexpected acquaintance. A friendly guy from NZ came by the pavilion and we got talking, neither of us knowing the other from a bar of soap (his name was Jon, he was from Auckland). Later that evening we got drinking and eating and eventually made all the NZ connections. Friends in common, etc. This was all at Osteria al Ponte, over the bridge from Ospedale. They put on a fine selection of fishy cicchetti for us - mussels, sea snails to be extracted with toothpicks, chargrilled fish fillets, scampi, shrimps, and masses of delicate white anchovies. At some stage the pennies dropped and I remembered he had stayed a night or two at our Rintoul abode when A&M had been house sitting for us before setting off for LA. Hilarious small world stuff. (Also slightly embarrassing.)
Anyway, he was really nice, and a total foodie. So the next evening he arranged for us to have a meal, together with Elizabeth from the NZ pavilion, at a lovely little place over Accademia way,  Enoteca Ai Artisti.
Funny that it took a chance encounter on the other side of the world for us to meet, and hang out, especially since he knows the contents of our home (he remembered particularly our Paul Maseyk wedding bowl). But fun, too.

All I have to show for it is the prosciutto and figs we shared.
Delicious, of course, but it is also especially exciting having dishes
that come with specific implements (see also St John post).

Last weekend Arnel and Svetislava invited us to join them and their friends (some of who we'd met at San Pietro) for a bbq party out at Lido. It was really great, they are all so friendly and welcoming. And the water was amazing - you could just flop in, no drama, and it was perfectly cool and refreshing. Oh and the bbq was delicious, of course. As well as lumps of meat, we had masses of aubergine, zucchini, capsicum, and slices of pre-prepared polenta. And not a grain of sand in any of it, the beach being composed instead of coarsely broken shells.

Finnly by the fire, before it got too hot and he was back in the sea.

On our way home together the other evening, Svetislava and I discovered two new and amazing gelato flavours. Fig and pear with pieces of chocolate and hazelnuts; and carrot, celery, almond, and ginger. The latter was especially amazing, zingy and delicious. It's the gelateria closest to the giardini and they make all their own gelato; clearly unafraid to experiment, their creations are delicious.

It was really too hot to stop for photos, this delay caused some seriously sticky fingers. 

That night Finn made a delicious variant on fish and chips for our non-NZ friends. Parboiled potatoes fried with leek (we have no oven) and butterflied fresh sardines lightly coated with a garlic, oregano, parsley, and dry polenta mix, also fried. A whole lot of lovely crunchy outsides and soft delicious insides. And salad of course. And some fresh fagioli like last time too. Yum yum. Then we had my first ever attempt at a cheesecake featuring the last of this seasons cherries. Pretty good, but I don't think I'll be adopting it into my regular repertoire.



The next night we had a meal with Elizabeth at a little osteria a few zig zags from our place. A plate of schie con polenta to share; another very nice cuttlefish (with ink) risotto; and a bowl of spaghetti with loads of mussels, clams, prawns, shrimps, and even a scampi.

The night after that (last night) was Festa del Redentore, but I'm saving that for another posting.

(Finn left for Florence first thing this morning with the camera, so I've got a few days to wait for the photos.)

Here we are, together, demanding YOU to come HERE and share in the fun.

17 July 2011