I have been writing about restaurants that are in or near cultural landmarks: museums, opera houses, historic sites. This column is an exception, as it is about one of the few restaurants in the world that is a cultural landmark in its own right: Harry’s Bar. It is an even more remarkable fact given that the restaurant is in the midst of probably the most culturally dense city in Europe, Venice.
I must declare that I have eaten at Harry’s at least once, sometimes twice, on every one of the many trips I have made to Venice since 1977. I love it. Not everyone does – or maybe it’s more accurate to say that not everyone gets it. I took a friend there on his first visit and he complained that “the chairs are too low, the drinks are too small and the prices too high.” All of which are arguably true, especially if you go at the height of the tourist season when like everywhere else in town it’s too darned crowded and €22 for a small Bellini seems daunting.
If you’ve never been before, go between October and Easter and don’t look at the prices, even though you will get a much bigger bill in any number of lesser restaurants in New York or London. What Harry’s has, almost uniquely, is an unequaled sense of chic informality and professionalism which the late Jan Morris found quintessentially Venetian: “the diligence and craftsmanship, the Slav strength and Italian grace, the touch of gravity and the talent for display.”
Also unique is the regular presence of 93-year-old Arrigo Cipriani, son of the founder. Few restaurants have a better backstory. Harry Pickering, the alcoholic son of a rich Boston family, was sent to Venice to dry out in the late 1920s and predictably found a new best friend in the bartender at the Hotel Europa, Giuseppe Cipriani. Cipriani ended up lending the young man 10,000 lire, which he subsequently paid back with handsome interest of 40,000 provided Cipriani used it to open a bar named in gratitude after the Bostonian. Opened in 1931, Harry’s feels like the bar of an art deco liner: lots of polished wood, sinuous tables and chairs, and a superb fleet of white-jacketed staff. You can still treat it as a bar: a cocktail or a glass of wine and one of their toasted ham and cheese sandwiches can be satisfying, but that would be to miss the superb cooking of Venetian dishes. Try the liver and onions, bigoli with anchovy sauce or the Harry’s bar classics like the baked taglioni with ham. Sit upstairs in the slightly more formal dining room with an excellent view of San Giorgio Maggiore and the Punta della Dogana or downstairs, which I prefer, for a slightly funkier experience. House wine by the carafe is good and fairly priced. Do not miss the best chocolate ice cream in the world. A huge bowl, really enough for three, is €26. I regret to say that with a little help from Lady G, I ate the whole thing. It all comes to about €100 to €150 a head.
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Venice gets an unjustifiably bad rap for food. This is unsurprising in a city with 50,000 residents and 100,000 tourists a day at peak times. There are plenty of clip joints dishing out some sort of “Italian” food to customers who will never come again. However, Venetian cuisine is outstanding – it helps if you like fish – and there are great must-visit classic restaurants in town as well as ones to discover.
One of my habitual excursions is the day trip to Torcello, one of the first islands in the Venetian lagoon to be settled by refugees from the mainland in the chaotic decades following the collapse of the Roman Empire. The ultimate combination of beauty and luxury is a visit to the Byzantine-cum-Romanesque basilica with its magnificent mosaics, followed by lunch at Locanda Cipriani.
The Locanda is temporarily closed, so Lady G and I instead boarded a vaporetto for Burano, an island famed for its colorfully painted houses, its lacemaking and its fishermen. Its charms alone are not quite vaut le voyage unless you also book lunch at Da Romano.
It’s my favorite kind of restaurant. Walls covered in good and bad artwork, faded photos of celebrities who’ve visited (Jane Fonda, Robert De Niro and various famous, but unfamiliar, Italians), lots of jolly families and a fleet of bustling waiters. Oh, and a wonderful wine list and great cooking, all offered at surprisingly reasonable prices. Their celebrated fish risotto is perfectly cooked; rice with a little bite bathed in a savagely reduced stock made from an assortment of the lagoon’s fish.
In spite of the huge helpings, we made our way through risotto, a brilliant mixed fish grill and pistachio cheesecake for dessert. It was impossible to resist a snooze on the return vaporetto.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s December 22, 2025 World edition.
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