Four years ago 57-year-old Toni Zottarel left his tiling career, his wife and the life he had built and took to his passion, fishing. He bought a bilancia, a traditional fishing hut on stilts, from an elderly man from Burano, deep within Laguna Veneta, Venice’s lagoon, and set about adding a vast motorised fishing net and an outdoor eating deck. Here he invited friends around to dine on the day’s catch, ladled up from the watery doorstep: fritto di mare, seafood simply dipped in flour and deep-fried. Detecting a unique dining experience, the friends encouraged Zottarel to open to the public, and for the past two years In Laguna da Toni has been fully booked all summer, dishing up the freshest fruit of the lagoon, from baby flounder and small sand smelt to soft-shell crab, lagoon prawns and totaneti – the tiniest of squid. |
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