Here’s how one dines in the restaurant opened in a secret garden in Venice

Cannaregio is perhaps the most underrated district of Venice, the quietest and most spiritual. Here you will not find herds of tourists in flip-flops, despite enchanting places such as the Ghetto, a true place of soul-recharging. It is here that the NH Collection Venezia Grand Hotel Palazzo dei Dogi is tucked away, where since last June the restaurant Da Lorenzo – Al Giardino Segreto by Paulo Airaudo has opened, carrying the signature of the Italian-Argentinian chef (here our interview) with six Michelin stars in various locations around the world and who in Italy has another establishment in Florence, Luca’s.

Chef Paulo Airaudo

An enchanted garden

First of all, it is worth telling the story of the restaurant’s name, the secret garden hidden within the hotel, an enchanted place of more than 2,000 square metres created in the 18th century by Lorenzo Patarol, author of the Erbario of the same name which today constitutes the oldest botanical collection preserved at the Natural History Museum of Venice.
I visited it on a rainy day, which on the one hand made my walk hurried and dripping, but on the other seemed to make everything even more reflective. The garden ends in a jetty overlooking the lagoon, from which one can see the islands of Murano and San Michele and, on clear days (not my case), the Alps. Even today in the garden there are rare plants, centuries-old specimens and historical elements – among them an ancient icehouse, a little bridge and a statue of the Virgin Mary, which visitors can freely view.

A corner of the secret garden

Many inspirations

It is in this setting that the restaurant Da Lorenzo (naturally the name is a dedication to Patarol) is located, a venue destined to find its place among those worth highlighting in the lagoon city, which today are no longer as few as some years ago, though not too many either. A place where one can taste an interesting cuisine halfway between the many inspirations of the Argentinian chef, the southern Italian flair of resident chefs Salvatore Paladino and Alfonso Esposito Ferraioli, and the territory itself, which emerges in many parts of the menu with its many products, from the herbs and vegetables of Sant’Erasmo to the fish products of the lagoon.

the dining room

Two menus at 170 and 120 euros

I tried the more extensive tasting menu, Emozioni, which costs €170 (the other, Sensazioni, costs €120 and drops two courses, the fresh pasta and the meat). It begins with a consommé, which according to the menu should have been of Sant’Erasmo artichoke but which, due to its unavailability – not signalled, however, in the menu, not even in the one I would be given at the end of the evening – became of tomato bruschetta: warm and refreshing, a pleasant oxymoron.

Then a parade of four snacks all playing with mimesis: a taco masquerading as sarde in saor, a Sicilian cannolo filled with hunter-style squid, a brioche wafer with saffron mayonnaise, pea cream and black olive crisp evoking risi e bisi, and a beetroot variation with umeboshi gel, goat’s cheese cream with mushrooms and goat’s cheese with mushrooms referencing the Ampezzo casunziei. Before the main courses there is also the bread service, which here, as in Niko Romito’s doctrine, becomes a proper course: remarkable the ciabatta with sun-dried tomatoes and the mixed-seed crackers, less so the rosemary and oil focaccia and the fennel pollen breadsticks.

A special mention goes to the Normandy butter to which a mould (“you cannot imagine what we had to do to get one produced”, the restaurant manager Mauro De Martino confides to me) gives the shape of the Basilica of San Marco.

the chef welcoming

The starter

The main dishes are five: first of all a dry-aged amberjack carpaccio with roasted kombu seaweed oil, seasoned with Maldon salt, finished with Chioggia turnips, wild herbs and with the decisive touch of slightly spiced and smoked fennel juice (a touch personally claimed by Paladino) with leek oil adding acidity – a well-balanced dish that is a classic of Airaudo.

The first courses

Then two pasta dishes: a Spaghetto monograno Felicetti cooked in mantis shrimp extraction with tomato variation, sea grapes, balsamic herbs, lightly marinated mantis shrimp with salt and Java pepper – powerfully Mediterranean, satisfying and comforting (though perhaps the portion in such a journey is a little excessive). And a tortello filled with duck confit, creamed with emulsified butter, thyme and its jus, very successful: perhaps the dish of the evening.

The main courses

Then the two main courses. For the fish, a dry-aged monkfish tail, passed in yakitori with Japanese spices, coated with goji butter and accompanied by bagna cauda and a crisp asparagus: the best lies in the meatiness of the tail. For the meat, a Tuscan pigeon cooked on the carcass and “skewered” with onion cream, mushroom mayonnaise, a charcoal-grilled mushroom and pigeon jus. A good dish, but one already seen.

The desserts

Surprising desserts, despite the fatigue of the taste buds. In particular the main one, a panna cotta dressed with sweet potato caramel and oat and walnut crumble, finished with Maldon salt and seasonal flowers, and some drops of 25-year balsamic vinegar of Modena from Bonini, which manages to be at once light and yet sweet, avoiding the unbearable trap of the not-so-sweet sweet so trumpeted today.

The balance

A good dinner, which showed me a young talent, that of Paladino, a slight figure of a chef yet capable of giving his own personal imprint to Airaudo’s ideas. Other strong points: the rightly sustained rhythm of the dinner (I ate in a neat two hours, and timing is increasingly important in contemporary fine dining), the substantial service fabric of De Martino, a maître of other times, and the talent of sommelier Varvara Viarshynina in offering pairings that are more emotional than technical.

the secret garden

A sore point, however, was the almost total absence of other customers, albeit with some mitigating factors: the rainy Wednesday evening, the eccentric position of the restaurant, far from tourist flows, the too discreet signage from the outside, the short time since the restaurant’s opening. On some of these factors one can work; the material is there, time we hope too: it would be a pity if a city hungry for high-level venues did not grant this one its chance.