“The middle”, Domenico explains, is where he has always been, recounting, “My grandfather was from Abruzzo in Southern Italy, a chef, and then my father at the age of 16 came to Venice, originally working as a chef in several Venice hotels and then opening two restaurants. This one, Al Colombo, is the mother ship. I was in the middle of the restaurant ever since I was a kid.
“…After my military service I went to New York, which had always been my dream. I worked as a bus boy at first. I loved everything about New York and it changed me a lot…After a year and a half though, my father said it was time to come home… My grandfather, my father- they were great chefs. I was just born into it. They never forced me in any way. They just put me in the middle of it…and I’m here, seven days a week from noon to midnight…and I love it.”
Domenico interrupts his personal story to segue into the history of the food on your plate and how very Italian they are---more, how quintessential Venetian they are too. You learn that the tangy sweet and sour prawns that accompany the Venetian styled bacalao, comes from a recipe developed during the plague. Marinating fish with onions and olive oil was an early way to prevent the spread of bacteria to food, and a delicacy that is typical of La Festa della Salute, a celebration of the plague’s end.
As you oooh and aaah over your Risotto di Ghiozzo, Domenico smiles and explains the painstaking recipe of slowly cooking little fish with celery, carrots, sage and other spices until it becomes a flavorful broth. Today they have a machine that presses the fish for 1 ½ hours to get the right consistency. He though, remembers how it would take his grandmother much longer, as she manually pressed the fish broth through nylons.
