Venice has a very strong reputation in Italy as having the country's worst food. That's partly due to the fact that ninety percent of the restaurants serve crap to tourists, but Italians speak disparagingly about the local cusine served in real restaurants as well. So we were less restaurant-obsessed than usual, but we did hit a good selection of places during our stay, enough to come to the conclusion that the Italians are probably right. The food is actually fine, mostly seafood based and very fresh, but it's lacking in spark, and doesn't really use such Italian basics as pasta.

For our first evening we at at the highly regarded hotel restaurant. This is a very old-school, formal place, with everyone extremely dressy, like a scene from Murder on the Orient Express. This is a bit odd, because the restaurant is outdoors, and looks relatively casual. The staff was very professional, very old, and spoke about twenty languages. I would say about two thirds of the guests were regulars at the hotel, and the staff has clearly known them for decades. (I have a friend who's grandmother has been spending a month at the hotel every year for thirty years, which is not uncommon here.) One fun pastime is to watch the waiters when they weren't serving guests, as they were constantly fighting with each other. I got the sense these arguments had been running since around the second world war, and there was no resolution in sight. Food was actually quite good, conservative Italian standards prepared expertly, and of course great views. (Food-14, Decor-16, Service-12).

The next morning we started with breakfast at the hotel (that's Somchai at the breakfast table). The food was pretty standard and generally tired, there's a different serving crew for breakfast, all old women. Unlike the old men working the dinner shift, these women seemed angry at the guests as well as each other.