Gluten Free in Venice

Venice was on my bucket list and is now crossed off! That’s not to say I wouldn’t go again…I absolutely would love to go back.

In this post, I’ll tell you about my experience as well as my research before the trip- the websites and App I used. During my 48 hours in Venice, I ate pizza and lasagne and…would you believe it….tiramisu and macaroons.

There were some ‘Coeliac Heaven’ moments and, unfortunately, a low moment too.

Planning Ahead

I did my homework and created a list of restaurants around Venice which had good gluten free reviews. The website https://www.findmeglutenfree.com was particularly useful for this. I then plotted these restaurants out on a map using an app on my phone (Ulmon Offline Maps).

TIP ALERT! Always try and get the building number and district for your restaurant. See Resource List section below.

This planning proved to be time well spent as it meant less stress at mealtimes, trying to find suitable restaurants.

Travelling Food Supplies

I took a gluten free sandwich as my emergency supply until I could locate somewhere to eat in Venice. I also had a supply of savoury crackers, flatbreads and oat and fruit biscuits to see me through to meal times (listed below).

Avoiding the Queues #1: Palace Ducal

On our first evening, we walked past a smart looking restaurant called Bar Ristorante Da Gino . It was around the corner from the guest house where we were staying in Dorsoduro. It turned out that they had gluten free pasta so we decided that we might go there for dinner later.

We headed off sightseeing to the Palace Ducal using the vaporetto (water bus). The palace was open until 7pm, so, at 6pm we had to wait in a very short queue. This was an ideal time as the day trippers had been and gone. (The tickets were €25 each and included entry to a couple of museums. It’s a shame that we couldn’t just get tickets for the palace alone as we knew there wasn’t time for the museums in our itinerary.)

Having worked up an appetite, we made our way back to Ginos.

I ordered the gluten free lasagne. Gluten free bread was served whilst we waited for our meal. The lasagne itself was a rather small portion when it arrived. I was grateful for the bread that I had eaten while we waited.

Gluten Free Problems

The next morning, I didn’t feel great. It’s hard to describe the feeling but it definitely felt like low level gluten poisoning (from experience!).

I had an unsettled stomach and a feeling of nausea. I suspect that the bread and the pasta in the lasagne at Ginos had been gluten free but there was some level of contamination. I decided not to risk going to Ginos for breakfast. We looked at alternative options nearby. There was the American hotel but they only catered for hotel guests. Another local restaurant didn’t open until later. I did have some gluten free bread with me but my stomach wasn’t interested in bread.

As we were booked on a walking tour at 11am, I suggested that we head in the direction of the tour meeting point and try to find an eating spot near there. I referred to my offline Venice map with my restaurants marked out. A restaurant called Ristorante Pizzeria Malibran was nearest to our meeting point. It’s part of a hotel and when we eventually located the restaurant, they were just shutting down after breakfast. They would not be ready to serve again until 11.30am.

We had a wander round and asked at a few cafes about gluten free options using my coeliac restaurant card. This reminded me that despite people saying how well coeliacs are catered for these days, there can be times when it’s a challenge. On top of my general feeling of being unwell, I was hungry and guilty. Guilty that my husband himself had not eaten in the hope that we’d both eat together.

We walked past a bacari (bar serving small snacks). Not the kind of place I’d expect to get breakfast, but…desperate times…!
I knew that bacari offer cichetti (a bit like tapas). I popped in to see if they had something suitable. The girl at the counter struggled to help even with the aid of the coeliac card (see link below).

In the end I saw some rosemary potato wedges and grilled courgette slices that looked like they just had oil on them. She warmed them up and served them, probably thinking it was a strange combination. Six wedges and four courgette slices later, we headed off to find the starting point of our walking tour.

Two hours later, our tour finished close to the starting point. My stomach felt somewhat better and my appetite was returning. We went back to the Ristorante Pizzeria Malibran for lunch. They had gluten free spaghetti and pizza on the menu but that all sounded too heavy for my delicate stomach. I chose salmon and potato.

