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This is about food but about language too so bear with me. If you're in an Italian café and you hear someone asking for pasta then picking up a nice sweet cake don't worry -- you didn't mishear. I know you think you know what pasta means. Spaghetti, linguini, penne et al. And yes it does mean that.

But it also means cake. Or to be more (or less precise) dough, pastry even pie. Here's another confusion. If you're having breakfast coffee and someone asks for a 'cornetto' they don't want -- sigh -- an ice cream from a passing singing gondolier. They actually want a croissant.

Those cornetti and cakes in the little display on the counter -- to which you usually help yourself after asking -- are all <em>paste</em> (pastas, geddit?)

Here's a special place to find cakes in Venice.

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Rosa Salva is almost directly opposite the great church of SS Giovanni e Paolo -- San Zanipolo to the locals -- in Castello. This has a rather gruff exterior but is wonderful on the inside. It is the resting place of many of the doges you will read about in John Julius Norwich and elsewhere. Oh and the semi-preserved foot of St Catherine of Siena. There's an interior shot below.

Like Zanipolo <a href="http://www.rosasalva.it/eng/index.php" target="_blank">Rosa Salva</a> is a Venetian institution, though one that dates only from 1879. The pastries are so wonderful in Venice in most places it would be churlish to claim they're the best. But they're very, very good, and the little tea room is so wonderfully 1950s you half expect Katherine Hepburn to walk through the door fresh from the set of <em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048673/" target="_blank">Summertime</a>.</em>

Since we're now approaching Carnival -- and I shall be returning to Venice for that in early February -- everywhere is full of the carnival treat <em>frittelle.</em> These are like doughnut balls with sultanas, pine nuts and other goodies in them. I'm sure Rosa Salva's are wonderful -- as are so many others. Real men don't eat cake, of course. Except this one does in Venice. And I think I'm right in saying <em>frittelle</em> stil only appear for carnival. They're not like English hot cross buns that now run all year round instead of being just Easter treats. Though I'm willing to be corrected on that last point.

Oh - and I would have offered you a photo of my breakfast frittella. But unfortunately I ate it before I remembered to take a picture.

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