Venice: Our last supper at Osteria da Alberto

Nearly four months after returning from our trip, I finally am getting around to the last post from our Italy trip. Staying true to our strategy of eating at Slow Food endorsed restaurants, we decided to stop in at Osteria da Alberto for our final meal in Italy. The food here was simple, flavorful, and provided a fitting end to a fantastic culinary trip.

We started our meal with mussels with parsley and lemon and a big bottle of white wine. Like just about every other restaurant we went to in Italy, the house wine here was high in quality and low in cost.

Next, we had a seafood risotto. Usually I'm not that impressed with risotto. It's something I make often, and usually, I think that the stuff I make at home is just as good as anything I invariably pay too much for at a restaurant. That was not the case here. This was, hands down, the best risotto I have ever had. The rice was perfectly cooked. A lot of the time, risotto is overcooked so it gets all mushy, making it impossible to distinguish each grain of rice. Here, each grain had a little bit to it, but it was cooked just long enough so the interior wasn't chalky. The rice was perfectly flavored with a subtle seafood broth and bits of assorted seafood such as mussels, scallops, and fish.

We finished with squid cooked in its own ink served with polenta. Again, this dish was perfectly prepared. The squid was nice and tender, and the lightly grilled polenta was perfect for sopping up the tasty squid ink sauce.