Original subtitles

- This is a really nice boat.

It's the fifth century.

You're an urban planner pitching an idea.

A city in the sea, you say, built on stilts,

canals instead of streets.

You can only get there by boat.

And incredibly, they built it.

Over a millennium or two,

Venice becomes the center of a world trading empire...

Silks, spices, ideas, and money, lots of it.

The Venetians live between earth and water.

It shaped their character... Salty, wise, and ingenious.

I've never seen anyone do that before.

I'm Stanley Tucci.

I'm Italian on both sides, and I'm traveling across Italy

to discover how the food

in each of this country's 20 regions

is as unique as the people and their past.

May I? Thank you.

How are you?

- Good. - Good.

Surrounded by wetlands...

These people are hunters...

You're a great shot.

And gatherers.

It's perfectly balanced.

Wow. Wow!

The sea brought the outside world to the Venetians

and fed their appetites.

Mmm!

So many different cultures right in a bowl.

Venice is the capital of the Veneto region.

It's flat, fertile, and damp...

Sheltered in the west by the Dolomites

and in the east warmed by the Adriatic Sea.

117 islands sit in this salty bay, the lagoon.

Venice is the largest.

No food is grown here.

It all comes in from the outside.

I want to eat what Venetians eat

in the places they go to eat it in.

A friend from here says I can do it

just two minutes from the Rialto Bridge.

Let's go.

My target is a wine bar, open for breakfast.

Okay, first, north down the Riva del Vin,

once full of wine warehouses...

Great priorities, the Venetians.

Take a right, and you're in a maze of alleyways.

It'd be easy to lose the way,

but the Rialto area is the fish market district.

You just have to follow your nose.

I could be hallucinating,

but would my mouth be watering?

- Hey.

- Buongiorno.

I found it.

It was 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Buongiorno.

All'Arco is abacaro, a neighborhood watering hole.

This one is run by Matteo Pinto

and has been in the family forever.

And these are cicchetti, a traditional Venetian snack.

It's only 8:30,

but a Venetian breakfast is eaten standing up,

washed down with a glass of wine

known as anombra, or shadow.

Ah.

Si.

This is fast food lagoon-style.

The wordcicchetti means "a nothing."

Ironic, because it's really something.

Yeah?

Oh, my God.

I love it.

I'm coming over here so I can see it.

Look... look at that. Oh, my God.

Okay.

You got some... oh, my God. That is so good.

The combination of flavors is incredible.

You have orange, truffle, dill, radicchio.

You have... Come? - Stracciatella.

- Stracciatella, which is... It's cheese,

and you have that incredible cross

between a scampi and a langoustine.

- You tasting? It's good? - It is so good!

- Mission completed. - That's incredible.

The Venetians invented cicchetti,

perhaps because merchants could eat them standing up

and haggle over a glass of wine.

If we want to talk about a Michelin star,

this should have a Michelin star.

There's a local saying...

"If you want to know the best place to eat,

ask a gondolier."

Luckily, there are around 400 of them.

This is Tobia Patias.

He's invited me to lunch at a popular boatman's hangout

just off the Grand Canal.

Ai 4 Feri Storti is cicchetti heaven, he says,

though gondola parking is limited.

So cheers. - Cheers.

Oh, my God.

Grazie.

- How about that?

More or less.

- That is dried tomato.

- I'll try it. Okay.

Mmm. That's really good.

Grazie.

- So gondoliers are eating cicchetti

sort of throughout the day.

It just keeps you...

In shape.

Rounded shape.

- Sarde in saor.

That's one of the most typical cicchetti

and dishes that we have in Venice

and comes from our great-grandparents.

They were using this as food

when they were going out for fishing in the lagoon

and were staying out 10, 15 days

before they were going back home.

- Oh, really? - Yeah.

- Right.

- And I really do love it.

This simple dish is a Venetian classic.

Another is baccala mantecato, the king of cicchetti.

It's made with a different fish

from a cold ocean far away.

Preserved by breezes on the Norwegian coast,

these cod are destined for Venice.

