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Via VicenzaBeyond the obvious
HIDDEN GEMS IN ITALY

Vicenza holds Veneto’s Slow Food record for the fifth edition running

For the fifth consecutive edition, the province of Vicenza has the highest number of Slow Food Chiocciole in Veneto. In the 2026 Osterie d’Italia guide, seven of the region’s 23 Chiocciole are in Vicenza province.

Traditional osteria table, introducing Vicenza’s Slow Food record and culinary traditions
Photo: Polina Kuzovkova / Unsplash
As told by
SLOW FOOD · NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER · THE GUARDIAN · MICHELIN GUIDE ·
01

What seven snails actually mean

The snail is the worldwide symbol of Slow Food, the movement born in Italy in 1986 and now active internationally. In Osterie d’Italia, the Chiocciola, literally “the Snail”, is the guide’s highest recognition, awarded to addresses whose food, ingredients, welcome and connection to local culture reflect Slow Food values.

For the fifth consecutive edition, Vicenza has the highest number of Chiocciole in Veneto. In 2026, seven of the region’s 23 Chiocciole are in Vicenza province, almost a third of the regional total.

They are spread across very different parts of the province: from Vicenza’s historic centre to hill villages, valleys and mountain country in the Venetian Prealps and the Berici Hills.

Five food and wine routes cross landscapes that range from wine hills and river country to Alpine dairies. Rare corn, aged mountain cheese, white asparagus, Grenache, Vin Santo and historic recipes all belong to this part of northern Italy.

National Geographic Traveller has explored the relationship between food and landscape across Veneto, while The Guardian and the Michelin Guide have both drawn attention to Vicenza and its surroundings. Yet the province still appears far less often than Italy’s established food destinations.

02

A SHORT HISTORY OF VICENZA THROUGH FOOD

Chapter I: The Agricultural Landscapes of Vicenza

Micro-Climates and Monastic Waters

Beyond the coastal paradox of bacalà, the culinary identity of Vicenza fragments into a patchwork of micro-territories. The gastronomy here is defined by precise geography: a single limestone slope, a specific pocket of alluvial plain, or a handful of fields fed by a particular river.

The Rice of the Abbesses

The landscape of Grumolo delle Abbadesse is a legacy of monastic engineering. In the sixteenth century, the Benedictine nuns of San Pietro in Vicenza reclaimed these lowlands, drained marshes and built irrigation canals for rice cultivation. Some of those waterways are still in use.

Rice remains closely associated with Grumolo delle Abbadesse, where Vialone Nano is protected by a Slow Food Presidium. In spring, it can become the base for risotto coi bruscandoli, made with the tender shoots of wild hops gathered along hedgerows and field margins during their short season.

Cooked into a risotto, the shoots bring a distinct green bitterness to the plate, in a dish tied to a few weeks of the year.

The Palladian Greens

At Lumignano, a village in the province of Vicenza just south of the city, peas grow on small terraces beneath the limestone walls of the Berici Hills. The sunny exposure, altitude and warmth retained by the rock create conditions that have long favoured an early harvest. The local bisi became known above all for two qualities: sweetness and precocity.

According to a long Venetian tradition, the peas ripened early enough to reach Venice for April 25, the feast of Saint Mark, when risi e bisi was served at the Doge’s table. The connection between Lumignano and the ducal banquet belongs partly to local tradition, but the importance of the crop to the village is well documented. For generations, peas grown on the masiere, the small cultivated terraces on the slopes, provided an important source of income for local families. In the first half of the twentieth century, a seasonal market was held several evenings a week during the harvest, attracting buyers from elsewhere in the province.

Further north in Vicenza province, the white asparagus of Bassano del Grappa comes from a very different landscape. The production area lies in the alluvial plain of the Brenta River, where gravel, sand and silt deposited by the water created loose, permeable soils. These conditions form part of the geographical basis of the Asparago Bianco di Bassano DOP.

Its colour comes from cultivation away from sunlight. The shoots remain covered as they grow and are harvested by hand while still white and tender during the spring season.

Two vegetables, two parts of Vicenza province, shaped by two very different agricultural landscapes.

The Fioretta

In the deep mountain valleys around Recoaro Terme, in the province of Vicenza in northern Italy, survival historically relied on making full use of every stage of the dairy process.

