Fegato alla Veneziana with Buttery Mash

Nick Bramham’s take on the evocative Venetian classic will transport you to the Grand Canal on even the dreariest of winter days. Words and images by Nick Bramham.

Dec 17, 2025

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Good morning, and welcome to Vittles! Today, Nick Bramham shares a recipe for fegato alla veneziana inspired by a mythical trip to the City of Masks. This hearty, warming dish is an ideal meal in the run-up to the Christmas season – comforting and with a sense of occasion, but easy to pull together.
Issue 2 of our print magazine, on the theme of Bad Foods, is now available. If you order today, there should still be time for UK delivery before Christmas.
Finally, last week, Jonathan Nunn published his complete list of the 99 best restaurants in London. Check out the full list – including where Nick’s restaurant, Quality Wines, placed – here.

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I really wish I could tell you a story about a perfect lunch I once had in Venice. About how, late one morning, on a perfect winter’s day – deep-blue sky, a brisk chill in the air but the sun warm on my skin – I alighted from a water taxi at Piazza San Marco and strolled straight into Harry’s Bar, where, as I was enjoying a croque monsieur and one of their punishingly cold and extremely dry martinis, a stranger at the bar told me where to find the best fegato alla veneziana on the archipelago.

About how I headed off on a pilgrimage, weaving along the colonnaded waterfront of the Grand Canal, down ever narrower and darker alleyways with fewer and fewer tourists, until finally I arrived at a tiny osteria, just as a cigarette-smoking fisherman was handing over a heaving sack of soft-shell crabs to the smiling chef-patron, who waved me across the threshold into a pleasingly cramped space: faded wooden beams, peeling plaster, four rickety tables. Where, within seconds, I was seated, poured a tumbler of red wine from a chipped porcelain jug and presented with a steaming plateful of fried liver and onions; beams of white light streamed in through the misted windows and a quiet descended as I raised my fork.

It was a picture-perfect scene … only it didn’t happen. None of this happened. I’ve never actually been to Venice. Rather, this is the romanticised Venezia of my imagination, the place to which my mind wandered while cooking and eating perhaps the signature Venetian dish at home on a rainy afternoon the other week. Does this version of the city – a hallucinatory mash-up of Death in Venice, Don’t Look Now and Sam Youkilis’ Instagram page – actually exist? I can’t be sure. All I know is that fegato alla veneziana takes me there every time I make it – and I wholeheartedly recommend your taking the trip too.

In its purest form, fegato alla veneziana comprises thin strips of calf’s liver that are quickly sautéed with local Chioggia onions, hit with a splash of white wine or vinegar and slid onto a plate. When cooked well – with thoughtfully sourced and prepared ingredients and a short rest to let the juices mingle – this evocative, transportive dish is an immensely satisfying and comforting plate of food, a delicious interplay between the tender, lightly-frazzled-but-still-blushing-pink liver, the gentle savouriness of caramelised onions and the sweet and sour jolt of good-quality vinegar.

Fegato alla veneziana is usually served with polenta, though I prefer to serve mine with coarsely mashed potatoes, laced with seams of barely melted salted butter. A couple of glasses of light red wine would be a good idea, ideally served in small tumblers to really lean into the whole clichéd Venetian fantasy thing.