Bacaro in Venice – Già Schiavi

Hey there!

 

 

First of I need to excuse the lack of posts in the recent days, but I spent a few days out of town in the past week. I have actually experienced the pleasure of spending the past six days in the beautiful city of Venice. The whole trip came about as an educational tour with my Italian class. And since we are all highly interested in Italy’s culture and traditions, we tried to suck up as much of it as possible. Not only did we eat a lot of pizza, pasta and gelato, we also held interviews with locals to get a special insight into the Italian life.

 

One of the places we stopped at even ended up being such an interesting experience, that I decided to dedicate a post to it.

Prior to our trip, my friend Giulia and I had already made the decision to take a closer to look behind the curtain of the Venetian food culture . Online and in various travel guides we read about the so-called Bacari, a special type of restaurant which is very typical for Venice. A Bacaro is a place where the Venetian population has a little meal after a long morning at work, alongside a so-called Ombra, which is basically just a glass of wine. The Venetians however named it Ombra, thanks to the location they used to drink their afternoon wine in. Because the cooling glass of wine was usually consumed in the afternoon shade, which is nell’ombra in Italian, the unusual expression was brought about. The little snacks you eat accompanied to your Ombra are the so-called Cicchetti, which are mostly served as a cream made of local ingredients, which then is spread on a slice of fresh bread. The whole creation has similarities to the Bruschette, however the bread doesn’t get toasted and brushed with olive oil prior to serving it.

The one Bacaro my friend and I decided to visit was located in the Sestiere Dorsoduro, which was the same part as we were living in for the endurance of our trip.

On the first day of our stay we decided to go by to find out whether we would be able to have an interview with the owner during our stay. Luckily our chosen Bacaro turned out to be a winner and the lovely elderly lady behind the counter kindly invited us to come by whenever it would suit our schedule.

 

When Thursday had finally arrived my friend and I were really excited to eventually find out more about the famous Cicchetti, we had heard and read so much about.

When we arrived at Enoteca Cantonine “Già Schiavi”, Alessandra De Respinis, the owner had already put together various Cicchettis, which were followed by several others during our interview.

 

Alessandra De Respinis, had started creating Cicchettis when she was only just 13 years old, which is now 54 years ago. She learned from her Nonna , who was working in the exact same Bacaro, which indeed is a family business in the third generation. De Respinis mentioned that she is is keeping up her hopes that her sons will be taking over in the future. In fact her sons were running about in the family business as well, one of them even served us a cup of perfectly brewed Italian espresso, which we kindly accepted due to the early morning hours.

 

Alessandra De Respinis was telling us about the importance of using fresh ingredients and she made clear that she greatly focuses on doing so. Additionally does she try to use mainly local products, however she also brought up the fact that sometimes resorting to Spanish or French products is necessary, if so they happen to be from better quality than the local Italian ones.

 

Interestingly enough isn’t she only an ordinary cook, she is also a cooking book author. De Respinis has a whole book with a recipe collection of various different Cicchettis. The little book goes by the title Cicchettario and carries a collection of 59 recipes, each with its special twist. The most extraordinary one seems to be the one, where De Respinis combines cacao and tuna. Another one happens to be her first recipe ever created, it consists of a paste of tuna, onion and myonaise. She told us that this is the all time favourite of her clients, from little kids to a more mature clientele. We had the pleasure of trying this special one and were absolutely stunned. Nevertheless another Cicchetto impressed us even more. In this case the bread was spread with a paste made out of three cheeses and pistachio cream. As a garnish a whole pistachio nut was placed on top and to give it its finishing touch, the whole thing was sprinkled with some paprika. The combination was an absolute delight to our taste buds and didn’t resemble anything I had ever tried before. The sweetness of the pistachio just complemented perfectly with the cheesy saltiness, which made it a special kind of a culinary adventure.

One of the little delicacies only runs at € 1.20, which isn’t a lot at all, considering you can actually make a meal out of it by eating only a handful of them. I find it very pleasing that the prices don’t diverse according to its ingredients. Whether you’re eating meat, fish or just a vegetarian cicchetto, it all costs the same.

Another speciality about De Respinis Bacaro are the freshly made Panini you can get prepared. Locals just walk up to the counter and tell her their desired combination, which she then turns into a freshly made Panino. One of the workers for instance asked for a Panino with tuna, smoked ham and balsamic vinegar. Therefore she freshly sliced the ham put it on top of her famous tuna paste and then drizzled the whole thing with balsamic vinegar. Just looking at it made my mouth water. The freshly made Paninos appeared to be very extraordinary to me, since in most Venetian Panino Places , the sandwiches were sitting ready prepared in a glass vitrine all day long.

 

All in all we received a very special insight into the Venetian culture and were even gifted with a copy of Alessandra De Respinis cooking book, which will surely be used sometime soon. I definitely need to recreate the pistachio Cicchetto, the flavour just blew me away.

If you are ever in Venice, I can only stress again how amazingly friendly the staff in this Bacaro is and how delightful their Chicchetti. It is definitely worth a visit and obviously a taste for anyone travelling to this extraordinary city built on 118 individual Islands.

 

Glossary:

Bacaro – type of restaurant

Bacari – plural of Bacaro

Ombra – glass of wine

Cicchetto – Italian version of tapas

Cicchetti – plural of Cicchetto

Panino – Italian for little bread

Panini – plural of Panino

Sestiere Dorsoduro – quarter in Venice

Nonna – grandmother

 

 

So there you have the address to this special place:

Enoteca Cantonine “Già Schiavi”

Dorsoduro 992
San Trovaso
30123 Venezia

 

Bisous

Fanny, the foodie

 

PS. New recipes will follow soon, my summer break has finally started, so I will have plenty of time to cook.