The trade started in 1432

when a shipwrecked Venetian merchant

went home with a gift of dried fish

and instructions on what to do with it.

I'll try the baccala mantecato. Si.

The fish is whipped with a little sunflower oil,

its creaminess coming from the cod's own gelatin.

It's available everywhere in the city...

A snack that is to Venice what pizza is to Naples.

It's really good.

And if you come to Venice,

you could just sort of eat like this throughout the entire day.

You don't even have to go to a restaurant,

but you should go to a restaurant.

But if you don't want to, you can do this.

I'm giving you that permission.

And I have something stuck in my mouth.

- At first light, Venice is already up and working.

Around 50,000 people live in the old city,

and they all want to eat something fresh.

Some of it comes from far away,

but a great deal of it comes from the lagoon.

It's their pantry.

I'm meeting my old friend, Chef Gianni Scappin.

Gianni. Oh, my God.

- Stanley.

- Everything okay? - Yes.

- Good. - How about you?

- Let's go. We'll go to the boat.

We met many years ago

when he was the food advisor on a movie I made

called "Big Night."

Ciao.

Do I give this to you? Okay.

All right. Grazie.

All right. Let's go!

Veneto born and raised,

Gianni is going to cook a Venetian classic with me...

Risotto al nero di seppia.

Yes?

No. I think it's good.

The ingredients are just a boat ride away

across the Grand Canal.

I don't understand it.

I literally don't understand it.

No. Insane.

Have you been to this market before?

- Yes. It is very old market. - Yes.

That's an understatement.

The Rialto Fish Market has been here

for 1,000 years.

Here, you're rubbing shoulders with home cooks

and restauranteurs.

Oh, my God. Look at that.

- Still alive, yeah?

- Si. - Si, si.

- And wait. What are these?

- It's like a tiny, tiny shrimp,

and they are so tiny that you don't clean anything.

- You don't have to clean 'em.

Yeah, you just eat the whole thing.

Okay, so that's cuttlefish. - Cuttlefish.

- And that's what we're here for.

Cuttlefish is a cousin of the squid and the octopus.

This is squid. - Squid.

- But this also has ink.

- It does, and some people confuse the...

You know, risotto nero di seppia...

They use squid because they cannot find the cuttlefish,

but a Venetian will tell you,

"No, you have to use cuttlefish."

- "Seppia" is Italian for "cuttlefish,"

and its ink is a key ingredient.

- Seppia...

- Si.

- Yeah, so let's get the little ones.

- Yeah.

- First, you have to extract the ink sac unpunctured.

It's easy if you're a tenth-generation fishmonger.

It looks like a pearl.

The precious ink is used to stain the risotto black,

making the dish as theatrical as Venice itself.

For our two-person feast, we're buying ten cuttlefish

then heading to my hotel to cook.

But the problem is, I just want to buy all of it.

I want to buy all of it, but I can't.

I'm staying in a hotel. I can't.

- Not a good idea. - I can't.

This fabulous dish is identified with Venice

because there are so many cuttlefish in the lagoon.

Maybe it's also because the whole fish is used,

and despite their wealth,

the Venetians are a thrifty people.

But we haven't been in a kitchen together for 20 years.

Did we even cook at my house?

- I think we did with your mom, your dad.

You know, your mom was the boss.

She was very judgmental.

- So cuttlefish risotto is a three-stage process,

one of them very messy.

- Just very gently, because you don't want to break the sac.

Look, see? - Where is the sac?

If you try it at home,

be prepared to repaint afterwards.

Oh, shit, oh, shit. - You just push...

- I broke it. - Great.

- Anyway, if there were people

that knew what they were doing here, it would work.

- Yeah. Exactly.

Squeeze it down.

- As well as the cuttles, we bought fish heads, tails,

and other bits to make a stock that we'll use in the rice.

Aren't those pieces too big, though?

- But they will braise.

We're gonna break down the fiber...

- Okay. - Become super, super tender.

- Okay.

- White wine. - I like to bring... go ahead.

That's good.

Now we can put a little bit of the passato di pomodoro.

Not too much, 'cause, remember, it's all about the black ink.

