When I visited: June 2017

Location: Venice (within Hotel Ai Reali)

Rating in the Michelin Guide: Recommended

Dining Owl Hoot rating: 4/5

What to wear: Men – jeans or nice trousers and a shirt; women – jeans and a smart top or a smart dress

Ambience: Fairly formal, views of small canal

Course of the meal: Homemade ravioli with burrata and prawns

If I could change one thing: Faster service

Review:

Alle Corone is an acclaimed, small, fairly formal restaurant within the lovely Hotel Ai Reali. If you sit by the window, you get a great view of the many gondolas that pass through the canal at night, each housing people enjoying their holiday and waving up at you.

My partner Owl and I selected the tasting menu (mostly featuring traditional Venetian fish dishes) with paired wines (which meant 4 glasses – one Italian sparkling wine, two whites and one dessert wine). Paired wines are usually very expensive in England but in this renowned Italian restaurant it only cost €25 for this option. The second glass (Sauvignon Cantima La Salute, Marca Treviggiana) was the best – the perfect mix of dry and light, although the Soave that followed it was also great, with a slightly fuller taste.

The first course was a tartare of sea bream and another fish, served with edible flowers, caviar and avocado on a black slab. It was a great start, and was followed up nicely with scallops and asparagus.

The next course was sardines fried with wasabi – I am not a fan of wasabi in general but this was a really well-put-together dish. However, the next course was even better – homemade ravioli with burrata and prawns. The ‘main’ was monkfish with lemon, and was wonderfully balanced.

The dessert was a dark chocolate mousse with plum jelly and edible flowers, featuring a range of textures including a good amount of biscuit. We also got some petits fours at the end – a big raspberry macaron, a mini chocolate tart, a white profiterole with cream, a mini lemon jelly, a chocolate truffle, biscotti, and a dark chocolate puddle with almonds.

The service was a bit slow at first – the staff were slow to seat us and then slow to take our initial order – but the waiters were personable and helpful and pleased that we like the wine (and happy to write down the name of the Sauvignon for us). The setting is definitely a plus point of the restaurant, with the candles outside and inside the windowsill by our table a nice touch.