Avoiding the Queues #2: Viewing Great Paintings

We continued with our itinerary for the day which was mainly to view great paintings in churches across Venice* rather than in an art gallery. This was followed by a trip to the Lido island.

On the walk back to our accommodation, I bought some Schar cupcakes and and Philadelphia cheese from the corner grocery store. There were four cupcakes in the pack. They were very large and quite dense. Not the best, but you know how you have to sometimes deal with ‘survival before taste’?
I used the Philadelphia spread on my crackers and had a couple of these as a snack.

Gluten Free Tiramisu

I’d seen great reviews for a place called Antico Dolo. It was supposed to be near the Rialto Bridge…and it was.  Some of the side streets are very narrow passages and somehow we managed to miss a few turns weaving in and out of the restaurant tables along the front of the grand canal.

The restaurant was intimate and cosy with a friendly service. It was fairly pricey but the gluten free reviews were great. I had gluten free penne pasta with seasonal vegetables. It was pretty much grated carrot and courgette, penne and oil. There was no sauce but it was surprisingly tasty.

For desserts I had to order the gluten free tiramisu. It was €10! But I haven’t had it in over 10 years since I was diagnosed…so it had to be done. The tiramisu tasted great but it was a shame that there was only a single sponge finger in one half of the tiramisu.

Avoiding the Queues #3: Basilica San Marco

Quick start breakfast the next morning was a Schar cupcake and some gluten free crackers with Philadelphia. We’d made our way to Basilica San Marco by 9.45am to beat the queues. I’m so glad we got the ‘skip the line’ tickets as the queue for these tickets was considerably shorter than the regular queue.

From there we were trying to locate another restaurant on my list but we couldn’t find it. Possibly because I had pinned it on my App by street name.

Gluten Free Macaroons

Walking on, I stopped to admire a shop window full of brightly coloured macaroons. Then I noticed some of the packs stated they were gluten free….yippee! I spent some time contemplating whether to get vanilla or chocolate or… Unfortunately, when I went inside, they only had lemon or orange stocked on the shelf…oh well, better than no macaroons.

We stopped at a cafe where I ordered tea as I indulged in the macaroons. I noted that they did have a couple of gluten free sponge options pre-wrapped at the cafe counter too.

Speaking of macaroons, has anyone found any gluten free macaroons in any UK stores?

Getting through the last of our itinerary at the church of San Sebastian in the Dorsoduro district, we headed to OKE for lunch. I decided on a prosciutto and mushroom pizza. After some initial confusion, the waiter was able to confirm that the pizza was cooked in a separate oven. A lovely meal eaten canal side to end my trip.

How to Find Addresses in Venice

Venice is divided into six districts (sestieri) in Venice. When locating addresses, don’t use the street name as your main search criteria. The street names are mainly descriptive of their location or of their history. For example, a street name may translate to ‘the street by the church’. There could be lots of streets with this name as there are over 100 churches in Venice! Each property in each district in Venice has a unique door number. As long as you know the district and the door number, you can find an address.

Resource List

Website to research restaurants: https://www.findmeglutenfree.com

Italian Coeliac Restaurant card: http://www.celiactravel.com/cards/italian/

Snacks:

• Nairn’s Gluten Free Flatbreads in rosemary & sea salt
• Nairn’s Gluten Free Biscuit Breaks Oat & Fruit
• Nairn’s Gluten Free Cracked Black Pepper Wholegrain Crackers

Restaurants visited:

• Ostaria Antico Dolo, Ruga Rialto, 778, 30175 Venezia
• Ristorante Pizzeria Malibran, Cannaregio, 5684 – Venezia
• OKE, Dorsoduro, 1414, Venice

App name: Venice Offline City Map by Ulmon. I was able to mark my accommodation, the places I wanted to visit and my list of gluten free restaurants. This allowed me to easily work out my nearest restaurant.

Checklist:

*I was inspired to view the paintings in churches rather than in art galleries by this article in the Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/italy/veneto/venice/articles/venice-church-art/