Cicchetti are small plates of food eaten standing at the counter of a bacaro, the traditional Venetian wine bar, usually with a glass of wine called an ombra. A single piece can be a slice of bread under creamed salt cod, a fried sardine, half a boiled egg with anchovy, a meatball or a cube of polenta. You order two or three, drink, pay and move on.
The local spelling is cicheti, with one c in the middle; the doubled form cicchetti is what visitors and most menus use. English-language guides have never settled on a translation, and the same set of pages calls them tapas, Venetian tapas, bar snacks, small plates, snacks, finger food and Venetian snacks (Cesiri, 2017). Each of those misses part of it, because the cicchetto belongs to a specific ritual: the giro d'ombre, a short crawl between bars in which the walking counts as much as the eating.
This guide covers what the word means, how a bacaro differs from an osteria, what a round actually costs, the dishes worth ordering and where the bars cluster, drawing on the Veneto region's register of traditional foods, one historic bacaro's own account of the trade and a 2025 survey of the city's bars.
What is cicchetti?
A cicchetto is a single small serving of food, sold by the piece over the counter of a bar. The plural is cicchetti. In Venetian the words are cicheto and cicheti, and the older format was a small portion straight onto a plate, ahead of the bread-based version that dominates today (CiboToday, 2025). At Cantina Do Mori near the Rialto the plate format survives: cured meats, cheeses, artichoke bottoms, salt cod with polenta, and tramezzini cut so small that they are called francobolli, postage stamps (CiboToday, 2025).
In standard Italian the word means something else. The dictionary gives cicchetto as a small glass of strong spirits, from the French chiquet, a derivative of chiqueter, to cut into small pieces (Treccani, 2026). The Venetian sense keeps the idea of a small quantity and applies it to food instead of drink.
English has no fixed equivalent. A study of English-language tourism websites about Venice found the same term rendered as tapas, Venetian tapas, bar snacks, small plates, snacks, finger food, small portions of food and Venetian snacks, all within one corpus (Cesiri, 2017, p. 202). The comparison with Spanish tapas is the most common one and it gets the size right, though the Venetian version is eaten faster and is paid for by the piece.
Bacaro or osteria: what is the difference?
A bacaro is a Venetian wine bar. One of the oldest surviving examples describes the type in its own words: bacari are historic osterie typical of Venice where locals and outsiders meet to drink an ombra and eat a cicheto, the two Venetian words standing for a glass of wine and a snack (Cantine del Vino gia Schiavi, 2026). The same bar states the format plainly: there are no seats, and you drink and eat standing up.
The line between a bacaro and an osteria is thin, and Venetians draw it by geography inside the room. You walk in and the bacaro is the counter at the entrance; the osteria is the sit-down room behind it (CiboToday, 2025). Plenty of places are both at once. A third word, malvasia, refers to the old wine shops named after the Greek wine they sold, and those form a separate category rather than a synonym for bacaro (CiboToday, 2025).
The label is elastic in practice, and bars now calling themselves bacari range from counters where a glass costs less than a coffee to restaurants using the word as decoration. Two signals separate them: whether there is a real counter with trays of food on it, and whether anyone is standing at it.
How much do cicchetti cost in Venice?
No city tariff governs food and drink in Venice, so each bar sets its own prices and the only figure that binds is the price list at the counter. Ask for it if it is not in sight, and check whether table service carries a higher rate before you sit down.
The last published survey of the city's low-cost bacari gives an order of magnitude. It listed small filled rolls at 1.50 EUR, wine or spritz by the glass from 1.50 EUR up to 4 or 6 EUR for the more expensive pours, and a board of cured meats at 10 EUR at one Dorsoduro bar; at another near the Rialto, cicheti from 2.50 EUR and ombre from 2 EUR (Scatti di Gusto, 2024). Those figures were published in 2023 and updated in August 2024, so treat them as a floor rather than a current menu.
The gap between a counter and a table is wide. A hotel restaurant on the Giudecca that trades on the same tradition charges 22 EUR for a small mixed plate of Venetian cicchetti and 35 EUR for a large one, with tasting menus at 60 and 95 EUR a head (Hilton Molino Stucky Venice, 2025). Eaten standing at a bacaro, the same idea sits in a different order of spending, which is the point of the giro d'ombre.
What to order: baccala mantecato, sarde in saor and the rest
Two dishes anchor the counter. Baccala mantecato is stockfish beaten with oil into a pale cream and spread on bread or on polenta. Sarde in saor is fried sardines layered with sweet and sour onions. Both sit on the Veneto region's register of traditional agri-food products, which in its current form covers 413 Veneto products and was re-established by regional decree DGR 340 of 1 April 2025; a product qualifies only where its methods have been practised in a consistent way for at least 25 years (Regione del Veneto, 2026).
The region's own account of saor describes a preservation method that became a recipe. Venetian fishermen needed food that would keep on board, so onions were cooked with vinegar and oil and laid in terracotta containers in layers between fried sardines. Sultanas were added to the original recipe later, to aid digestion and sweeten the breath, and pine nuts belong to the modern version (Regione del Veneto, 2015).
Beyond those two, the trays usually hold meatballs, folpetti (baby octopus), fried vegetables, half eggs with anchovy, cured meats and cheese, and tramezzini, the soft crustless sandwiches that Venetian bars cut small. Ordering is done by pointing. Bars refill the trays through the day, and the best pieces go early in each service.
Where the bacari are: Rialto, Cannaregio and Dorsoduro
Three clusters carry most of the tradition. Around the Rialto, the markets drew wine bars and small osterie that worked on glasses of wine and tastes of food, and the density survives (CiboToday, 2025). Cantina Do Mori, on Calle Do Mori, is the oldest surviving example in the city and keeps its wooden counter and its two entrances on separate calli. Bar All'Arco, at San Polo 436, is the best known for its cicchetti, many made to order, in a room small enough that standing is the only option (CiboToday, 2025).
In Dorsoduro, Cantine del Vino gia Schiavi sits at Dorsoduro 992 on Fondamenta Nani, across the canal from a working boatyard. It opens Monday to Saturday from 08.30 to 20.30 and closes on Sunday, and it sells cicchetti prepared fresh each day, sandwiches made to order at lunchtime, and more than five hundred wine labels to drink there or to take away (Cantine del Vino gia Schiavi, 2026).
Cannaregio is the third cluster, strung along Fondamenta della Misericordia and Fondamenta dei Ormesini, where the bars open onto the canal bank and the crowd stands outside on warm evenings. It is the easiest area for a crawl on foot, because the bars sit in a line instead of being scattered across bridges.
How to do a giro d'ombre
The giro d'ombre is a crawl between bacari, one glass and a couple of cicchetti at each stop. The ombra is the glass of wine at the centre of it, and the crawl takes its name from the drink rather than from the food (Cesiri, 2017). Venetians do it standing, in short stops, and treat the walking between bars as part of the evening.
Timing matters more than picking the right bar. Bacari work in two windows: late morning to mid-afternoon, when the trays are full and the crowd is local, and from around six in the evening for the aperitivo. Some close between the two. A Dorsoduro bacaro that keeps to the old pattern opens 08.30 to 20.30 and shuts on Sunday (Cantine del Vino gia Schiavi, 2026), a useful reminder that a bacaro is a daytime business first.
The practical habits are simple. Stand at the counter, order two or three pieces at a time instead of a plateful, settle up at each stop, carry cash for the smaller places, and move on after one glass. The spritz has displaced the plain glass of wine in many bars (CiboToday, 2025). Asking for an ombra of white or red still works everywhere, and it costs less.
