Alan B.
Yelp
Just a little bit off the well beaten path, you will find Trattoria Alla Fontana, and it's worth the extra minute or two to find this little Trattoria. It had good Yelp reviews, something we started doing more frequently, after our extremely poor dinner experience at the Al Gazebo which is only a few minutes from this restaurant. Alla Fontana is a seafood oriented Italian restaurant, though their small staff will go out of their way to customize a dish to your liking. We dined here twice, once inside their small restaurant, and once along the canal. In both cases, we were very happy with our dinners.
Unlike some of the traditional Italian restaurants in the area, Trattoria Alla Fontana kitchen opens early, as we often dine between 6 and 6:30pm. We found that many local (non-tourist) Venetian restaurants and osterie only serve cicchetti until 7pm or 7:30pm, until the full menu is offered. For our dinner selections we chose:
* Spinach in Cream Sauce
* Spaghetti in Olive Oil with Garlic (they prepared a non-seafood version of this dish for us)
* Spaghetti with Fish of the Day
Candidly, it matters not what is in their cream sauce, it's going to be delicious. And the Spinach in Cream Sauce was no exception. Additional bread was requested to finish off the sauce. We thought about ordering pasta in the sauce, after eating the spinach!
The Spaghetti in Olive Oil with Garlic which normally comes with some type of seafood, was nicely cooked, and perfectly al dente. It came with a light olive oil sauce, nicely seasoned, and was very tasty.
However, the best dish in my opinion was the Spaghetti with Fish of the Day. The fish of the day was a medley of clams, mussels, shrimp, and a large prawn. All of these tasted fresh, presented with nicely prepared spaghetti in a simple, light and tasty sauce.
Service was attentive throughout our meal, and we thought the prices were very reasonable, and the staff speaks enough English to compensate for our questionable Italian language skills! On both nights, we were provided a complimentary Limoncello after we asked for the check. A 4.5-star restaurant considering the food, service and value, rounding up to a 5 for our two enjoyable dining experiences.