More than a decade ago when I first started visiting Venice regularly it was generally accepted that the standard of restaurant food was poor. Overpriced, often with poor service, low in quality… and riddled with rip-offs typified by the waiter who announces, ‘I am the menu – now I tell you what to eat.’ And never mentions the prices of course…

Five years ago the standard of restaurant food was greatly improved. You still forked out plenty but at least it wasn’t that hard to find something edible. Sadly, after four weeks here this year, I have to report the clock is going backwards. Restaurant food in Venice today is ridiculously expensive and dreadfully erratic in quality. I no longer recommend restaurants here any more – they change so quickly it’s futile. So what you get here are simply reports of places I’ve liked and loathed this year. I always stay in apartments so far and away the best food I’ve eaten is at home, from delis and supermarkets. Even if you’re in a hotel it’s easy to grab some bread and cheese and snack in a warm corner – which is far preferable to the rip-off miseries out there.

Anyway… first, the <strong>outstanding.</strong>

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You can’t beat a good Venetian cafe and <strong>Mille Vini</strong>, one of several in the ever more popular Campo Santa Margherita in Dorsoduro, is the best I’ve ever found. Lovely food – salads, cheese plates, panini – great wine and coffee, extremely friendly staff (who speak English and are very helpful to tourists). A euro 9.50 plate of lovely cheeses saved an appalling evening where we’d been stiffed for 70 euros for one of the worst restaurant experiences I’ve known anywhere (of which more later). Open at lunchtimes till late in the evening, tel 041 5223436. There is a branch near the Rialto too but I didn’t visit.

<a href="http://www.tavernasanlio.com/" target="_blank"><strong>Taverna San Lio</strong></a> is in Salizada San Lio, a busy route from Rialto to San Marco and close to both. Part of a small bed and breakfast place, this is somewhere I moaned about in January when one evening I was lured in by a menu del giorno which only applied at lunchtimes. But the food was good and today we went back and tried that euro 19 menu. Fantastic. Two different types of pasta, one cheese ravioli, one with mussels, then a frittura mista that included calamari, shrimp, fish and a range of crunchy vegetables. Plus a dessert. The wine is superb at five euros a glass, which makes this a touch less of a bargain. But a lovely place with welcoming staff and plenty of room between the tables. It’s very modern looking and may not match up to the general picture of Venetian trattoria but I’m starting to think that’s a good thing.

[caption id="attachment_5879" align="alignnone" width="490" caption="Frittura Mista, San Lio"]<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/dscf1215.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-5879" title="Frittura Mista, San Lio" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/dscf1215.jpg" alt="" width="490" height="367" /></a>[/caption]

Now to <strong>the good.</strong>

<a href="http://www.murovinoecucina.it" target="_blank"><strong>Muro Venezia</strong></a><strong> </strong>have three restaurants in Venice but please don’t call them a chain. Again these are very modern-looking places, with helpful multilingual staff and a range of dishes. We went to the Frari branch, the newest and perhaps smallest. The pizzas ran to around euros 12 a time but were huge and beautifully cooked (you’ve no idea how hard it can be to get decent pizza in Venice). There was meat and fish too. If you want to eat at busy times I suspect it’s worth booking.

<strong>Osteria ai Pugni</strong> is right by the Ponte dei Pugni bridge over the San Barnaba canal in Dorsoduro. More a cafe than a restaurant, it's open from breakfast till late at night, serving great coffee, pastries, pasta and an excellent wine list. Short on space for a posh meal but great and friendly for filling up, and at very reasonable prices. Its sister establishment, the Cafe Ai Artisti, round the corner in Campo San Barnaba, has seats outside where you can get two spritzes of an evening for five euros, which for a pretty seat in the open is a bargain in Venice.

The good section is short. That was it.

Here come two restaurants <strong>in limbo</strong>, places I’ve enjoyed in the past but now avoid. Maybe one day they will redeem themselves. In Venice who knows? The first is <a href="http://www.hostariadafranz.com/indexeng.htm" target="_blank"><strong>Hostaria Da Franz</strong></a>, an incredibly expensive upmarket spot near Giardini, beloved of movie stars during the festival. This was the scene of possibly the best, and certainly most pricey, meal I’ve ever eaten. Hasn’t been that great since and at this price you expect perfection, or as near as dammit. I walked past to sniff the menu. Much changed, and no longer has a frittura, which used to be superb. Not convinced frankly…

The second is <a href="http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187870-d716282-Reviews-La_Furatola-Venice_Veneto.html" target="_blank"><strong>La Furatola</strong></a><strong> </strong>in San Barnaba in Dorsoduro, in the little alley leading off from the campo which houses several restaurants (more on one later) and even a Japanese tea room.

