La Bitta but no bill-a

You know you've been in Venice too long when you glimpse a heart-stopping vignette — a particularly lovely arched bridge, a yellow boat, the late sun offering a gentle light — and you're too jaded to unzip your purse and pull out a camera.

Also too full, I was, from last night's dinner at Restaurant La Bitta, just off Campo S. Bernaba, where carefully prepared but unfussy food finally met up with reasonable prices, just-what-you-want atmosphere and warm service. Tired and cold, too, Venice having switched faces as quickly as a tourist trying on Carnivale masks, from intensive, humid heat to a Friday night thunder-and-lighting show and drastically dropped temperatures. I spent the day wrapped in scarves, not having packed for the chill wind.

Despite the cold, we sat where we had previously booked, in the tiny giardino (reservations are a must at popular, 8-year-old Bitta) draped with ivy and offering a view of the ubiquitous swifts with their sharp silhouettes carving up a square of sky high overhead. Here, I finally experienced the attraction of two popular antipasti that, on American menus, have always struck me as pallid and uninteresting: caprese salad and proscuitto with melon. Insalata Caprese con Burrata (E10, burrata refers to the type or region of the cheese, I believe) encompassed a fat purse of fresh white cheese that wept milky richness over the grape tomatoes and lettuce. Orgasmic. Ossocolo de Casado Con Melone (E10) brought together paper-thin ossocolo (a cured ham) and sweet, ripe (this is key and rarely accomplished in the U.S.) honeydew with just a dustling of pepper. Ossocolo has a more pronounced salty, beefy flavor than conventional American-made prosciutto and is a bit drier in texture. Eye-opening. Oh, that's what the Italians are on about when it comes to these two dishes.

I remarked to Bonnie, who agreed heartily, that so much of Italian cooking is really quite easy and straightforward, but impossible to achieve properly without ingredients that approach perfection in freshness or manufacture. Easy for Bitta to make such starters with such cheese, meats and produce.

More work goes into the dish of the night for me, the owne'rs grandmother's recipe for Conlio in Tecia, rabbit stew (E10), a sort of coq au vin with rabbit, richly larded with pancetta and bathed in brown sauce with a breath of cloves and perhaps allspice, a typically Venetian touch (first time I craved steamed rice since I've been here). The smashed potatoes with which it was serve were also flecked with bits of pancetta, the potatoes so fresh they tasted of the musty earth (in a Good Way).

I'll leave it to Bonnie (alohafromveneziaredux on blogspot) to discuss dessert; it's her story, of the search for the perrect panna cotta. My tira mi su (invented in Treviso, near Venice) was wonderful. For all this, plus Bonnie's two glasses of wine and my espresso, plus tip, we paid under E80. (And it tells you how steep are prices here that that seems like a bargain, since it's about $150.)

Some observations, as I prepare to attend Mass on Isla San Giorgio Maggiore in a Benedictine monastery designed by Palladio:

Sitting on the vaporetto yesterday, it seemed to me there are two kinds of Italian men. Type 1 is appealing, dishevilled, with face hair and glasses and undoubtedly glorying in the title dottore or professore or possibly maestro. Type 2 is impossibly handsome with chiseled bone structure, fashionable clothes and hair that begs to be tossled; two-day facial stubble optional. There are other men, I'm sure, with paunches and receding hairlines and such, but they have escaped my notice.

Venetian restaurants have a peculiar habit that is beginning to annoy me intensely. The first course arrives rapidly (since we generally eat early and so are often surrounded by empty tables); grazie mille, I'm usually hungry however early we go. The following courses arrive in sedate succession. And then all action stops. The conto (the bill) never comes. You can ask for it. You can look bereft. You can gather up your things. Nothing works. What a contrast to the rapidity with which American servers tend to "drop the check" (often even before you've ordered dessert or a second cup of coffee). I am an enthusiastic but bird-like eater who does not care to linger at table once the food is done. Last night, chilled to the bone, intensely uncomfortable with an aching lower back (I pulled something), I actually left my money with Bonnie and walked out after waiting 15-20 minutes. It was another 15-20 before she emerged.

She was full of glee: She had spoken with the owner, who waited on us, and was so enthralled by her comments that she wrote them down. "What are you doing with that tira mi su," she demanded, eyeing my half-finished dessert. "Here," she said, "you do not order food you do not eat." They chatted about this for a while, and she insisted, literally insisted, that Bonnie, who had finished all her food and part of my rabbit and potatoes, too, felt in honor bound to eat the dessert. The woman then informed her that, at Bitta, you will never get the check unless you ask for it; you can sit there all night with nothing in front of you.

Bonnie thought this was charming. I thought it was indefensible. 1) If I'm paying for a dish, I'll eat as much or as little of it as suits my physical health and appetite (see my previous blogs on Venetian restaurants reactions to a request for a takeout container). 2) A server, in whatever country, should be alert to a table's needs, able to read, and willing to respond to, body language that screams "Let me out of here!"

While it's somewhat enlightening to hear her take on it, I'm pretty much appalled by this and it makes me want to take the remainder of my meals here in cicchetti bars (where you eat standing up and leave when you want) or in the form of take-away food. I resent being enslaved at $20 a plate! Harrumph!