Italy isn’t really a sit and enjoy a long breakfast kind of place. The best, fastest, and cheapest way to start your day is by visiting a coffee, bakery or pasticceria, ordering at the country, enjoying your food and drinks right there at the counter and then paying when you leave. It takes a bit of skill to get the attention of the staff, since there is no obvious line or order. But the staff know what they are doing. They know who arrived first, they know what you ordered and how much you owe. The system works great.
We walked several kilometres to enjoy a sweet breakfast at Tonolo, considered to be one of the best Pasticcerias in town according to the locals. It also seems to be on some tourist lists because there were equal number of tourists, obvious because many of them didn’t even bother to order in Italian, they just assumed English would be fine.
Choose a cream filled pastry, a must in Italy. It obviously has all the nutrients andn vitamins you need to start your day because the Italians are doing fine fuelled by them. If you order a coffee, here it is served in beautiful ceramic cups. The hot chocolte, not so much. It was more a hot milk with a little bit of sweetened cocoa powder in it, just a little bit, like a dusting. It came with a very generous serving of unsweetened whipped cream or panna in Italian. This is important because if you order a hot chocolate, you will be asked, “con panna?” And your answer should generally be “si”. A bit of calcium in whipped form. A complete breakfast.
Overall, highly recommend this stop, but skip the hot chocolate and get a chocolte pastry instead…or two…or three.
Pasticceria Tonolo, Calle S. Pantalon, Venice, Italy
