Port in a storm

It poured in Venice on the Sunday we were there . . . and I mean poured. Constant, heavy rain for hours and hours. We'd been expecting it, the weather forecasts had been predicting heavy rain on the Sunday for days. We'd planned for it and decided to make the Sunday our museum day. Of course, so had everyone else in Venice. The queue for the Accademia snaked around the building - a long sad line of wet people standing under umbrellas. It didn't appeal. So we kept going to the Peggy Guggenheim museum where the queue was at least inside, albeit still long and snaky. So after dragging this reasonably small museum out for quite a while, it was time to head back out into the pouring rain.

At this point, a long slow lunch somewhere inside really appealed. This was not the day for a slice of pizza standing next to the pizza shop. So when we walked past Casin dei Nobili and I noticed the three course set menu for 18 euros and the nicely crowded, darkly lit (hence all the dark photos) room filled with 'real-looking' people, it seemed an easy choice (despite that dinner reservation at Al Covo that we already had for that evening).

And it was a great choice! We were immediately provided with a bowl of ciabatta bread and foccacia croutons to nibble on. The croutons were excellent, crunchy and delicious, and is a great nibbly idea as they are already so flavoursome from the foccacia toppings.

There were two choices for entree and main on the set menu and we decided to go with one each. Kyle chose the Homemade, oven-baked Romana style gnocchi with bacon and pecorino cheese and the Veneziana style cuttle fish with soft polenta. This left me with the Homemade, oven-baked "Girella" pasta with fresh ricotta cheese and spinach and the "Prosecco wine" style scallopini with oven-baked rosemary potatoes.

The starters were excellent. I don't know how they get their gnocchi to be like that, but it was so light and fluffy, almost like souffle. The crunchy bacon bits on top provided a great texture contrast. My "Girella" pasta turned out to be a sort of roulade of pasta with spinach and ricotta in a cheesy sauce and was also excellent. Everything was really well-seasoned and fresh tasting.


Kyle's main of cuttle fish was a little unusual. We saw cuttlefish on menus everywhere in Venice, so it must be a traditional dish. It is quite similar to calamari and in this case was in a stew sauce that tasted almost beefy. The polenta it came with was soft and creamy.

I have to admit, I didn't really think about my order or if I did, I think I expected pork escalopes. They were definitely veal, and most probably that controversial European white veal. That being said, they were incredibly tender and delcious and the prosecco sauce was fruity and light. Yum.

The bottle of house red was a Santa Sofia merlot and was actually a nice light pairing with all of these dishes. I did like that they put a restaurant label on the bottle - definitely the 'house's' red wine.



There were no choices for dessert and it was a surprise when it came. Well, maybe not that much of a surprise as the number one Italian dessert would have to be tiramisu. It is such a good dessert - creamy and rich with coffee and chocolate. All of the desserts here are apparently made on the premises, as are the bread and pasta, which is both rare and good news.

I really enjoyed this meal. It was a lovely restaurant with a great atmosphere. The staff were all friendly and helpful and most importantly, all the food was excellent at a very reasonable price. I hadn't come across this one in all my 'research' (looking it up now, there are lots of positive reviews on the internet) but I am very pleased we stumbled upon it and would definitely recommend it - although I'm not quite sure where we were!

The only downside was that it was still pouring when we left.

Casin dei Nobili
Dorsoduro, 2765, Venice