Venice Food Tour: Rialto Market, Cannaregio, Gondola, Food & Wine

Take a fork and follow us on a tour dedicated to showing you that Venetian food is some of the best in Italy, if you know what to eat and where to eat it.

Your Venice food tour starts when you meet your local guide in the heart the city's culinary scene; the Rialto Fish Market. Here, fresh fish from the Mediterranean shows up on boats every morning, as it has for hundreds of years. After learning about the unique food culture of a city that has no farmland (and gazing upon some of the freshest fish you'll ever see), you'll go off in search of something to eat.

Your first stop is one of our favorite local watering holes, a bacaro (or bar), known for its unbeatable cicchetti, particularly bread-based snacks, and a mean spritz. You’ll try two items of your choice here along with glasses of the local wine, prosecco or spritz. We highly recommend the baccalà; a quintessential Venetian dish of salt cod, pureed and spread over toasted bread.

Next, you'll head over to another cicchetti bar to try other types of bruschetta - like crostini, panini, and delectable Venetian fritti, i.e., fried foods like fish and vegetable fritters. You'll also taste some prosecco, which is a local specialty of the Veneto region.

If you're going to eat like locals, you should travel like them as well. You'll board a gondola, crossing the Grand Canal and head into the neighborhood of Cannaregio. As part of Venice's old Jewish Ghetto, Cannaregio is still home to some of the most locally-beloved eateries in the city. Here you'll disembark for a plate of the city’s best fresh seafood pasta.

Your Venice Food Tour is not just about filling you up with delicious local food (although there is plenty of that!) we also want to educate you on how to eat well in a city where it can be difficult to find great, affordable food. That means your guide (a consummate local foodie) will tell you where to eat, how to eat, and what to look for on menus - to make sure that you are enjoying the very best of Venice's fantastic local and regional cuisine.