My Accidentally Fine Lunch

This city is famous for its bad restaurants and snobbish attitudes, but sometimes there´s a hidden place where the crowds disappear and the food is pure Veneto.

Venice, Italy – A waiter with dark, slick-backed hair carries a tray of young roasted potatoes and vegetables mixed with sprigs of rosemary. He weaves through the terraces´ tables like a light-footed dancer. It´s noon and business at the Trattoria Antica is brisk. A thick canopy of grape-like vine leaves covers the terrace and blocks most of the sun. Lagoon water laps gently against the terrace´s boat landing. Men in white shirts with rolled sleeves or blue sports coats are seated at white-clothed tables with women in summer dresses or slacks, Dolce Gabbana loafers. Elegant Armani-chic Venetian workers sip crisp wines and engage in animated discussions while still looking fresh from the oppressive heat and world politics that lies beyond our shade. They don´t seem in a rush to return to their offices or stores but their telefoninos lie ready on the table.

It´s mid-June in a Venice that is heated with the tourist trade and if you want to avoid the milling press of foreigners like yourself, Trattoria Antica is one of those places to go where the food is pure regional Veneto and reasonably priced. However, the journey, to this tourist, and this mythical-like restaurant is one of discovery and chance found only through labyrinthine narrow alleys and canals that seem to lead nowhere until persistence and courage leads me through a final passageway where crowded Venice suddenly disappears into a quiet oasis of Time. It is well worth the hunt. Only affluent local business people seemed to have effortlessly materialized here and I don´t let put me off. The affluent always spend less money and get more value. Later I learn that most of them arrive and leave with a "carpooled" gondola or launch which can save a half hour of walking.

Outside, at the table next to me is an eccentric looking older gentleman in a battered Panama hat whom I slowly recognize as a fellow American traveler. At his feet is a small, white terrier feeding on a cooked beef patty served up by the restaurant. The man lifts his glass and nods and continues with his plate of pasta which looks like it´s covered with a salmon and parsley sauce. I return the toast. Four years ago, I name him Panama for reasons of privacy, he and his wife pulled up stakes in Philadelphia to move to Italy where they bought a small house at the edge of a hilltop town in the Euganean Hills near Padua, where his wife is at this moment. She´s taken up oil painting while he just enjoys his retirement. In a nutshell, on why they moved, he says, "we older folks were brought up in a different America and the people in charge were gettin´ scary. "

I decide to skip the fish after, Antonio, my waiter, proudly claims the shellfish come from Venice´s lagoons. "Ci e nient´altro sul menu? I ask, practicing my horrid Italian. No, nothing except the risi e bisi, a rice and peas dish, a whole wheat pasta with salmon and parsley. From past news reports and rumors, the lagoons of Venice, they say, are pretty much polluted from the nearby industrial wasteland from the Mestre industrial area. So like Panama, I opt for the pasta and a two cold beers. Two hours later, on my return to the sweat and press of the high density tourist matrix, two Americans pitch in with several other Italians for a launch to the San Marcos area.

My reason for continually returning to this decaying and elusive city, once besieged by epidemics and now by tourists and rising waters, are many.

Venice is a sinking city, a boutique for tourists, a site for the Venice Film Festival, a state of mind, and a city of fictions in constant translation and can be full of wonderful accidents, like my lunch today.