Are you hungry right now? If you’re like me (and I certainly know I am), then you think about your next meal right after you finish the previous one.
A meal at today’s subject eatery is highly recommended…though you will need to travel to Venice to enjoy it…carry out or delivery just won’t work in this case.
De PIsis is located in the Hotel Bauer. This hotel is one of the up-scale hotels in Venice…a hotel for which we would not normally make a reservation. However, in 2004 we spent a January week in Venice and the Bauer’s rates were such that it was affordable. And yes, it was very nice, indeed. I’ll let you know more about a winter visit at another time.
We’ve dined at De Pisis for both lunch and dinner, and both were wonderful. But, our routine now is to arrive in Venice mid-morning, drop our bags at the Hotel Flora, and then immediately make our way a couple-of-hundred yards to the canal-side terrace of De Pisis, under the red canal-side awnings you see in the aerial photo.
It is such a lovely terrace, situated just where the Canale Grande (Grand Canal) enters the Bacino San Marco (St Mark’s Basin), with a view of the church of Santa Maria Della Salute in one direction and San Giorgio Maggiore in the other.
Today’s article will be short on verbiage and long on photos of the food and revelry of some of our visits. So, here goes.
A Toast to You and Yours!
As we always start our meals with a toast to friends both present and absent, that’s what we do here. Note the beautiful Santa Maria Della Salute in the background. This toast is with Debbie and Scott Kennedy. It is a rare event that Scott eschews wine for a beer…but it was a long, hard journey.
Another time and another toast with in-laws Leslie and Craig Johnson.
The particular toast above is made with Venica’s Ronco delle Cime, which is produced in the northern realm of the Veneto. The Veneto is the region in which Venice is located.
I love the way that Italian wine websites describe their wine ethic. Venica’s states that, “This wine wants to tell the story of a borderland with people and memories related to family’s values and to the region’s traditions.”
After our tasting, we understood the story.
And though we don’t always travel with friends, wife Ellen and I never fail to execute a toast to you.
Though we are pre-meal toasting here, we drank our prosecco throughout our meal.
And which prosecco did we demolish during this meal?
Banfi’s, of course! How does it taste? Let’s check their website. for a description. Oh here it is, “…an edgy, fresh peach and peppercorn-scented sparkler. It’s bright with the greenness of chlorophyll and a peppery burst in the end.” Hmm…bottom line…we like it!
And is that ‘B’ for Bauer, for ‘Banfi’, or for ‘Burkett’? We’ll never tell.
The Meals
Adam has come to tell us that our meal will be arriving “in un momento”.
In the background you can see the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, located on the Giudecca island.
And the meals are here! We’ll start with a salad and move on to the other savory dishes.
The Fish Course
And, let’s not forget a fish course…after all, we are sitting in the middle of a lagoon!
Dealing with a whole fish can be a formidable experience, right? Not so in Italy.
The typical routine is to present the cooked whole fish for your viewing pleasure, and then the fish is disassembled and de-boned tableside.
I don’t have a fish presentation photo from De Pisis, so I’ll use one where Elizabete makes the presentation at La Terrazza Danieli on the Hotel Danieli’s rooftop restaurant.
Our De Pisis waiter is carefully de-boning our fish selection.
And here is our plated fish dish, ready to be placed before us for our eating pleasure.
It’s Over
All good things come to an end…though I’m not too happy about it during this visit to De Pisis. Even the wait-staff seem to commiserate with my end-of-meal blues. The parsley? I’m just NOT going to eat that parsley.
We don’t always finish a meal with wine…sometimes we need a refreshing Coca Cola Lite, or Coke Zero. Ahhhh!
You will see Ellen and me traveling through Italy with friends in many of these articles. I wrote an article on ‘Traveling with Friends’ back in 2015. In that article, I included a short video giving you a whirlwind 3:28 glimpse into a 2012 trip to Italy. Here is that video, should you have missed it.
I hope you enjoyed your voyeuristic meal today at De Pisis as much as I enjoyed bringing it to you. And don’t forget…no carryout or delivery…you have to go in person. How about you join us the next time we’re there? Is it a date? But if your there on your own, be sure and make a reservation for the lunch-time terrace at the bottom of their web-page, here.
Ciao for now,
Steve