CC Travel Blog

Nov, 2006
A long long time ago, a Venetian Contessa (Italian for Countess) came in her frequented restaurant looked worried. So the restaurant owner asked, my honorable Countess, why are you not happy? Well, she said, my doctor is concerned about my health and he orders me not to eat cooked meat; but I love meat! How can I not eat meat and enjoy life? The Countess signed.

The restaurant owner thought for awhile, then he went into the kitchen without saying anything. A few hours passed by, he walked out with a plate of red meat which had white sauce on top. Try this, he gave it to the Countess. The Countess tried it, it was raw beef, sliced thinly, mixed with a creamy white sauce and the taste was excellent! The Countess loves art, so the red and white presentation of the dish captured her heart at the first sight. To date, the restaurant serves that dish, called carpaccio.

I read this story from my hometown newspaper written by a food critic in 1996, since then, I have created a wonderful image of Harry’s Bar. So when we went to Venice, Harry’s Bar is a must-do item on the agenda.

Located on Calle Vallaresso, close to the Piazza San Marco, the bar — as the owner Ciprianis always calls it — was first conceived as a hotel bar, serving no food, and later transformed into a restaurant.

Every tour book says that the restaurant is famous for two things, Bellini and carpaccio.

Bellini is a cocktail mixed with peach juice and champagne and carpaccio is sliced wafer thin beef sirloin with a white sauce made of mayonnaise mixed with lemon juice.

The bar has two stories, the ground floor is the bar where they serve Bellini at 12 Euro per glass. Normally, you can order some appertizers at the bar table, as we always see carpaccio listed on restaurant’s appertizer menu, so we asked for it to the bartender.

The bar tender shook his head and pointed us to a host waiter. The host waiter came over and lead us into the restaurant’s second floor. The way he did it was funny. He showed us into an elevator and once the door of the lift was closed, we could hear him running up the stairs.

The elevator was slow and when we reached the second floor and the door opened, the host waiter was waiting outside already.

We sat down and the waiter placed a freshly baked scone on our plates. The scone smelled buttery and tasted wonderful. Then we saw the menu.

There it was, carpaccio; my eyes rolled slightly to the right and my heart skipped a beat. For a hefty price of 55 Euro (!!!), a customer can try the carpaccio.

We bit the bullet and the waiter wrote down our order. We are just going to share that, we told the waiter.

It came out as two plates, thanks to our comments of the “sharing”, but the price also changed to $70 Euro ($35 per person)!! Of course, we did not know that until the bill came. To their credit, salad and bread were free. The beef tasted soft and fresh, very different from those defrosted frozen meat I tried in many restaurants in the US, the mayonnaise sauce tasted creamier than the regular Kraft we found in a grocery store.

The total bill came out to be about $116 Euro for the two of us. Oh morn my skinny wallet!

Appearantly, Harry’s Bar serves tons of international tourists and their menu comes with a daily exchange rate. Since we were low on cash and needed the emergency funds at late night, we added salt to our bloody injury and pulled out 300USD in exchange, at that date’s rate, for $200 Euro.

For more info about this legendary restaurant, check out these:

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/FOOD/news/10/13/harrys.bar/

http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Europe/Italy/Veneto/Venice-140867/Restaurants-Venice-Harrys_Bar-BR-1.html

But like most of the users commented on tripadvisor.com, it wouldn’t break your heart if you skipped it, imho.