Venice Food & Wine Tours
Venice eats standing up: cicchetti at the counter of a bacaro with an ombra of wine, fish from the Rialto market, sarde in saor and baccalà mantecato, and an hour inland the Prosecco Hills and the Amarone cellars of Valpolicella. This is our Venice hub. Below are the top-rated food and wine experiences in the city, then our detailed pages: cicchetti and bacaro food tours, cooking classes, Prosecco Hills day trips, Valpolicella and Amarone wine tours, and Verona.
Top-rated food and wine experiences in Venice
Why Venice for food? Because the bacaro is one of the world’s great eating institutions and almost nobody finds the good ones alone; and because two of Italy’s best-known wines, Prosecco and Amarone, are made within an hour.
Ways in: a cicchetti and bacaro tour, the essential Venice evening; a cooking class, ideally starting at the Rialto market; a Prosecco Hills day to Valdobbiadene; an Amarone tour from Verona or Venice; Verona for its own food tours and classes.
What to eat: cicchetti of baccalà mantecato, sarde in saor and polpette; risotto al nero di seppia; bigoli in salsa; fegato alla veneziana; risi e bisi in spring; moeche, the soft-shell crabs, for a few weeks in spring and autumn; a spritz made with Select, not Aperol.
Cicchetti, bacari and the ombra
A bacaro is a small wine bar, often a counter and a few stools, and cicchetti are the snacks on it: crostini with baccalà mantecato, whipped salt cod; sarde in saor, sweet-and-sour sardines with onions; polpette; a slice of frittata; a fried something. You eat them standing with an ombra, a small glass of wine, and move to the next bacaro. The name ombra, “shade”, comes from the wine sellers who followed the campanile’s shadow across Piazza San Marco. Guided bacaro crawls are the best-reviewed thing to do in Venice after dark; see Venice food tours.
The Rialto market
The Pescheria, the fish market under its neo-Gothic loggia, runs Tuesday to Saturday from about half past seven until noon; the Erbaria produce market beside it opens most mornings except Sunday. Go early. The best cooking classes start here with the chef choosing the fish; see Venice cooking classes.
Wine within an hour
Prosecco comes from the hills between Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, an hour north, a UNESCO landscape since 2019 and a DOCG since 2009; Cartizze is the tiny cru at the top. Valpolicella, behind Verona, makes Amarone from grapes dried for months, and Ripasso, its lighter sibling; Soave is the white next door. Both regions work as day trips from Venice, and Verona is an hour away by fast train. See Prosecco tours from Venice and Valpolicella and Amarone wine tours.
Padua and Treviso
Padua, 25 minutes by train, has a covered market under the Palazzo della Ragione and food tours of its own; Treviso, the same distance, claims tiramisù and the radicchio. Both are half-day escapes from the crowds and appear in our Venice feeds.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best food tour in Venice?
An evening bacaro crawl in Cannaregio or around the Rialto with a local guide; the ones with thousands of reviews are consistent and well priced.
Is Venice expensive to eat in?
At the restaurants near San Marco, yes. At the bacari, a cicchetto is a couple of euros and an ombra the same, which is why the tours are good value.
Prosecco or Amarone as a day trip?
Prosecco for scenery and sparkling wine in a half or full day; Valpolicella for serious reds, best combined with Verona.
Read next: Venice cicchetti and bacari explained
How we choose
We list only experiences with a strong rating over a meaningful number of reviews and free cancellation where available, and we favour small-group and family-run hosts. FindEatLocal earns a commission when you book through GetYourGuide or Viator links on this page; it doesn’t change the price you pay. More about how we choose.