La Zucca (The Pumpkin)

I had read a lovely review of La Zucca on A Spoonful of Sugar and decided this was a good restaurant to include in the eating frenzy our Venice weekend had become. I took particular note of the difficulties she described in finding the place and asked the concierge at our hotel for directions. He confidently marked the place on the map, giving us a nice little nod of approval at our choice of restaurant (always makes you feel good!).

We rode the Vaporetto to San Stae, even though it would probably have been quicker to walk, and it was a fabulous trip. The sun was finally starting to come out and the views from the boat were fabulous.

We arrived at the Campo S. Giacomo dell' Orio at around 7.20pm, with some time to spare before our 7.30pm reservation. We were conscious not to be late as we'd tried to book for 8pm but had only been able to get the earlier time slot, so assumed they were quite busy. We located the street the concierge had marked out and decided to stroll around the square for a while soaking up some atmosphere until it was time to go to the restaurant. At which point we realised the street was a completely empty dead end with no sign of anything. It was now about 7.28pm and we had no address and no clue. We wandered around for a while and finally went into a shop to ask directions. They spoke no English but the Italian hand gestures came into their own and eventually, by some miracle, we located the restaurant on the opposite side of the square and around the corner. In the end, we did no better than the review I'd read. Still, we were only about 10 minutes late - luckily, as the restaurant had a sign on the door advising they were fully booked for the evening.

La Zucca was originally a vegetarian restaurant but had a good selection of meat-based dishes as well. The menu was the only one we came across that was only in Italian and we struggled through, ordering the Buffalo Mozzarello with tomatoes and olives for me and the chicken liver pate for Kyle.



The pate was an enormous serving and came with a pile of too-crunchy toasted ciabatta bread and some lovely little curls of unsalted butter. The pate was really rich, but Kyle persevered and managed to polish it all off. My mozzarella was stunning - a firm to the bite texture, but creamy and with real flavour. Quite often, mozzarella can taste of nothing. The tomatoes and olives were also good, but the cheese was the star of the show.



Kyle picked the best pasta off the menu - Tagliatelle with sausage and mushroom, so I decided to go for Osso Bucco, only realising when it arrived that I had ordered veal again (oops). The pasta was nice enough, but was a little dry as there wasn't really any sauce. My Osso Bucco was a tender piece of meat, slow-cooked until you could just pull it apart served with a chunky carrot and onion sauce and some rice. It was really tasty, but something I could probably do at home reasonably easily (although perhaps not with veal).

We ordered a one-litre carafe of the house red, which wasn't bad, and was a bargain 10 euros.

I had been very excited by the sound of the desserts on the Spoonful of Sugar review, so was very disappointed to see no chocolate desserts at all on the menu. I know it was a long time ago, but I'll admit, my hopes were high. I decided to settle for the Zabayon Semi-freddo with Caramel, while Kyle opted for Panna Cotta with strawberries. Both desserts looked nice enough but were quite simple and plain, nothing to get all that excited about.

La Zucca was clearly very popular - they filled the restaurant across two sittings on a Monday night (although it isn't huge), but I would have to say I found it a little wanting. Everything was nice enough, but except for the mozzarella, nothing was amazing.

That being said, we ate extraordinarily well in Venice. It definitely doesn't deserve its reputation for bad food, although you might have to look a little harder for it. Ironically, for all my research, the best meals were the ones we hadn't planned - at Casin dei Nobili and Da Acighueta. Typical!

La Zucca