Vegetarian food in Italy
 

I would be visiting Italy in December first week, 2010.
2 days Rome, 3 days Venice, 7 days villa in Chianti.

I figure being winters, there would be less of sightseeing and so I want to focus more on food. Being vegetarian and wine/alcohol drinker, will I have enough choices to keep me busy during the trip? Or is vegetarian food hard to find in Italy?
Please suggest some good vegetarian restaurents if you can.

In Venice, my favorite restaurant is La Zucca. It's not 100% vegetarian, but most of the options are vegetarian and it is absolutely fantastic. Reservations essential, even at lunch. I have lots more recommendations on a previous trip report of mine:

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...rip-report.cfm

The report is from 2005, but I've returned to Venice twice since then and enjoyed several of the same places.

You will not have any problem finding vegetarian food in Italy. There is no need to seek out purely vegetarian restaurants. You will have plenty of choices at "regular" restaurants - just check the menu before you head inside (or before you make a reservation).

Italy for vegetarians is not too difficult there are usually quite a few options on the menu. It is a good idea of course to check menus before going in. And I always research in advance so I know of a place or two that I can always fall back on.

I second the recommendation for La Zucca, it is wonderful. Several years ago we went to Il Margutta in Rome http://www.ilmarguttavegetariano.it/eng/index.html
and had a great meal.

Italy is either the world's biggest or second biggest wine producer so you have plenty of choice available. Unfortunatly Italian white can be disapointing with a kernaly taste so chose the whites carefully. Reds; well you can go mad. Generally Chianti has been dumbed down over the last 20 years but Amarone (best opened 12 hours earlier) and the wines of Puglia have developed without the price hits of the super tuscans. Enjoy

I had no problems finding vegetarian food in Italy, although my choices were more limited in Venice. I'm not a big foodie, so I didn't much note of the places I ate, although I was very impressed with 4 Fiumi in Plaza Navona in Rome.

We are not "foodies" and survive in Italy as vegetarians. You most likely will not have that much variety. Delicious, but after a couple of weeks of the same kind of food you will look forward to a non-Italian meal. The caprese salad (tomatoes,fresh mozarella cheese,basil,olive oil) was one of my favorites, much better there than home. Have a good trip.

I visited a different region, I eat fish, and I was there in spring, so I cannot offer specific advice, but I can recommend you do what I did and read lots of cookbooks and brush up on Italian. It helped tremendously--but you'll be suffering from too much food, not a lack of it!
I agree, you don't need to seek out vegetarian restautants, just be knowledgable about what is in season and be able to navigate a menu and you'll be fine.

I loved the white wines I had in Liguria and Tuscany.

Vegetarian restaurants are rare indeed in Italy, since Italians don't seem to think highly of vegetarian diet. But every restaurant will have some vegetarian dishes on the menu - not because they think there is any value in offering vegetarian food (so you'll probably never find a separate "vegetarian" section on the menu, and will probably have to ask which of the dishes in the list actually is compatible with a vegetarian diet), but simply because there are plenty of traditional dishes that don't involve meat or fish. Again, they were not invented because anybody would have wanted to eat vegetarian food. The word "vegetarian" was unheard of at the time they were invented. Dishes without meat or fish were poor people's diet - and those poor people would have much preferred to have meat or fish. But they just couldn't afford it, and that's how vegetarian dishes got on the Italian menu. They're still there, and they're delicious, not least because vegetables are so good in Italy. (Insalata caprese, however, won't be that enjoyable in winter. Tomatoes and basil are of course typically better in summer.)
Some thought on Venice. Since Venice mostly eats fish, you might be hard-pressed to find many vegetarian dishes in Venice if you don't go to La Zucca. And while La Zucca is certainly quite good, I don't concur with the rave reviews that I read most everywhere (not just on this thread). It's decent to very good food, but there's a big downside: these are NO traditional vegetarian dishes of the kind described above. It actually is one of the rare restaurants that deliberately cater to vegetarians (though not to them only). Which is not a recommendation, in Italy. BUT Venice is perhaps THE place for vegetarians all over Italy since its vegetables are among Italy's best, and particularly in winter (the Veneto region is big on winter vegetables: radicchio, artichokes, cardoons, broccoli rabe...). You just have to prepare them yourself since the restaurants don't; which would mean to rent an apartment. This thread might give you some ideas (and recipes): http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...estaurants.cfm

There is a very good vegeterian restaurant in Rome called Arancia Blu (Blue Orange). Unfortunately, it's not in the center, but it can be reached with a single bus from the bus hub at Roma Termini.

Ouch. VegetArian.

Franco don't forget cavolo nero in Tuscany. December is the beginning of the cavolo nero season. It is a brassica and is always better after the first frost.

Cavolo nero on top of toasted tuscan bread with lashings of the new season olive oil .... when in tuscany you can live on this but you can also eat various other dishes made with chestnut flour, cannellini beans, chick peas (cecina) etc etc

I'm a vegetarian living in Italy, and like the others, I have never had any difficulty finding food. Although Italy wouldn't ever consider its dishes to be "vegetarian," there's almost always something on the menu (except for at fish restaurants--I agree about having more trouble in Venice)--pizza, or a pasta dish. just make sure to ask them about their dishes, to make sure there is no meat in the pasta sauce, for instance.

"secondi" are more difficult to find, but you could almost always substitute a dish of cheese or an omelet for whatever meat dishes they have as "secondi."

As a vegetarian, though, the thing i like the most is the abundance of "contorni" (or side dishes) that are almost always some kind of cooked, grilled, or baked vegetable. you could base an entire meal around these, for instance, if you find yourself in a tough situation in a fish restaurant in somewhere like Venice. :) often, you can also find some local specialties among the contorni, like artichokes in Rome, for instance. delicious!

good luck! in Tuscany, remember to eat the SOUPS! one of the best, tastiest vegetarian options in that region! ribollita and pappa al pomodoro are not to be missed, plus any bean soups too!

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Choices seem plenty for my 12 day stay.
As we are staying in a villa in Tuscany, we can probably cook some fresh vegetables there. Is there some resource where I can get some recipies to cook Tuscan style :)

There are a bunch of recipes (mostly Tuscan, some vegetarian) here:
http://www.divinacucina.com/vestri.html