at, I once lived in rooms for a month and ate in
all the restaurants in turn. Having had this experience I expect to be
believed when I say that the restaurants of Venice are not good. The
food is monotonous, and the waiting, even at what is called the best,
the Bauer-Gruenwald, say, or the Pilsen, is leisurely. Add to this that
the guests receive no welcome, partly because, all the places being
understaffed, no one can be spared for that friendly office, and partly
because politeness is not a Venetian foible. An immense interval then
elapses before the lista, or bill of fare, is brought, partly because
there is no waiter disengaged and partly because there seems to be a law
in Venetian restaurants that one lista shall suffice for eight tables.

Then comes the struggle--to find anything new either to eat or drink.
The lista contains in print a large number of attractive things, but few
are obtainable, for on an Italian menu print is nothing: it is only the
written words that have any relevance. The print is in Italian and
German, the reason being that Italians, Germans, and Austrians are the
only people who resort to restaurants. The English and Americans eat in
their hotels, en pension. (In Venice, I might say, all foreigners are
addressed first in German, except by the little boys in the streets
whose one desire on earth is to direct you to S. Marco and be paid for
their trouble. They call you _m'soo_.) Once a meal is ordered it comes
rapidly enough, but one has to be very hungry to enjoy it. For the most
part Venetian food is Italian food: that is to say, almost wholly veal
and paste; but in the matter of fish Venice has her specialities. There
are, for examples, those little toy octopuses which on my first visit,
twenty-five years ago, used to be seen everywhere in baskets at corners,
but now have disappeared from the streets. These are known as calamai or
calamaretti, and if one has the courage to take the shuddering first
step that counts they will be found to be very good. But they fail to
look nice. Better still are scampi, a kind of small crawfish, rather
like tenderer and sweeter langouste.

To the investigator I recommend the dish called variously frutta di mare
and fritto misto, in which one has a fried jumble of the smaller sea
creatures of the lagoon, to the scampi and calamaretti being added fresh
sardines (which the fishermen catch with the hand at low tide), shrimps,
little soles, little red mullets, an