Now we put the stock. - Okay.

- You can cover until they become nice and tender.

- So that's stage one.

With the cuttlefish tenderizing,

now it's time for the rice.

- So do you have the onion?

Oh, let me see. Yeah, it's getting hot enough.

- Uh-huh.

- So you want to make sure you coat the rice with the fat.

- Arborio is the famous risotto rice,

but Gianni has chosen something richer.

It's turning white in the center.

- Yeah, this is all like a... - And that's what you want.

- Yes. - Yeah.

This rice is carnaroli.

- I'm gonna start putting my stock.

So there you go.

- Final stage... Shuttle fish into rice.

- Pasty stuff.

- Do you want me to put it all in?

- Yeah.

- The more ink, the blacker the rice.

- You see the pasty stuff on the bottom?

- Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

- That's probably very concentrate.

- Thanks to the spillages, our limited supply of ink

gives us a fashionable gray beige.

- This, as you can see, we just call it all'onda,

which is we create a big wave.

And then the cheese.

- Parmigiano.

- Right in the center. - Oh, that looks so good.

Mmm. - Tender, right?

- Mm, yeah. Perfect.

- They're not mushy.

- Yeah, not chewy, not mushy. - No.

And at the end,

you taste the actual cuttlefish flavor, right?

Just coming in. - Yeah. You do.

That's delicious.

But also, the rice is perfectly cooked.

So this is a quintessential...

- It is a classic Venetian food.

- I'm very happy to see you again.

- Hug again? - Yeah. Sure.

Thank you.

Risotto al nero di seppia is so great,

it's claimed by some neighboring countries

as their invention.

We can't really know, but in the Venetian cookbook,

the ink's been dry for a very long time.

- In the fall, the soft light in Piazza San Marco

makes it easy to step back more than 1,000 years

to the start of the Venetian Republic.

It was ruled by the doge, a sort of elected city boss.

Back then, a favorite fall delicacy,

eaten by doge and commoner alike, was duck.

Today, eaten with pasta,

it's still a warm treat for the cold months,

when Venetians have always hunted birds for the pot.

To find out more about their fowl habits,

I've come to Harry's Bar...

Grazie.

Favorite of Ernest Hemingway, writer, drinker,

and duck hunter.

The house martini is named after him.

That's good.

- Stanley... Nice to see you.

- Nice to see you, too. - Great to see you.

- Thank you for coming here. - Glad you're in Venice.

- Do you want water? Martini?

- Maybe water and martini and a coffee as well.

- Andrea di Robilant is a Venetian historian

with a passion for duck and hunting.

- It was a great tradition of the doge...

- Yeah.

- The ruling authority here in Venice,

to donate five ducks... - That's right.

- To every member of the main legislative body in Venice,

but there were about 1,000 of them,

so it meant 5,000 ducks.

- 5,000 ducks?

- 5,000 ducks before Christmas.

So imagine the rush.

They had special state-run boats

that would go out in the lagoon and shoot these ducks

so that they would make sure that they had

a big enough supply.

- Whoa.

- And there are some beautiful paintings...

Venetian artists depicting these scenes in the lagoon.

They would serve these ducks in any kind of...

you know, there was duck fricassee,

stewed duck, roast duck.

- Duck-duck. - All sorts of quack-quack.

- Oh, my God. - So, yeah.

- To reach the doge's happy hunting ground,

you head west out of the city

about 20 miles as the duck flies.

It's an environment hard to describe as mainland.

The solid-to-liquid ratio shifts

and becomes a vast wetland.

I'm absolutely frozen.

Okay, for this kind of hunt,

you have to get up before the ducks,

andthey get up before daybreak.

I wish I had brought some of those hand-warmer things.

- The first time for you? - Yes. First time.

- Important is that you manage the coffee.

- Oh. - I manage the rest.

- Okay. - Okay?

- I had no idea we'd start

with a lake full of sitting ducks.

Actually, they're wooden decoys,

and they'll encourage the real thing to drop by.

So me in here? Okay.

My host, Oliver Martini, aptly named,

is by day a top businessman.

