Lunch In Venice: Pane Vino e San Daniele

  Having been here now in Venice a week or so, I feel like it's time to share a little yumminess. 

  And what a place to share..

  Pane Vino e San Daniele is a wonderful spot to spend a leisurely couple of hours enjoying the best of Venice. 

  The menu is super vegetarian friendly, and this location offers a fabulous outdoor dining space on a very quiet piazza. 

  Big plus....it's about a 5-10 minute walk from our apartment. Sweet.

  I recommend making a reservation. We stopped by in the morning, around 10, and made a 1pm reservation for  outdoors...I'm glad we did, as it was busy, even on a Thursday....

  The gentleman who waited on us did not speak English(always a good sign, in my opinion....), but I had no problem getting across our culinary wishes...

  I should mention that they are famous for their Prosciutto Crudo San Daniele... a pork product that is very special. Not our cup of tea, of course....but something some of you out there would appreciate...

  For the two of us, it was an easy choice....

  To start, we shared a wonderful buratta cheese with roasted cherry tomatoes and mixed baby greens. Superb....

This was served with a local olive oil to drizzle as we pleased....and, oh, we pleased.....

Heavenly.....

What was left after we were finished....

  There were a few good veg choices for our main dish, and we decided on two different plates.
  Johnny had me order for him, and I did... but I knew what I wanted since earlier in the morning when we first made our reservation.

  "Fregola" is a pasta from the southern areas of Italy. It's sort of like couscous, but roasted, I think, and kind of rustic. I have wanted to try it for some time, and this was the time...
  Here it is served with zucchini and finished with lavander oil...a really surprising combo. I would eat this again, gladly. So good. The texture was great, too.....

Fregola, my new friend!

  Johnny opted for "pasta fagioli", a classic Italian dish.. pasta and beans in a soup, almost. Also really good....

Tiny pasta with beans....yum.

  The "contorni", or veg side dishes, were equally fantastic....

  I had a caponata, and Johnny went with zucchini with mint. Outstanding on both accounts!!!

My caponata....eggplant, peppers, onion, zucchini, pine nuts & raisins. Oh, man, this was soooo good...

Johnny's zucchini with mint. A dish I hope to replicate back home. Simple, yet........not.

  They did not offer a house wine, so we went for a chardonnay from Friuli. I know that this northern region of Italy has great white wines....so we enjoyed.

Ummm....no dinner tonight, I'm thinking....

Yep.

 Since we had come this far, why not indulge in a sweet treat?
 We shared this tasty semi-freddo, with a couple of espressos... Oh, yeah....

Cafe semi-freddo, with a cinnamon-lavander caramel and toasted walnuts.
MMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

  While finishing our fab lunch, Johnny dreamed of things to be..........

  Hey, it could happen........we dream, we work hard, we dream some more... and who knows?

  In the mean time, we look forward to our next meal at: