What is on the menu at Cafe Venice
The menu runs starters, pizza and calzone, pasta, salads, and grilled meat and fish, then puddings, coffee and a drinks list, with a separate children's menu. Gluten-free bases and gluten-free pasta are stocked and several dishes are made vegan-friendly. Prices are on the printed menus in the restaurant, mid-parade on Whitton High Street, and we reissue them whenever the suppliers make us.
Starters
Calamari strips, deep-fried brie and garlic bread head the starters, and they arrive while the oven is doing its work. Two starters and a pizza between two people is a reasonable way to eat here; the kitchen will send them out in that order without being asked.
Pizza and calzone
Bases are thin, and the calzone is the same ingredients folded and heavier. A gluten-free base goes on any pizza on the list — read the note further down before you choose it. The vegetarian pizza is the one to ask about if you are cutting out meat rather than dairy.
Pasta
Tagliatelle delle mare and linguine di calamari sit at the seafood end of the list, alongside the tomato, cream and meat sauces you would want on a Tuesday. Portions are dinner-sized rather than tasting-sized. If a child wants a plain plate of pasta with butter, ask — it is printed nowhere, and the kitchen will make it anyway.
Salads
House salad, chicken salad, mozzarella and tomato. At lunchtime these are main courses rather than the leaf beside something else, which matters if you are ordering one alongside a pizza.
Meat and fish
Grilled and pan-cooked plates for a full dinner. This part of the list moves with what the supplier has, so the printed menu is the accurate one and the specials board beats it.
Allergies and diets
What we can and cannot promise
Gluten-free bases and gluten-free pasta are stocked, and several pizzas and pastas can be made vegan-friendly. What we cannot claim is a coeliac-safe environment: this is a single kitchen with a flour-dusted pizza bench in it, and a dedicated gluten-free kitchen is a different thing altogether.
Tell us about an allergy when you order, not when the plate lands. Written allergen information is kept behind the counter and staff will go through it with you instead of answering from memory. If an ingredient is a hard no for you, ring ahead and ask, or come in and read it at the counter.
Puddings, coffee and drinks
Cakes, puddings and ice cream, then coffee. The drinks list runs from wine by the glass through beer and liqueurs to soft drinks for the table with children at it, and sits on its own card at the table.
Taking it home
Everything on the menu can be boxed for collection. Ring the order through and whoever answers will give you a time to come down for it — the counter is mid-parade, in the shopfront with the green fascia. This page takes no orders and stores nothing you type, for the reasons given in the privacy notice.