In the past, he might have made doge.

- Now the autumn is particular

because many ducks arrive from the north,

and they stay here until March.

- There's thousands of them. - Yeah.

Okay, now we try to catch some, otherwise you don't eat.

- Most of these ducks are mallards...

And so numerous,

they're officially listed as unendangered.

Obviously, these particular specimens

are in quite a lot of danger.

- The dog will find him.

- This isn't just for sport.

Every duck shot here is destined for the table.

So how many did you get? Eight? Ten?

- 15. - 15?

Jesus.

That's a good lunch.

The doge's men hunted in an age

before conservation was a hot topic.

Oliver sees his role as environmental management

and animal husbandry.

- We having in Veneto about 500,000 ducks.

The population is increasing a lot.

- Over the last... - 10, 15 years.

10 times more than 10 years ago.

So here the job to conserve

and improve the environment is all what we do.

How do you say "magical" in Italian?

- Magico.

That's how you say it? - Magico.

- The same. - Unbelievable.

Just across the lagoon is the island of Torcello,

renowned as the place

where the people who built Venice first lived.

Grazie.

I've come to the restaurant Villa Seicento,

where its chef, Nicola Codolo,

is from a family of duck hunters.

A third-generation duck lover, he's cooking his take

on the Venetian classic sugo d'anatra, or duck ragu.

The elements are simple... Onions, carrot, celery, thyme,

and bay leaf are sauteed in olive oil.

A simple stock made with the bones stands ready.

The chopped duck is gently browned with the stock

in a little white wine, then it's slow-cooked,

because wild birds can be tough.

The scent of sugo d'anatra

has lured Andrea across the lagoon.

You have no idea how tired I am from hunting.

- Let's hear about it. - Yeah.

- I hope you didn't go out in the lagoon dressed like that.

- No, I didn't. - Didn't change your clothes.

- No. I was dressed appropriately, yeah.

But that landscape...

I really had no idea that that landscape existed

outside of Venice.

- Yeah. - I had never seen it before.

- Since the very beginning of Venetian history,

men have shot ducks.

That's why there are so many recipes.

- Yeah, yeah.

This dish refers back to the days of the doges.

Old recipes feature nutmeg, cinnamon, and saffron.

Today Chef Codolo plays with tradition,

switching noodle-shaped bigoli pasta for gnocchi.

- Ah, look. - Well...

- The result of your duck shooting, no less.

Yeah.

Buon appetito. - Buon appetito.

- Mm.

- Yeah. - This is good.

- Okay, I'd eat that, yeah. That's really good.

- It's really tender, the duck.

- It has, like, a sweetness to it.

What is that? - The carrots, the carrots.

- It's the carrots? - Yeah.

Gnocchi works very well with it, I think.

- Yeah.

- It's quite a rich taste. - Yeah, yeah.

- So you don't need a lot of it.

- Right, and so that whole experience

of the lagoon and, you know, and early morning

and the nature, all of that is captured by this.

- Yeah.

Venetians have always thrived on a diet of fish,

but when fall beckons,

their friends out in the Veneto marshes

have supplied an alternative protein...

Duck fit for a king, or at least a doge.

- At the height of its success,

Venice was called La Serenissima...

"the most serene."

It still is, despite the fact that every few years,

the Adriatic Sea floats in.

Maurizio?

Journalist Maurizio Danese knows the trials

of living by and in the sea

and also the best place to eat scartosso.

Like Venice, this delicious street food,

a jumble of fried calamari,

becomes more delicious from a final dose of sea salt.

Oh, wow.

Si.

Si.

Yes. Yeah.

For as long as Venice has existed,

every four years or so, extra-high tides in fall

and spring have done this.

It's called theacqua alta.

1966 was the worst in living memory.

2019 established a record for this century.

And, says Maurizio, the seawater has a legacy.

It's all salt?

'Cause they weren't salty enough.

The people of the lagoon are adaptable.

They have to be.

On the island of Mazzorbo, they regularly get wet feet.

