Venice has always been a bustling trading city. Its cuisine is the most profound expression of a territorial identity and was not immune to contaminations by other cultures. The need to preserve food during long sea journeys and strong links with the far east, the origin of the city's imported spices, generated recipes with unexpected flavours. Nonetheless, the flavour of Venetian dishes reveals something more than its commercial past. To discover what that is, you have to sail to the lagoon's islands, where the restaurants offer authentic traditional Venetian cuisine, what you might call native Venice.