In Venice, Italian accents by the glass
THERE’S a three-way intersection about a 20-minute walk from Saint Mark’s Basilica. It’s somewhere between two canals. (Just like everything in Venice is between two canals.) Here, you’ll find a small grocer and a couple of bacari, the wine-and-small-bites joints that are the Venetian answer to pubs.
Aside from an internet cafe nearby, they’re all old-fashioned businesses with modern storefronts in weathered buildings that look like they’ve been around since the fall of the Republic of Venice in 1797.
But on a chilly afternoon this past winter, my attention was drawn to one wide window that looks in on a cosy, sepia-toned bar with nary a wine bottle in sight.
Time Social Bar was just opening for the evening when I wandered in last winter. The bartender handed me the cocktail menu, an enticing mix of classic recipes, creative inventions and decidedly Italianaccented versions of familiar drinks.
The house Sazerac, for one, substitutes the absinthe that traditionally is used as a rinse for Sambuca.
The bartender, Eleonora Contessi, had only recently started on the bar after helming the morning coffee shift.
As she mixed my drink, she told me that she’d come to Venice after high school in 2012 to study economics and Japanese. After she got her degree, she waitressed at the Hard Rock Cafe in the city centre, where she worked with Alessandro Beggio, who opened Time in 2016.
With the cocktail wave cresting in other parts of the world, she saw an opportunity to be part of Venice’s own impending cocktail renaissance.
“Venice has always had grand hotels – legendary ones like Metropole and Danieli – and they all served cocktails in their bars, but more recently for a long time, people perceived cocktails as something for a disco bar,” she told me.
“We’ve also always been famous for wine and wine bars, so maybe that’s why the cocktails scene isn’t so developed. But that’s changing.”
And with that she suggested I try the Pear Cheers, a vodka drink with pears and honey shaken with, of all things, ricotta cheese, which is strained out.
It was a beguiling balance of rustic flavours with just a whisper of sweet cream. Changing times, indeed.
Venice’s imbibing history is long and wonderful. Caffe Florian, an elegant institution that opened on the main square in 1720, is said to be the oldest cafe in Italy.
The majestic hotel bars that Contessi referenced, the epitome of antique grandeur, are the stuff of fairy tales.
The fabled Harry’s Bar is an anomaly
for not being in a hotel, but it’s the most celebrated bar of all, as it lays claim to Venice’s most famous drink, the Bellini.
The city is indeed upping its cocktail game lately, but still, a trip to Venice without visiting Harry’s is simply out of the question.
Yes, it’s part of the mighty
We’ve also always been famous for wine and wine bars, so maybe that’s why the cocktails scene isn’t so developed. But that’s changing. Alessandro Beggio, owner of Time
Cipriani empire, which is synonymous with extravagant Italian restaurants in New York, Hong Kong and elsewhere, but Harry’s Bar is far more famous for its celebrity habitues ( Hemingway wrote about drinking there) and small dishes of giant complimentary olives, and bartenders who wear crisp, white jackets, barely smile and serve martinis in undersized glasses.
I found the room to be quite drab and the food and drink an exercise in price- gouging, but the stories of times past were captivating.
Lauren Bacall, Orson Welles and Truman Capote drank here – and legends die hard.
If Harry’s calls Venice’s recent past to mind, Il Mercante di Venezia offers a very modern narrative of ancient history. The bi-level bar, which opened in 2016, is retrofitted into a splendid, historical cafe.
There’s a marble bar by the entrance, but my friends and I opted to kick back upstairs on comfy couches.
The menu features an illustrated Silk Road map and collectively the drinks chronicle Venetian traveler Marco Polo’s stops along the route.
Those cocktails are as exotic as I imagine his journey east was.