Five miles northeast of Venice,

the place comprises a few homes, farmland,

and a medieval vineyard

that's been flooded hundreds of times.

How do you grow vines in a place

where the roots are soaking in brine?

Matteo Bisol's family

has been making wine in the Veneto since 1542.

- Italy's full of vineyard, but this is...

- I've heard that, yes. - Quite special.

This is a vineyard of dorona grape.

- Dorona? - Yes.

This grape variety, dorona,

adapt itself to survive exactly in this place,

so this is why you can find this variety

only in the lagoon of Venice.

- Really? - Yeah.

- For centuries, Venetians drank this local wine,

but the grape was the victim

of their increasingly sophisticated tastes.

Dorona went extinct, or so they thought.

In 2001, Matteo's father found a few surviving plants

and brought them here.

No sooner had the vineyard started producing

than the 2019 acqua alta arrived.

- Acqua altaand the salt,

it's a big stress for the vine. - Right.

- But this is very important for quality,

because to produce very good wine,

it's important that there has to be

a little stress for the vine.

- No pain, no wine. - No pain, no gain.

No pain, no wine.

We start with Venissa.

- First, we try a pre-flood bottle.

That's amazing.

It's really fresh.

It's dry, and it's soft. It's so soft.

- Yeah.

- And, understandably, not inexpensive.

- This is very special. - Is it? Oh.

- This is 2020 vintage.

- It's way too early to taste theacqua alta vintage,

but we do anyway.

- Yeah. - Okay. Cheers.

It's literally like licking a rock.

- But you can feel that this guy

is going to be something amazing,

because the beauty and the genius of Venice...

- Of Venice.

- To make something amazing out of impossible.

Yeah.

- Chef Chiara Pavan also makes something amazing

out of the apparently impossible.

She runs a restaurant within the vineyard,

cooking with things that thrive in the salty soil.

The restaurant is called Venissa.

Her food is of the lagoon and about it.

Hello? - Hi.

- Hi. - Nice to meet you.

- Good. Nice to meet you, too.

- I know you are a very good cook, so...

Not like you.

- No. I mean, I haven't tasted your food yet,

so, you know, we'll see.

We'll just see what happens.

- I know you have a Michelin star, don't you?

- Yeah, I do, but... - That's pretty good. Yeah.

- Michelin star is not my aim. It's not my joy.

- Right, right.

- I mean, I like clients. I like nature.

- Yeah. - I like cooking.

- So what's cooking?

It's spaghetti, obviously, but...

And what do you call this dish? - We call it spago oro.

- Golden spaghetti.

This is not traditional.

- With this dish, I want to express the flavor of lagoon.

So this is the garum. - Yeah?

Loved in the ancient world,

garum is liquid fermented fish with a delicate umami taste.

Oh, you can really smell that.

- The fish. Yeah. - The garum. Yeah, yeah.

- I give the sour flavor with dorona grape.

This is the unripe grapes.

In French, they call it verjus.

- Oh, ver... - Verjus.

- Oh, I've heard of that. Yes.

- So try to open it.

It's boiling.

- It's boiling? Is it fermenting?

- Yeah, it's fermentation, acid-lactic fermentation.

- Chiara uses leftover unripe dorona grapes

from the vineyard for her verjus

that is soft and acidic, like a light vinegar.

What did you just put in there? What was that you just put in?

- Sea asparagus and sea parsley.

Please. - So this is the sea asparagus.

This is the Italian version of samphire,

which has a really great...

Salty. - What happened?

No, no.

Sale.

It's very salty. - Really?

- But it's incredibly delicious.

Actual gold leaf,

as used by Renaissance artists.

Stop it.

Oh, it's delicious.

It's perfectly balanced.

Creamy, unctuous.

Wow. Wow!

Balancing them with sweet and sour tastes,

Chiara transforms salty ingredients into gold.

It's culinary alchemy.

I seek the deep.

Oh, fantastico.

Regularly dunk a community in seawater

for 1 1/2 millennia,

and you'd expect them to grow resilient.

The Venetians always see challenges as opportunities.

- For centuries, wealthy Europeans

depended on spices to enliven their food.

