Dalla Marisa

Rio della Crea, Venice, May 24, 2011—

WE SPENT A MONTH HERE ten years ago, and collected a number of eating-places. Fortunately I wrote home about some of them; unfortunately the journal I kept, and Lindsey's, and our annotated guidebooks, were all borrowed by French gypsies and have not yet been returned. So we do the best we can by memory and nostalgia, and will be busy these next few weeks correcting mistaken impressions.

Among them, my misattribution of an excellent dinner we'd had at the Ristorante Tre Archi, only a few meters from our apartment this year. I attributed it to another restaurant a little further up the Canale di Cannaregio: dalla Marisa, highly recommended by Edward Behr in his quarterly The Art of Eating. We went up there for lunch today: pasta; primo; contorno; wine; water.

I had spaghetti pomodorini: cherry tomatoes, bits of feta cheese, eggplant. It was good, but it arrived far too late: my companions had already finished their pastas long since. My polpettone — ground meat and flavorings, amounting to an Italian-style “Salisbury steak”, was no more than routine. The price is right: with a quarter-liter of wine and another of water this amounts to €15. But I can't recommend the cuisine. Maybe dinner is better.

Prosecco and red wine in carafe

• Trattoria dalla Marisa , Fondamenta San Giobbo, Cannaregio 652, Venice; 041 720211 ‎