Cicchetti Are Venice’s Answer to Tapas, and This Is How You Actually Order Them

Cicchetti are Venice’s version of tapas, small plates meant to be eaten standing up at a bar, and they are the meal most tourists never actually find because it does not look like a restaurant meal at all.

A bacaro is the kind of bar that serves them, and you will recognize one by the glass case running along the counter, packed with small plates. Crostini topped with baccalà mantecato, a whipped salt cod spread that sounds strange and tastes incredible. Fried sardines. Marinated artichoke hearts. Little meatballs called polpette. Cheese, cured meats, boiled egg halves with anchovy. You point at what looks good, the bartender plates it, and you eat standing at the counter or at a small shared table outside.

The drink that goes with it has its own name too. An ombra is a small glass of local wine, traditionally poured in the shade of the bell tower in St. Mark’s Square back when wine sellers would move their carts to stay out of the sun, which is where the name comes from. It literally means shadow. Order an ombra alongside a few cicchetti and you are doing exactly what Venetians have done for their early evening drink for a very long time.

This is the evening people remember, and it costs close to nothing compared to a sit down dinner. A round of cicchetti and a glass of wine per person runs a fraction of what a full restaurant meal costs, and you can hop between two or three bacari over the course of an evening instead of committing to one long dinner, which also happens to work well with kids who have a shorter attention span for sitting still at a table.

For families, this is one of the easier ways to eat in Venice with children. Nobody is locked into a full course meal. Order two or three small plates for the table, let everyone try a bite of something different, and if a kid does not like the fried sardines, that is a two euro plate, not an entire wasted dinner. It also gets everyone up and moving between bacari rather than sitting through a long formal dinner at the end of a day of walking.

Go early evening, right around when the last day trip boats and tour groups have cleared out, which is usually after six. That is when the city stops performing and the bacari fill with actual Venetians stopping in on their way home, which is exactly the crowd you want to be eating alongside.

Skip the restaurants with big photo menus right on the main tourist routes near St. Mark’s. A real bacaro rarely has an English menu at all, and that is precisely how you know you found the right one.

More on eating well in Venice on the Venice city guide.