They came overland from Asia and Arabia

and entered through Venice.

Spice was like gold, only more valuable.

I'm headed to the north of the city

and a district called Cannaregio,

one of the six oldest parts of the city,

which means it's very old,

but it's home to something new and very spicy.

- Yes. - Okay.

- Hamed Ahmadi is from Afghanistan.

Having upset the Taliban,

he was in an Italian refugee camp

when he dreamed of giving Venetians this...

The tastes and flavors

of a place their ancestors once traded with.

His restaurant is called Orient Experience.

Hello.

- Hey, good morning, Stanley. - Hey. Good morning.

How are you? - I am fine, thank you.

- Good. Nice to see you. - Nice to see you.

- Thanks for meeting me. - Thanks for being here.

- Buongiorno. - Buongiorno.

- Buongiorno. Thank you. What are we drinking?

- The original recipe is from Iran,

and it's a mixture of, like, saffron, sugar water,

and, obviously, some prosecco.

Cheers, cheers.

Wow. That's delicious. - Yeah, yeah.

- Yeah, I love it.

- Would you like to see some of my colleagues?

- Yeah, sure. Why not? - Let's go.

- All right. Let's go.

Buongiorno. - "Good morning," we're saying.

- Hey. Hello.

- Hello. Good morning, guys. - Good morning.

How are you? Nice to meet you.

Ravioli? - Yeah.

- Beautiful.

How many different cuisines are you cooking?

Right, right.

No, it's fantastic.

Hamed's staff are all former refugees.

They keep the link to their own cultures alive

through the dishes they add to the menu.

Is it beef?

Oh, wow. Mmm.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. That's great.

- Yeah. - That's great.

Listen, we know that Italians...

- Mm. - Basically eat Italian food.

It's very hard to find anything except Italian food.

You might find a French restaurant.

You might find a Japanese restaurant.

It's not like other cultures. - That's true.

Actually, Venice is different from the rest of Italy.

- Is it? - Yeah.

We are saying, like, Venetians are like people from south

living in... - In the north.

Oh, really? - Yeah.

They're more open-minded? - Yeah, yeah.

- That's good.

Hamed's feast is a culinary United Nations,

sights and scents that underscore

the traditional Venetian openness

to outside influences.

I'm starving. Yeah.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God!

Wow. Thank you.

Yes.

Mmm. That's really good.

Oh, I love that.

With the lentils.

Wow.

There's a multiplicity of flavors here.

There's turmeric in the kabuli and cardamom in the rice...

Tastes brought home to Venice by Hamed's team.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Right, right.

Your restaurant attracts a lot of people.

- 80% with the residents and the students here

and 20% with tourists. - Right.

- 'Cause we work a lot with Venetians

and really thank Venetians that they are coming to us.

- Yeah, that's great. - Yeah.

- This project will work wherever there is

a refugee population who need a new start

and where diners are open to new experiences.

And Venice has been very accepting of you,

accepting of your food?

- I think we did a good exchange.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

And the other part...

Somehow, I am Venetian, too.

- Yeah.

- After 15 years, I have to say that I am Venetian.

- Of course. Yeah.

- And I'm proud of that. - Yeah.

Some Italian politicians see the arrival of foreign food

and the people who bring it as a bad thing.

I say adding new ingredients just makes the stew richer.

That's the Venetian way.

- There's a car coming. I better hurry up.

In medieval times, the Veneto was larger,

extending into what is today the next-door neighbor

of Friuli-Venezia Giulia.

Here we are.

We're in Friuli, a mile away from the Slovenian border.

This is northeast of Venice,

and it's incredibly beautiful, very lush.

You're just not gonna get all that fish

that you get in Venice.

When it was part of the Venetian empire,

this was the overland entry point

for goods from the East and Asia,

where spices entered Europe.

For most of its history, Friuli was Austrian

and part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

All these influences have made this very desirable crossroads

a culinary gold mine.

It's just so pretty.

I've come to the restaurant L'Argine a Venco

to meet Chef Antonia Klugmann.

- Welcome.

