Food and Wine of Veneto Italy - Travel Guide & Information

This description page of Veneto, region Of Italy, will guide you in planning your trip to Italy and help you to find useful travel information about the Food & Wine of this Italian Region.

Food (Cibo)

Veneto cuisine is varied, from thick soups and creamy risotto to sophisticated and light, such as fish risotto, sprinkled with shrimp, to carpaccio, wafer-thin raw beef dressed with olive oil, arugula, and Parmesan. Fresh fish and seafood from Lake Garda and the Adriatic dominate many traditional specialties. For seafood lovers, the cuisine can be memorable, with soft-shelled crabs from Murano, plump red mullet, pasta heaped with lobster or black and pungent with cuttlefish ink. A trademark dish is cuttlefish risotto or baccalà (dried salt cod) prepared with milk and herbs or Parmesan cheese and parsley. These dishes are complimented by seasonal produce, peas, zucchini, asparagus from Bassano del Grappa, and radicchio from Treviso.

Venetian cuisine spells cosmopolitan cuisine and incorporates spices that demonstrate oriental influences: pimento, tumeric, ginger, cinnamon, cumin, cloves, nutmeg, saffron, and vanilla. Rice was introduced from Spain by the Arabs and remains the most versatile aspect of local cuisine. Risi e bisi (rice and peas) is a thick soup flavored with ham, celery, and only. A Middle-Eastern-inspired dish is sarde in saär, tart sardines marinated in the standard Venetian sauce, saor. 

Pasta is eaten throughout the Veneto, but more typical is polenta, made from cornmeal, and various types of risotto. Treviso is the birthplace of radicchio (red endive) which finds it way—raw, grilled, or fried—into risotto, pasta, and salads. From November - February, several restaurants serve the famous “radicchio.” If you love white asparagus, come in May.

Pastries, cakes, and desserts, flavored with cinnamon and nutmeg remain a Venetian forte. Venetians introduced cane sugar to Europe, and retained their sweet tooth. Try fugazza vicentina, a popular Easter cake while in Vicenza, or Pandoro di Verona, a Christmas sponge cake when visiting Verona.

Cafés, and coffee, are serious business in northern Italy. While in Venice (Venezia), stop by Caffé Florian, located under the arcades of the Piazza San Marco, it is considered to be the prince of the coffee houses. Founded in 1720, it is the oldest surviving café in Italy. And try the famed Bellini cocktail at the legendary Venetian bar, Harry’s Bar.

Wine (Vino)

Veneto is a significant wine-producing region (Italy’s third-largest wine producer), encompassing the area from Venice (Venezia) to Lake Garda, and plays host to VinItaly in Verona, the country’s largest wine fair. The Veneto produces large quantities of everyday wines—red, white, and rosé.

Veneto boasts a prestigious wine production of very old origins, which nowadays produces a big quantity of excellent DOC wines, making it one of the largest producers of DOC wines.

Veneto production features many traditional local varieties—such as the red Corvina and the white Garganega—as well as Merlot and both Cabernets, and popular white varieties, such as Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, Pinot Bianco, and Sauvignon.

There are three distinct areas of wine production in the Veneto: Verona, the central hills around Vicenza and Padua, and eastern Veneto around Venice (Venezia) and Treviso.

Among the biggest regional names are sparkling Prosecco, from the wine hills north of Treviso, the red, cherry-like Bardolino, as well as fruity Valpolicella from around Lake Garda, and dry Soave, produced east of Verona.

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