This used to be a slightly less expensive and ambitious equivalent of Da Franz, with lots of fresh fish, especially fritture. Ate there for lunch in May. For euros 45 I got one plate of tired fried fish, a salad and a glass of wine. Not good. Walked past last Saturday night and the place was half full, which is unheard of in San Barnaba. And they were offering a euros 25 special summer menu, again unheard of. Trouble is I still haven’t expunged the memory of that last meal. Maybe one day.

Let us move on <strong>to the bad. </strong>We don’t have to travel very far for the first entry. This is in that San Barnaba alley and is an outlet of a growing chain, <a href="http://www.panevinospa.it/" target="_blank"><strong>Pane Vino e San Daniele</strong></a>, which has places all over Italy. One test of a real Italian restaurant is that you can order nothing more for lunch than pasta and the waiter won’t moan. Not here. If you look in the window this seems quite a reasonably priced place – panini, ham, cheese, pasta specials and much more expensive meat dishes. We ordered two plates of pasta. The grumpy waiter sighed. You could almost hear him mutter, ‘Cheapskates’. We’re not actually. We just wanted a plate of pasta.

He tried to get us to order the special starter for two, a massive plate of mainly meat that the couple at the next table were clearly struggling with. No thanks. He persisted. How about we just <em>try</em> a plate of ‘his special ham’? San Daniele ham is very good, actually, so I gave into this thuggish customer-bullying. He didn’t look as if he’d leave until we’d ordered more anyway.

The ham was beautiful. One plate of pasta was OK. The other was dire. He barely spoke a civil word to us throughout. We hadn’t ordered enough to be worthwhile you see. This is the Venetian restaurant attitude of old, and you wonder, really, how these people manage to stay in business.

Another bad one, and I hate saying this, is the little working class eating hole of <strong>Ae Do Porte </strong>in Castello, not far from Zanipolo. This used to be great for a quick two course meal with a little wine, and full of local workmen filling their faces in a pretty wooden dining room unchanged much since the 1950s. The menu is now euros 17, the pasta was OK, the chicken turned out to be a skewer with beef, sausage and pork on it, and my pork fillet wasn’t much better. Nice people, not worth the effort.

Now to the clincher. The most <strong>worst place I’ve eaten in Venice</strong>, or anywhere else, in a very long time. <strong>Do Farai </strong>is close to Campo Santa Margherita and a stone’s throw from where we’re staying. If you read <a href="http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187870-d1088070-Reviews-Do_Farai-Venice_Veneto.html" target="_blank">Tripadvisor</a> you’d think it was fishy heaven on earth.

Oh no. Oh so very much no. We walked in and found there was only one other table eating, a bunch of Americans who were ordering everything, including the ‘whole fish sold by weight’, a very dangerous thing to do indeed. The bread was stale. The house wine came in a half bottle only and was appalling. The service was, er, erratic.

I fancied <em>frittura mista</em>. It was off. Off? In a fish restaurant? One just a few metres from a square with three or four excellent fish stalls during the day? Unbelievable. So we ordered the mixed fishy starter to share, then Venetian liver and a plate of grilled langoustines. To be fair the starters were lovely, and included razor clams, polenta, sarde en saor and scallops. I wish I’d had them as a main course.

The liver was OK, nothing more. My langoustines were grilled langoustines. We were getting the ‘you haven’t really ordered enough’ signals, so we ate what little was in front of us and left – euros 70 the poorer, for very little food and a half bottle of dreadful wine.

That was when the inexpensive plate of beautiful cheese in Mille Vini saved us, for which I’m grateful. And while we were there someone asked where we’d eaten and rolled their eyes when we said the name, ‘Do Farai’. Looking back it was incredibly expensive but the food itself was OK to mainly. What stuck in my memory was the weird atmosphere and that horrible stale bread. There are any number of decent bakeries on the doorstep. I could have popped into the supermarket round the corner and bought a couple of fresh rolls for next to nothing. Why inflict this on people – and then give them a colossal bill?

Oh well, as someone once said, ‘You don’t come to Venice for the food.’ Thank God we didn’t.

I do hope the places we loved stay loveable for the next trip.