- She has Polish, Jewish, and Italian roots,

and so do her menus.

She's fusion personified.

Thank you so much.

- It's such a pleasure. - No, it's a pleasure for me.

Thank you, thank you. Grazie. Grazie.

- I want to show the best part.

For me, the garden is important.

- And this is where you grow everything, but you use it.

- Some of them are really here to inspire me, you know?

- Right.

- And some of them are for the guests.

- Gorgeous. - You know?

- This is my favorite.

- Chicory is a really fundamental ingredient

of Italian tastes,

and I think we can have some of them.

- Oh, yeah. - You know? For our kitchen.

- Yeah, they're gorgeous. Yeah.

The restaurant is a modernist gem

in the fields... Remote but celebrated.

It's got a Michelin star.

Wow. - Welcome in my kitchen.

- Antonia wants me to taste a dish

her grandparents made for her,

food that reflects the cultural collision

that defines this area.

- I wanted to show you a dish

that it's really a comfort food for me...

Important to my family...

- Yeah. - Important to my region.

And the goulash really represent it all.

- A goulash is what people

would think of a Hungarian recipe.

- Austrian-Hungaric. - Austria, yeah.

- Austrian-Hungaric.

So you put the base of a normal tomato sauce,

but you start from the garlic.

So, when it's like this...

You put the tomato in.

- Yeah. - Now, you add the onions,

and they will use the water of the tomato

to stew more gently, okay?

- It's Austrian but in Italy.

Goulash is usually made with beef or lamb,

but Antonia prefers pork cheek.

- Okay. - That's really interesting.

Okay. - I prepare some red wine.

I will add some of this here and bay leaves,

génépi, and black pepper.

I will add it right away to our sauce.

Okay. - Beautiful.

- Like this.

Another thing...

The cumin, okay? - Oh, cumin.

- And the other spices that I need here is the paprika.

The sweet one... - Mm-hmm.

- And the spicy one... A lot of it.

- Wow.

- So we use much more spices

than other parts of the north of Italy.

- Sure. - And that...

- Because you're getting the influence from...

- From the port. - Yeah.

- You know? - Yeah.

- In the port, we received all these influences

from the Turkish world, the Greeks, the Albanians...

- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. - Croatians.

- The last ingredient is straight out of the wild East.

- I've put some apricot, the dried ones.

- To use fruit in Eastern Europe

as part of the cooking is very traditional.

- Exactly. Exactly. - Yeah.

- And to help the tradition along, something modern.

Is it stewing or steaming?

Whatever. It's genius.

- In this way, it's perfectly hermetic.

- Sealed. - Yes, sealed.

- I've never seen anyone do that before.

Antonia's sister and business partner Vittoria

runs the restaurant.

They keep the place intimate, with just nine tables,

but this afternoon, there's ten...

A chef's table.

Oh, I thought you'd never arrive.

Hi.

- Thank you. - Wow.

- Thank you.

Let's eat our goulash

with some veggies as a side.

- The side dishes are made with ingredients

we harvested from Antonia's garden...

Cavolo nero with beans, chicory with lemon,

and then the delicious leaves of the zucchini plant.

- I start always from the meat.

Mmm.

- Oh, my God.

That cheek. It's the guanciale.

- Mm-hmm. - Right?

Oh, that's really good.

This is delicious. Delicious.

- I'm happy that you love. - I love it.

It's the perfect mix of so many different cultures...

- Yes. - Right in a bowl.

- We have to tell the people that Italy is not a cliché.

Every region has many shades,

and Friuli-Venezia Giulia

is one of the most interesting place to visit,

because of this complexity.

- And you've had a great impact making people aware of that,

because you have this incredible restaurant.

The rich fusion of tastes in Friuli comes from geography

and a history of the citizens' openness

to outside influences.

But they weren't the only ones.

The Venetians, too, relied on centuries of trade

to create immense wealth and global influence.

Visiting the Veneto today, we can still enjoy ingredients

first brought home by the merchants of Venice

and eat the dishes they created with them

in their city by the sea...

very clever people with a taste for adventure.