The Best Restaurants in Venice—in Every Neighborhood

Reported by Vogue.

The Venice Biennale's 61st edition — In Minor Keys, the final curatorial vision of the late Cameroonian-Swiss curator Koyo Kouoh — runs May 9 through November 22 across the Giardini and Arsenale. The art is the reason you book the flight. The food is the reason you extend the trip.

According to Vogue, the city's dining scene quietly pivoted in 2011, when brothers Massimiliano and Raffaele Alajmo — of three-Michelin-starred Le Calandre near Padua — took over Grancaffè Quadri on Piazza San Marco, earning it a Michelin star almost immediately. That moment set a new standard. Today, GLAM at Palazzo Venart holds Venice's only two Michelin stars under Enrico Bartolini, Italy's most decorated chef. On the island of Mazzorbo, Chiara Pavan's Venissa has become an international reference point for environmental cuisine, anchored by the near-extinct Dorona grape — resurrected by Gianluca Bisol of the Bisol prosecco family. And for 2026, the arrivals are serious: Heinz Beck now oversees the newly opened Orient Express Venezia in Cannaregio inside a restored 15th-century palazzo; Airelles Palladio on Giudecca has assembled Nobu Matsuhisa, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Cédric Grolet, and Norbert Niederkofler under one 16th-century roof; and Zeffirino — the Genoese institution founded in 1939 and favored by Frank Sinatra and multiple popes — has landed at Nolinski Venezia, trofie al pesto still finished tableside from a marble mortar.

Beyond the Grand Gestures

The more democratic pleasures run just as deep. "Venice has a great concentration of excellent traditional osterie serving Venetian classics done exceptionally well, alongside great wine bars with a more contemporary look and feel," says Valeria Necchio, food and culture writer and co-founder of Versatile, a creative work club with two Venice locations. Her current obsession: carciofo violetto — purple artichokes, peak season now — best eaten raw, in risotto, or alongside fish carpaccio. On Sant'Erasmo, Osti in Orto, conceived in 2020 by Cesare Benelli of Al Covo, cultivates four hectares of historic farmland growing artichokes, radicchio, heritage asparagus, white peaches, and rare varieties nearly no one else bothers with anymore.

In Castello — the most local of the six sestieri, largely unbothered by tourists outside Biennale surges — Al Covo remains a north star. Trattoria del Local, the casual sibling of Michelin-starred Local, is one of the city's toughest reservations: baccalà mantecato, guinea fowl ravioli, and a wall of Capovilla grappas that could justify the trip alone. At Alle Testiere, Bruno Gavagnin and Luca di Vita have run a 22-seat room since 1993 on a daily menu built entirely around the Rialto market — close it out with Luca's Amaro Nostrano, a digestif of purple artichoke, samphire, and wild wormwood that tastes, improbably, exactly like Venice.

The Biennale gives you the excuse; the food gives you the reason to stay.

Read the original at Vogue.