Arts by Dylan: St. Mark's Canvas

Venice is a little like NYC in the sense that you can be round the corner and a block away from something truly spectacular and have no idea its there.  It's also nothing at all like NYC because it is almost impossible to get lost in NYC since it is a grid city and you are either East or West of broadway or heading uptown towards the Bronx and Long Island, or downtown towards Wall Street and Jersey City.  

 

In Venice you will get lost trying to find St. Marks, and that's 99% of the fun of Venice.  But also, there are some tourist restaurants and deal breakers in Venice just like Italy.  For example, restuarants that have their menu in English first are probably not ones you should go to, also restuarants that have a guy in front trying to get you to go in and eat are not ones you should probably go to.  The reason why is their customber base is tourists and not locals.  When a resturant's customer base is tourists it doesn't matter the quality of service or the food because once they are done eating they probably will never ever go back to the restuarant again in their life and tomorrow there will be another packed dinner service filled with people who will never eat there again.  So therefore I came up with two rules to help decide if a resturant is good or not. 

 

1. When you are walking, and see a restaurant, check to see if anyone is eating inside. If nobody is eating inside there is probably a good reason why nobody is eating there.  It's probably not that good of a restaurant.  This sounds simple, but that's also kind of the point. 

 

2. If you see people inside eating, do a little snooping, check to see if they look like tourists or locals.  If you see a bunch of tourists inside you might be okay, but if 70-90% don't look like they are tourists and they look like Italians just out to lunch, that's a Eureka! moment, and just go take a chance. 

 

This worked absolutely perfect for me on my trip to Italy.  I found a fantastic little restaurant just a little bit away behind some ally and around a few corners from St. Mark's square taht was a fantastic restaurant.  I looked inside, the place was busy, everybody in there was dressed with style which told me the customers were probably Italians and not foreigners, and I decided to give it a shot and I was rewarded with one of the all time best seafood pasta dishes I've ever had. 

Photographer: Dylan Carpowich