Da Rioba tops list of Venetian restaurant finds, but avoid eating at Hotel Dei Dogi at all costs

As a general rule of thumb for Venice, the further you get from St. Mark's Square, the better the food will be. (With an exception for the area immediately around Piazzale Roma and the train station, generally filled with execrable places taking advantage of hungry new arrivals who will never return.)

In the main islands of the city, your best bets tend to be in the districts of San Polo and Cannaregio. If you're staying in the main mass of tourist hotels around the Rialto or in San Marco, this may look like a daunting walk. Once you get the hang of navigating the city, however, nothing is more than about 20 minutes away. Trust me, it's worth it. Get into the areas where the natives actually live, and you'll find places serious about the food because they need their regulars to come back.

Our top find for this trip was Ostaria Da Rioba, at Fondamenta de la Misericordia 2553. As with most of the best places here, it's tiny ... about 10 tables ... so essential to book. They put additional tables on the pavement in nice weather; they're on a lovely but almost entirely residential canal with wonderful views. The menu is varied with both fish and meat dishes (the latter being more unusual in Venice) and the preparation leans toward the gourmet. The service is fantastic; English-speaking waiters know the details of dishes and aren't afraid to make recommendations, both from the menu and the wine list.

Piers started with a most un-Venetian goose carpaccio with mango jam, baby salad leaves and candied walnuts which was the clear winner for this course. My spaghetti alla seppia, with a black sauce made from cuttlefish and their ink that's one of Venice's most classic dishes, was delicious but lacked the novel delight we got with the goose. We both triumphed with the mains: Piers with a gorgeous piece of tuna crusted with black and white sesame seeds and grilled perfectly so that it was still very rare at its centre, me with melt-in-your-mouth goujons of lightly battered turbot served over a pile of grilled baby artichokes. On the side we'd ordered a spinach salad with pears and walnuts, also gorgeous. This was all accompanied by the waiter's wine choice, a 2009 collio bianco from Edi Keber, a Friulian who doesn't export much. Decanter magazine gives it five stars and says "ample fruit and floral aromas, soft and full bodied with a long tasty finish." Yes. A second bottle was a must. Which means that neither of us can now remember what I had for dessert, other than to say it was great. (Piers had the first of many tiramisus; every restaurant tells you theirs is unique) I suspect if those particular brain cells weren't killed by the wine, they were done in by the complimentary grappa the waiter brought at the end of the evening. The whole meal came in at £140 which is, of course, not cheap, but good value for three courses each and two bottles of excellent wine.

The runner up prize goes to Osteria Da Alberto, on calle Giacinto Gallina not far from Zanipolo. Less elegant and more homey than Rioba, its handful of tables are scattered over two rooms. At the front there's a bar where locals pop in and get sandwiches and snacks to eat while chatting with the proprietors; most of the starters and desserts are dished up from here. I started with sarde in saor, a Venetian classic from the days before refrigeration. The fish are breaded and deep fried, then marinated in a sweet and sour vinegar with lots of onions. It's not a dish for the faint of heart, and I have to say that the Danes win the pickled fish contest by miles. But you really should try the dish while you're here, and Alberto's was an excellent example.

Piers started with a dish of tiny gnocchi in gorgonzola sauce. Delicate and rich, this combination of two of his favourite ingredients ... potatoes and cheese ... had his eyes rolling in delight. He went on to a fillet steak, cooked rare as he requested and served on a bed of balsamic dressed rocket, while I had the spaghetti al mare. It's tough to avoid the latter dish in Venice, as just about every restaurant does it, but this was a particularly good example loaded with fresh seafood and delicately flavoured with garlic, oil and excellent tomatoes. We had another excellent wine here: Marco Scolaris' pinot nero from the Collio region was the kind of fruity yet light red that can easily cross over between meat and fish.

