Tasting Venice with Chef Alberto Fol: Crafting the City’s Story, One Plate at a Time

The quest for authentic gastronomic experiences inspires countless trips. Alberto Fol, Executive Chef of The Gritti Palace, a Luxury Collection Hotel’s fabled restaurant, Club del Doge, has made it his mission to introduce his guests to real Venetian cuisine. With every mouthful, he offers an insight into the lagoon’s culinary traditions, as well as those of the entroterra, the Veneto hinterland.

Chef Fol takes great pride in seeing guests enjoy classic Veneto dishes crafted from the finest ingredients: fish caught that morning, locally sourced vegetables, and meat from animals raised on inland pastures. As a native of Treviso and the Dolomites, he is equally passionate about helping guests appreciate the provenance of these products, whether they originate from the Dolomite foothills, the surrounding mountains, or nearby islands.

Chef Fol is the visionary behind the great Club Del Doge at The Gritti Palace, a Luxury Collection Hotel. (Photo: Marriott International)

Celebrating history at a historic restaurant

At Club del Doge, it all starts with the kitchen garden. Visitors to Venice usually expect seafood to dominate menus, but the lagoon also has a long history of vegetable cultivation, game from the mountains, and wild fowl from the lagoon islands and hinterland. Even wine can be produced thanks to its saline-rich soil.

The team tends to local gardens in neighbouring islands to bring the fresh ingredients back to the restaurant. (Photo: Marriott International)

Chef Fol and his team tend a garden on the island of Mazzorbo in the north lagoon. There they grow the highly prized violet artichokes for which the lagoon is famous. They also oversee a few plots in the vegetable garden of the 16th-century Redentore monastery on the island of Giudecca, which was opened to the public for the first time in 2024. Again, they use the vegetables from the Redentore orto (vegetable garden) to bring the lagoon to the Gritti kitchen. Throughout the year, their homegrown produce takes centre stage on the menu.  

Chef Fol sources the vegetables he doesn’t grow himself from producers in Cavallino, a sandy peninsula straddling the lagoon and the Adriatic, and adds wild herbs and edible flowers from the islands and sandbanks of the lagoon itself to really make his dishes taste of Venice. 

His wagyu beef, meanwhile, comes from the Dolomites. For seafood, he goes straight to local fishermen, even buying from the famous fish market at the foot of the Rialto Bridge. 

“We’re in a strategic location, right by the sea but also close to the Prosecco hills and the mountains, where they produce fantastic butter and cheeses,” Chef Fol explains, who seeks to straddle the two worlds of lagoon and hinterland on his menus. In doing so, he recreates the culinary history of La Serenissima, the historic Republic of Venice which dominated the Adriatic and northern Italy from 697CE to 1797CE.

Exploring every dimension of Venetian cuisine

The historic The Gritti Palace stands as an iconic landmark of Venice since 1475. (Photo: Marriott International)

Enjoying a delightful position right on the Grand Canal, The Gritti Palace was built in 1475 as an aristocratic mansion, before its conversion into a hotel in 1895. For over a century, travellers have flocked to its terrace cantilevered over the Grand Canal. The Club del Doge’s signature dish, a creamy risotto swirled with prawns and topped with a carpaccio of the super-sweet Mazara shrimp, is known as the Hemingway-style risotto, because the Nobel Prize-winning author claimed it cured him of an illness on one of his many stays. The original recipe even hangs on the wall.

Club del Doge's signature Hemingway-style risotto with prawns. (Photo: Marriott International)

But Chef Fol doesn’t just introduce guests to the glitzy Venice; he also presents the Venice of local people. “Recently I’ve been doing a lot of historical research, going back to recipes from the past,” he says. “Often they were very complex, but bringing them back and reinterpreting them in a modern way is bellissimo.”

One of his latest additions to the menu is spaghetti with a radicchio sauce, which was inspired by an old, anchovy-based recipe. “We reimagined it with cod ‘tripe’ and a squeeze of lemon. We’re giving value to the original recipe without simplifying it, taking it to a new level.”

Chef Fol and his team are reintroducing historical ingredients into the kitchen, too, such as an ancient red corn. “It’s an ingredient that was widely used in the past, then forgotten,” he says. “It’s a beautiful thing to bring it back.” He uses it in his take on fegato alla veneziana, the city’s classic liver dish, in which the meat is stewed with onion and served on a polenta base. 

Like liver, eel is another frequently overlooked ingredient whose rich heritage Chef Fol is bringing to the fore. “All our guests come to Venice because this city has thousands of years of history, including culinary history,” he says. “Its gastronomic culture is rich, layered, and unique. That’s what makes it an irresistible destination. Here we are in La Serenissima, with the legacy of the Silk Road. There’s an incredible blend of cultures and flavours that make the gastronomic experience truly unique.”

Respecting the rhythm of the seasons

At Club del Doge, granseola (Venetian spider crab) is featured as a refined seasonal specialty, particularly highlighted in winter menus. (Photo: Marriott International)

Chef Fol’s Club del Doge menus are rigorously seasonal: his famous artichokes are only on the menu when it’s harvest time; radicchio, which comes from his hometown of Treviso, is a winter speciality.

“Meat and fish also follow their own seasonal rhythms, and we always try to highlight them at the right time,” he says. When we speak, it’s hunting season, so game is on the menu; in autumn, a special menu dedicated to the precious white truffle appears alongside the pumpkin and mushroom dishes – the foothills of the Dolomites an hour north of Venice are known for their fungi. 

Another winter special, found particularly in December and January, and then again in April and May, is the granseola, a large crab that’s often found in the lagoon. “There are so many local products in Veneto, many of which are seasonal, and at Club Del Doge we absolutely love them,” enthuses Chef Fol. 

Italians have a nickname for people who epitomise their birthplace through and through: DOC, a play on the ‘DOC’ labelling for Italian wines produced in a specific area. Chef Fol is certainly Veneto ‘DOC’. “I grew up in a small village in the Dolomites, and being surrounded by nature, art and culture really shaped my creativity,” he shares. “When I’m in the mountains, I love cooking on a traditional wood stove. Slow cooking gives you time to think, to develop ideas, and to give value to simple, traditional things by bringing them back to life.”

It's that rooted approach to his cooking that brings history with every bite at Club del Doge.

Published: December 01, 2025

Last Updated: March 10, 2026