For our only dinner in Venice, the tricky part was to find a fine dining place that is open on Sunday evenings. We decided to try Il Ridotto and made a reservation 3 days before. The restaurant is about 5 minutes walk from Piazza San Marco.
Reservations are a must here, since the place has about 24 seats and it was fully booked that evening. Each table had beautiful handmade Murano glasses of a distinct color.
And here's a table after it had been cleared. There are many mirrors to create the illusion of space, but the place is actually quite small, romantic and the area close to the kitchen seemed to be quite stuffy.
We ordered the "Menù di Terra e di Mare - leggero, bello, buono" with 4 courses. We asked the waiter what was included in the menu that evening and he responded that it would be up to the chef to decide. We also checked if the dessert would be something from the regular à la carte menu, and again were told that it's the chef who would decide. The waiter did ask us if there was anything we did not like, and we requested a seafood-only dinner without the Terra part, since Il Ridotto is mostly known for its seafood dishes.
Some words on our waiter (there was only one along with an assistant). With his beard and mustache and funny way of asking questions, he was quite a character. Some of the other diners seemed to be slightly puzzled by his approach, we found that he added some humor and local colour to the dining experience.
We were offered an amuse consisting of shrimps from the lagoon, potato cream, petal of tomato.
Two spoonfuls to whet our appetite. The shrimps were superb.
And some bread, which was a tad too hard. As in Italian restaurants that want to be 'gourmet' i.e. different from the trattorias, no olive oil was offered for dipping.
Piatti 1 - pan-fried scallops with lemongrass sauce, carrot puree, salad with a touch of balsamic, black tea powder.
Three good scallops and that's it. The balsamic in the salad did not match the lemongrass sauce at all, and we still do not get the point of the ground tea powder, besides maybe as a way to decorate our plate.
Piatti 2 - Tubetti risotto style with fresh cuttlefish and Go fish from lagoon.
Excellent, the highlight of our dinner and we could have had a second plate each! The gravy was delicious and we wiped our plates with the bread.
Piatti 3 - Gallinella di mare, potatoes, tomato sauce, black olives, capers, fresh oregano
A classic Italian dish that was fine. I guess we could have bought this from any good osteria. 
Some petits fours served before dessert.
Only the round truffles were nice. The rest did not deserve their place on our dinner table and should have been kept by the chef for coffee the next day...
Dessert: chocolate cake, nocciola (hazelnut) gelato, zucca (pumpkin), vanilla cream
The saltiness of the pumpkin matched the cake and gelato very well. The cake, however, was disappointing (too hard, nothing special) as was the vanilla cream (can't help wonder if this was not some cheap ready-made sauce that had been warmed up?).
Did this supposedly gourmet restaurant live up to its expectations ? No. Only the amuse and pasta dish were memorable, so basically the rest (three of four courses) was just average cuisine. Here's my advice if you visit Il Ridotto: do not trust the chef's inspiration for the menu and order à la carte.
Il Ridotto Restaurant
Campo SS. Filippo e Giacomo, Venezia
http://www.ilridotto.com
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