Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
TOP SIGHT
RIALTO MARKET
Restaurants worldwide are catching on to a secret that this market has loudly touted for 700 years: food tastes bet-
ter when it's fresh, seasonal and local. Before there was a bridge at the Rialto or palaces along the Grand Canal,
there was a Pescaria (fish market) and a produce market. So loyal are locals to their market that recent talk of
opening a larger, more convenient mainland fish market was swiftly crushed.
More vital to Venetian cuisine than any top chef are Pescaria fishmongers, calling out today's catch: glistening
mountains of
moscardini
(baby octopus), crabs ranging from tiny
moeche
(soft-shell crabs) to
granseole
(spider
crabs) and inky
seppie
(cuttlefish) of all sizes. Sustainable fishing practices are not a new idea at the Pescaria;
marble plaques show regulations set centuries ago for the minimum allowable sizes for lagoon fish. Note the line-
caught lagoon seafood here, and you'll recognise tasty, sustainable options on dinner menus.
Compared with supermarket specimens, Veneto veggies look like they landed from another planet. Tiny
purplish Sant'Erasmo
castraure
(baby artichokes) look like alien heads and white Bassano asparagus seems to
have sprouted on the moon.
Buon appetito!
DON'T MISS…
»
Lagoon seafood displays
»
Chanted boasts about local produce at bargain prices
»
Produce barges by Grand Canal docks
»
Veneto speciality produce
»
Seasonal fruit
PRACTICALITIES
»
MAP
»
041 296 06 58
»
7am-2pm, Pescaria closed Mon
