Solo Pesce

So now that I'm with the REAL food writer - my friend Wanda Adams who arrived today is the Food Editor at The Honolulu Advertiser - I no longer need to take a notepad to dinner. Yippee.

We went back to what I've realized is our sestier's (neighborhood's) little restaurant row, Calle Lunga San Barnaba. You may recall that Marcia and I had a killer meal at La Bitta (Wanda and I are going back Saturday night) - where the credo is "NO FISH." Tonight Wanda and I had a simple, perfectly home-cooked, delicious meal down the calle at La Furatola - where the business card reads "Solo Pesce" - ONLY FISH.

The baccala montecato was the best I've had in Venice - creamy AND chunky, and it was served with two giant prawns and a little pool of polenta. Add some homemade bread sliced to order and that's heaven. We shared a whole branzino - they translate it as sea bass but I don't think it really is, at least it's not what we call sea bass, it's way too small and it doesn't have the texture of sea bass. Anyway, it was grilled whole and served with beautiful grilled vegetables - zucchini, eggplant, potatoes, thin green asparagus, fat, juicy white asparagus. The server divided the fish tableside - we'd already seen him do this several times for other tables- and then he did something neither of us had ever seen before. He made a mound of the trimmings - skin, bits of dark meat - and smothered it with olive oil, mashed it, tipped the platter as he held the mixture in place and spooned all that fantastically flavored olive oil onto our plates. An aromatic "dressing" for both the fish and the vegetables that couldn't have been tastier or easier to make.

Fantastico...yet again.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I haven't even BEEN to the Biennale. But you're wrong. I have been. I'm just overwhelmed by the gazillion photos I've taken and by trying to learn the best way to post them. And I'm done apologizing. You'll be the first to know when I get it all figured out.