MET Restaurant

at the Hotel Metropole

Riva degli Schiavoni, 4149

Venezia

Tel : +39 041 524 0034

The food:

Potatoes, fondue and porcini mushrooms (Patate, fonduta e funghi porcini)

Mantova-style pumpkin ravioli (Ravioli di zucca alla mantovana)

Spaghetti with herbs and smoke (Spaghetti erbe e fumo)

Braised eel and porcini mushrooms (Anguilla in umido e funghi porcini)

The wines:

2013 Quintarelli Bianco Secco	90
2010 Peter Dipoli Sauvignon Voglar	92

The MET is a one Michelin-star restaurant located in the upscale Metropole hotel, about a ten-twelve minute walk along the shoreline from Venice’s famous St. Mark’s square. 

The restaurant’s interior is beautiful, if a little ornate, with almost gawdy oriental touches in the Venetian tradition. The minute you walk in and sit down, you realize it’s a place that deserves its Michelin star. The food and wine list are of that level, and service is highly professional. But there is one caveat: the wine list is simply too expensive. Clearly Venice attracts moneyed visitors, but I found some of the prices on the wine list to be simply too much above a normal markup.

Potatoes, fondue and porcini mushrooms

Chef Luca Veritti has come up with a curious and inventive menu in which the same main ingredient is prepared two different ways: a traditional recipe followed by a more innovative, modern interpretation. And so it is that a true Italian classic, and one of the country’s greatest pasta dishes, pumpkin ravioli (the traditional Mantova recipe dates back to the 1500s and consists of egg pasta ravioli with a slightly sweet pumpkin and mostarda filling) is revisited in the “contemporary” version as a pumpkin soup with juniper marinated trout and a hazelnut butter-polenta sauce.

Mantova-style pumpkin ravioli

I came away impressed with the culinary talent behind the stoves after this recent lunch The potatoes, fondue and porcini mushrooms appetizer was filling and savory; so good in fact I could have easily gobbled down another portion. Even better (in fact, the best dish of the day), was the aforementioned Mantova-style pumpkin ravioli (Ravioli di zucca alla mantovana), to which a generous dusting of parmigiano reggiano aged 36 month added further complexity depth and lusciousness. I matched these dishes with the lovely 2013 Quintarelli Bianco Secco Veneto, a blend of different local and non-local white grapes including Garganega, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Trebbiano Toscano, and Saorin, a rare native grape. Perhaps Quintarelli’s least famous and least known wine, the Bianco Secco was  bright and fresh, with sneaky concentration to its orchard fruit and white peach aromas and flavors. It held up better than expected to both dishes, with its cleansing acidity readying the mouth for more morsels of food.

Spaghetti with herbs and smoke

I then moved on to the truly delicious 2010 Peter Dipoli Sauvignon Voglar Alto Adige, one of Italy’s top five or six Sauvignon Blancs. The 2010 had a little bottle age on it, gaining in complexity, with the gooseberry, sage, rosemary and lime notes really deepening with aeration. The very pure and not at all grassy aromas and flavors matched well with my next two dishes, complementing rather than overpowering them. The spaghetti herbs and smoke dish, a modern take on the classic Friulian cjalsons pasta, was laced with ricotta, aromatic herbs, lemon and a dollop of caviar, which made for a delightful combination. Another contemporary dish, the braised eel and porcini mushrooms, though excellent, took creativity too far. Why bother calling this eel if white sea bass was used?

For the most part, Venice’s best eating spots remain small family run osterie and bacari), but MET is well worth a visit, especially given Venice’s lack of upper scale dining options. True to the line that Arnold Schwarzenegger made famous…I’ll be back.

-- Ian D’Agata