Fioretta comes directly from this economy of necessity. Pale, semi fluid, fresh and faintly acidic, it is a soft ricotta obtained from the whey left after cheese making, collected at its first surfacing. To prepare the local gnocchi, cooks mix this delicate curd with flour and salt into a soft batter, then drop it by the spoonful into boiling water. The dumplings rise to the surface almost weightless. They are finished simply, coated in butter browned to the colour of hazelnuts, and dusted with grated mountain cheese or aged smoked ricotta.

There is no potato to bind the dough, no intricate filling, and no elaborate preparation to distract from the ingredients. The dish relies entirely on immediacy, the freshness of the fioretta, the quality of the mountain butter, and the dairy culture of Vicenza’s high mountain pastures around Recoaro. The town preserves this tradition through the De.Co. designation for Gnochi con la Fioreta and a festival dedicated to the dish.

The Winter Hills and the Children of Creazzo

Just a few kilometers west of Vicenza’s city center, the landscape rises into the hills of Creazzo. Here, on calcareous and sandy soils, grows an ingredient that looks nothing like the compact broccoli heads found on modern supermarket shelves. The Broccolo Fiolaro di Creazzo grows as a leafy brassica, characterized by tender side shoots emerging along the main stem.

In the Venetian dialect, these lateral shoots are called fioi, the children, and they give the vegetable its name.

The defining characteristic of this crop is its relationship with the winter weather. The Fiolaro tolerates short periods of very low temperatures, and its flavor improves after the first frosts. As the plant responds to the cold, its biological activity slows and the concentration of natural sugars and mineral salts increases. The result is a sweeter, more tender winter vegetable, traditionally harvested from November to February.

The historical reality of the vegetable is tied to the local agricultural economy. Its cultivation on the hills of Creazzo goes back several centuries, and by the nineteenth century production was already substantial, with much of the harvest destined for the market in Vicenza. For generations, the Fiolaro was a winter crop that provided income for farming families in Creazzo and the surrounding area, linking these hills directly to the food markets of the provincial capital.

Today, the Broccolo Fiolaro di Creazzo remains closely tied to this small part of Vicenza province and to the winter conditions that have shaped its cultivation for generations.

03

Chapter II: Vicenza’s signature dish

The Architecture of Autarky and the Trans Oceanic Paradox

Vicenza’s cuisine was shaped inland and it grew among Benedictine estates, irrigated rice fields, limestone hills, river gravels and high summer pastures. While Venice looked outward, filling its kitchens with spices and ingredients from Mediterranean trade routes, Vicenza developed on a different scale. Its food remained tied to individual valleys, villages and soils, to the point where moving just a few dozen kilometers changes the local pantry entirely.

The paradox is that its most iconic dish begins in the Arctic.

Bacalà alla Vicentina depends on Gadus morhua dried in the cold air of Norway’s Lofoten Islands. Vicenza’s connection to stockfish is traditionally traced to the 1432 voyage of the Venetian merchant Pietro Querini, who was shipwrecked near Røst and returned south after encountering the dried cod produced there. In Vicenza, stockfish eventually became the basis of one of the province’s defining dishes.

The Technique of Pipare

Stockfish, soaked for two to three days → onions and salted sardines → flour, parsley and Grana → milk and olive oil → four and a half hours of pipare

The official recipe preserved by the Venerabile Confraternita del Bacalà alla Vicentina is almost entirely a question of patience. The soaked stockfish is boned, cut into pieces and layered with a soffritto of onions and salted sardines, then finished with parsley, flour, Grana, milk and enough olive oil to cover the fish.

What follows is not vigorous cooking but endurance: the pan remains over the gentlest possible heat for roughly four and a half hours and is never stirred. Instead, it is moved occasionally in a circular motion so the fish cooks without breaking apart. In Vicenza this prolonged simmer is called pipare.

By the end of the cooking, the stockfish has absorbed the milk, oil, onion and sardines, becoming tender and savoury. It is traditionally served with polenta.

The appeal of stockfish was historically as practical as it was gastronomic. It kept far longer than fresh fish and could travel inland without refrigeration. In Vicenza, technique and repetition made a food from the Lofoten Islands part of the local culinary canon.

04

What does Bacalà mean?

In most of Italy, the distinction is straightforward. Baccalà refers to cod preserved in salt, while stoccafisso means cod preserved by air drying.

Vicenza follows its own usage.

Here, the dried stockfish used for the city’s defining dish is called Bacalà, spelled with a single “c”. The Venerabile Confraternita del Bacalà alla Vicentina preserves that spelling in its official name and recipe.

SOURCE AND CURRENT INFORMATION