You come to Mazzorbo to escape the madding crowd and explore the Venetian lagoon, but above all to taste the starred cuisine of Venissa. It is here that chefs Chiara Pavan and Francesco Brutto, with their dishes, talk about and protect the fragile lagoon habitat.
A journey out of time
The journey begins on the water. The vaporetto leaves the city of bridges behind to reach the islands and the soul slowly becomes lighter. First stop: Murano, the island of glass. The journey continues, the scenery becomes wilder. Next to Burano, known for its lace and colorful houses, is Mazzorbo, the two islands are connected by a wooden bridge from which you can see Torcello, with its imposing bell tower.
Like a romantic lost (gourmet) paradise, Venissa awaits travelers to refresh and host them. The Wine Resort was born in 2010 thanks to the intuition of Gianluca Bisol, who wanted to bring Dorona, a native Venetian vine, back to life.
The heroic history of this vine continues to fascinate: it lives in conditions that can be defined as extreme, in a perfect balance between suitable soil and the constant threat of salt and water. The rows welcome you when you enter Venissa, but you soon realize that they have good company: the chefs, in fact, grow vegetables and aromatic herbs in the large garden of the estate.
The beginning of a career in cooking
Chiara Pavan he is from Verona. She has loved food since she was little. He tastes everything willingly, but does not imagine a culinary career.
«Among my first memories in the kitchen there are certainly the days preparing gnocchi in enormous quantities in the kitchen of my childhood home. We filled trays and trays laid out on every available surface. My father was driving and my mother instead acted as the perfect commis!
When he grew up, he studied philosophy in Pisa, in the meantime, to support his studies, he began working in the restaurant sector. She likes cooking, she does it for friends, and she feels more and more that the kitchen is her place, until she decides to enroll at ALMA: the most authoritative center for advanced culinary education.
The landing in Venissa and environmental cuisine
Chiara arrives in Venissa a bit by chance, coincidence, destiny. He has never visited Mazzorbo before.
«I had been to Venice several times, of course, but I had never really entered the lagoon. The first time I arrived in Mazzorbo I thought it was a complex place, not immediate, even difficult to reach, but for this very reason very interesting. A place that needed time to be understood."
It is 2017 and the restaurant has seen the guidance of great chefs such as Antonia Klugmann and already has a Michelin star. At this point Chiara must take her own direction and chooses to move towards a cuisine that takes into consideration the lagoon and its habitat, even in the great evolutions that climate change is bringing about. She defines it as "environmental cuisine", because it tells the story of the environment in which it was born and then because this environment is taken care of in a concrete way, through the choice of what is put on the menu.
«In the space of ten years since I have been here, we have witnessed very rapid, sometimes drastic, transformations. Many fish and products that we used to find regularly are now increasingly rare: I am thinking of eels, moeche, lagoon cuttlefish. At the same time, alien species have spread such as the blue crab, which can be interesting in the kitchen, and the sea nut, which however is not edible and represents a problem for the ecosystem, because it covers the seabed and helps remove oxygen. Even on land the effects are evident. Increasingly frequent droughts make soils saltier and complicate the cultivation of many vegetables that are not resistant to halophilic conditions. Working every day in close contact with fishermen, farmers and people who live in the lagoon, it is impossible not to notice these changes. And, once you see them, it is equally impossible not to take them into account in your work."
The green star, the book, taking care of the territory
Today Chiara and Francesco have become the thermometer of what is happening from an environmental point of view and are also part of the island community, with which they have a very beautiful and direct relationship. Thanks to the work they are doing, in 2021 they obtained the Michelin green star, which rewards the most eco-responsible restaurants.
In April Chiara published Environmental Cuisine with Mondadori, a book in which he explains how cooking can react to a changing planet.
For her, cooking in the lagoon means «transforming fragility into awareness. Choosing what to put on the menu becomes an environmental gesture, not just a gastronomic one. It means valorising what is there, giving up when necessary, not chasing a fixed idea of abundance and creating dishes that tell the present of the place, even when that present is complex. Cooking alone cannot save an ecosystem, but it can change the way we look at it. It can educate, create attention, give value to what risks being forgotten and show that adapting does not mean becoming impoverished, but imagining a different future."
The future of Venice and the lagoon
Those who choose to go beyond Venice and reach the islands are generally willing to visit these places with a less superficial look, especially when they reach the most pristine ones, such as Torcello, Sant'Erasmo and Mazzorbo.
«Cities like Venice are often suffocated by overtourism. Venues and restaurants open that don't always put the care and attention that a place like this would require first. The flavors and proposals end up becoming uniform and I fear that in the end it will fuel tourism that is not very interested and aware of what is on the plate. Fortunately, however, there are those realities that are trying to go in the opposite direction, working on quality and on a more responsible relationship that has the objective of respecting and taking care of the city and the lagoon".
To date, Chiara's hope is that we continue to support those who really work in the area «considering it a living pantry of our kitchen. I think of the fishermen, of those who research and protect perhaps forgotten local varieties, of the companies that recover ancient seeds, of the small producers who do precious but complex work. Working this way requires more effort and is often more expensive: buying from a farmer means taking on a greater responsibility than choosing a standardized product. For this reason I believe that the issue is not only individual, but also collective and political. Creating a system, creating categories, imagining support tools, such as incentives for those who choose to work with certain ingredients and producers, could help make this approach more accessible and sustainable over time, for the cuisine and for the lagoon."
Direction Mazzorbo
Venissa it is located in Mazzorbo, in Fondamenta S. Caterina, 3. In addition to the starred restaurant, you will also find the Osteria Contemporanea. If you choose to visit the lagoon, the advice is to give yourself a few days to experience it at the right pace. If you stop in Burano you can stay in one of the rooms of the Wine Resort or in one of the beautiful fishermen's houses Burano House.
Sprouts is the new column dedicated to the stories of those like us who have decided to put our heart and soul into planning a dream. Every month here you can read a new story.