Next on the list is Anice Stellato (Star Anise), on Fondamenta de la Sensa. It is the closest restaurant to the Hotel Dei Dogi, and one that's been in the guidebooks for a while. I'm fairly sure we ate here on the Northwestern Girls' trip in 2001, something I didn't remember until I got inside and was almost certain I'd been there before. A bit bigger than either of the restaurants above, Anice Stellato spreads over three rooms with a bar anchoring the space between the first and second. While Rioba looks like a slightly trendy local wine bar, Alberto like an un-improved workers' lunch spot, this place is a more consciously modern restaurant, with stripped wooden floors, bare wood tables and lots of modern art. The food was good but the service less so, something you'll see reflected on their Trip Advisor reviews. We couldn't get in on our first night, so made a reservation for 9 on the next.

Our table was waiting when we arrived but service was slow ... after a long delay posy starters the waitress removed our bread basket and handed us dessert menus. I'm sure they forgot the second half of our order. Because of the delay, we were the last people in the restaurant and while we had dessert the staff was changed to go home, sat in the front room, had a good gossip and generally forgot about us.

The food might have made up for it but for some sloppy mistakes in the kitchen. We started with a little ciccheti ... the Venetian take on tapas ... of prawns in saor. A more delicate and enjoyable taste than the sardines, but this is never going to be my favourite way to prepare a prawn. Piers' first course was tagliatelli with locally caught spider crab and zucchini, which he pronounced excellent but for stray bits of shell in the dish. My bucatini in a light tomato sauce with smoked tuna was good, although I'm not sure I'd do that combo again as I felt the sweetness of the tomato and the smoke of the fish were actually battling with each other; a cream sauce would have been better. When the mains finally arrived, they were average. Piers' lamb rolled in pistachio had potential, but had been cooked too long for much taste to remain. My swordfish steak was beautiful, done with lemon, butter and breadcrumbs and melting in the mouth, but the plate beneath it was swimming in far too much butter and the potatoes that accompanied it were bland and unattractive. I'd try it again if staying at the Dei Dogi, but I'd book well in advance so I could be there with the main dinner crowd, and I'd be much more assertive about how my mains were cooked.

One place I would NOT, under any circumstances, eat again if staying at Dei Dogi is Dei Dogi itself. We reserved a table in their small dining room for Valentine's Day dinner, figuring it would be convenient not to leave the hotel and responding to a great looking Valentine's Day menu in a brochure left in our room and promoted at the front desk. We should have been warned when the front desk seemed surprised that we wanted to eat in the restaurant, offering to book us a local place instead. Our first surprise that evening: No sign of the promised menu. What was on offer bore no resemblance to the brochure, and was an odd selection of dishes all in a jumble rather than broken into starters and mains. Second surprise: The window table the hotel manager had specifically walked us into the restaurant that morning and told us he'd save for us was already occupied. The service at Anice Stellato was world class compared to here, where one man alone was working the nine tables of the restaurant and the hotel bar. We waited almost an hour between starters and mains. Third surprise: The biggest bill of the trip ... over £200 ... for the least amount of food and wine.

We split a decidedly mundane carpaccio of over-marinated beef which I suspect had also been left out longer than health standards would say is wise. (Piers' stomach was not its usual robust self the next morning.) Piers had badly overcooked tuna; the "tartare" of courgettes on the menu arrived as diced aubergine and potato. My mixed platter of fried local seafood was lukewarm and uninspiring. At least the wine the waiter recommended was good, but at 45 euro it should have been. At that price we paced ourselves and kept to one bottle, a challenge since the creeping service meant our dinner took more than three hours. Still trying to make it a special evening we tried for dessert. Piers' plate of local cheese lacked diversity and had too many hard, sharp varieties that are better cooked with than eaten alone, and my tiramisu ... really the only appealing thing on the menu since they were out of the chocolate fondant ... was well below what I can whip up myself at home. A final insult: they refused to serve tap water. Bottled only. That, my friends, is simply blatant extortion. And after all those indignities, it took another 20 minutes to get the bill.

Sadly, the outrageous rip off off the restaurant countered the great deal we got on our room, and left me with both a literal and figurative bad taste in my mouth. While I still recommend the hotel, based on that experience I will be shopping around for other options for my next visit. Fortunately, I have the memory of the other restaurants to remind me that you can dine well in Venice, with enough research and planning.