Harkening Back to...Nope: Harry's Bar, Venice

When it's frigid outside and I'm shoveling feet of snow I think how only a short time ago it was Summer...

And when you reach Venice you have to turn in your motor car to be herded on and off water buses by attendants sporting rat tails (local tradition), unless there's a strike, but you'll have plenty of notice in that case.  The whole setup of the place strikes some as Disney-ish, but unlike a lot of other jaded travelers, I think Venice is great (nothing against Disney either).

You can almost totally avoid Piazza San Marco or the Ponte Rialto and still find enough to make the place memorable, which I suggest.  My favorite thing is to just stroll down the narrow alleys, crossing the minor canals and getting lost.  The winding waterways make it easy to lose your sense of direction, but you're never that far from anything.

And the remarkable thing is that without cars and with significant speed restrictions on boats it's silent.  All I need to do is find an empty piazza, decrepit but still showing glimpses of Gothic-Byzantine opulence, and I realize why I just enjoy the feeling of being there.  It took me until the third trip there to get that, but I think Nicole quickly got on board with that during our short honeymoon stay.

Being big Prosecco fans and knowing we were just offshore of Treviso and Valdobbiadene, we sampled many a bottle a Venezia.  And favoring it over champagne for almost every toast since we've known each other, we've used it to make mixes with fruit and other liquors, all of which descend from the Bellini.

Harry's Bar is often cited as the birthplace of the Bellini; Prosecco with white peach pulp mixed in. It's also reputed for its super dry martini, sucked down by guys like Ernest Hemingway and Alfred Hitchcock.

So I thought Harry's Bar would be reminiscent of the big band years, when club waiters in tuxedos were standard and life was lived in black and white.  Sometimes I just get it plain wrong, and Harry's is an example of that.
   

Risotto with Asparagus & Mushrooms

Maybe the joke's on us. We weren't trying to play dress up as though we'd just stepped off our yacht and were in search of other classy people who smoke Pall Malls. The objective was the original drink but we ended up spending an unjustified amount of money on an underwhelming dinner.

Based on our limited information we were imagining some kind of of haunt reminiscent of the good old days, an outdoor bar where we could pull up and be served aperitivi and stiff vodka drinks by slick bartenders, a dish or two of food scattered in between in the setting sun of La Serenissima. Instead we were immediately ushered upstairs since there's no outdoor bar to be found and the first floor is cramped.

We ordered a couple Bellinis off the bat, served up in thin stemless glasses, flat and as if they were poured from a big pitcher.  Was it even real peach?  Maybe it was the same stuff sold in soda bottles in coffee bars around the city.  Then we stuck around against better judgement to look at a food menu averaging about 40 Euros a dish. Indeed, and we knew there wasn't much to be said for its reputation as a gastronomic destination, as with anything Cipriani, who now own it. Nicole had a decent risotto with asparagus and I had a tender but salatissimo dish of cuttlefish cooked in its ink.  The waiters serve each dish from a tableside platter on to your dinner plate, and the portions are more than any one diner is going to eat, so it makes the prices a little more understandable.  But what if you don't want an automatic doggy bag?   

Pearly white Polenta and tar black Cuddly Fish

We were left thinking, are all the other people tricked into it like us? It didn't seem that way. It would be unfortunate if the other patrons actually thought this was something to behold, but they ate it up.  I did a number on my napkin from all the squid ink though so maybe the dry cleaning costs explain the whole sham.   

We didn't hate our Harry's experience and we concluded by laughing at our carelessness for walking in and being inundated with the white glove business that we normally snicker at. I've had better Bellinis elsewhere (like 40 Hogan Trail, mixologist Gina Saponare), so this place is definitely one I will dissuade others from seeking out in the future.

You're better off enjoying a glass of Prosecco in your hotel room and squeezing some ripe white peaches between your fingers to a pulp (feels good) and shmearing it into your glass if you really want one.