Venice, famously, has fewer miles of canal than Birmingham, although as you chug down the Grand Canal, the wake from your vaporetto washing up against gothic palace after gothic palace, you are unlikely to wish yourself on the Grand Union instead. Or at least, not until lunchtime, when you might recall wistfully that, these days, Birmingham can boast twice as many Michelin-starred restaurants as its Italian counterpart.

For Venice, almost alone among Italian cities, is also famously short of good places to eat, the inevitable consequence of having just 60,000 residents battered by 15m tourists per year. Nor are the guidebooks much help, recommending as they do the same dozen or so names again and again: Osteria da Fiore, Al Covo, the Corte Sconta... pleasant establishments, but ones where you are unlikely to hear much Italian being spoken. Still, those 60,000 residents have to eat somewhere, and while good local restaurants will probably always be thinner on the ground than, say, Renaissance masterpieces, there is a real sense that things are changing.

Certainly it is hard to believe, as you stroll around the pescheria, the old fish market near the Rialto, that you are in a culinary desert. Under a vaulted loggia, crisscrossed by stone columns like a Shakespearian stage set, fishmongers display their wares as proudly as works of art. Huge boxes of silver seppie, the local squid, are greasy with their own black ink. In a corner, a 5ft swordfish sits slumped on a trolley, its weapon casually tipped with a piece of polystyrene to avoid slicing pounds of flesh from the legs of unwary passers-by. Stalls glitter with bream, crayfish and octopus, constantly sprinkled from watering cans to keep them fresh. Across the street in the fruit market, varieties never seen in Britain, such as the cedro, which looks like a cross between a lemon and a grapefruit, jostle for space alongside delicacies such as radicchio di Treviso or the tiny spring artichokes known as castrare, the best local produce proudly marked “nostrani”, or “ours”.

Having spent an hour or so salivating, you might now be in the mood to eat what you have been looking at.

A short walk and a hop across the canal brings you to Calle Priuli, where the new Al Fontego dei Pescaori is guaranteed a good supply of fish — it’s owned by the president of the fishmongers’ association. Here they specialise in modern reinventions of Venetian classics, such as the “cloc”, a plate of 12 fish carpaccios presented in ascending order of flavour. Or, if those vegetables caught your eye, a slightly longer walk brings you to La Zucca, a mainly vegetarian place whose decor remains resolutely 1970s, but where the flavours and ingredients are as fresh as it is possible to be.

It is hard, too, to believe that Agostino Doria has not yet attracted the attention of the Michelin inspectors, although they might simply have failed to find his restaurant amid the maze of silent alleyways around Campo Santa Marina. Agostino has spent the past few years turning L’Osteria di Santa Marina into a foodie haven. An inquiry about his risotto led to me being swept into the kitchen, where I was given a passionate masterclass. You must always use a copper pan, Agostino told me, because it transfers the heat evenly to the rice — which he softens in oil and sweetens with roasted pumpkin pulp before adding the stock, one boiling spoonful at a time.

Also being prepared in the kitchen were handmade black pasta tortellini stuffed with broccoli and served with lobster sauce: a typically Venetian combination of ingredients brought up to date with a flourish, as is Agostino’s folpetti, baby octopus served with celery and orange zest. However hard you try, you are unlikely to have much room for dessert here — a shame, as the dolci are pure carnival: extravagant, theatrical confections that conceal saucy surprises, such as a soufflé that spurts a core of molten chocolate. It could only work in Venice.

Nor would you find someone like Sara Cossiga anywhere else but Venice. Sara is a qualified sommelier, an enthusiastic cook and an art-history graduate who organises gourmet tours of her native city. She is equally happy to arrange a cooking lesson in a palazzo, based on the aphrodisiacs with which Casanova seduced his conquests, or to accompany you on a giro di ombra, a tour round the ancient wine bars known as bacari.

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For centuries, Venetians have been jostling at these counters, gossiping, downing an ombra, or “shadow”, of wine and eating cichetti (finger food) such as sarde in saor, sardines marinated in vinegar with onions and raisins. These days, some bacari will even let you sit down to eat, though you have to be selective — one reason for the dearth of decent food in Venice, Sara explained, is that the authorities are reluctant to risk fires, and thus regulate the number of places allowed to cook with flames, rather than reheating. Thus, you should never, ever order a pizza.

Sara is generally unimpressed by the quality of wine served by the bacari, but two that meet with her approval are Alla Vedova, just behind the Strada Nova, and the Enoteca San Marco, a wine shop and bar not far from the basilica.

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