The Venice Film Festival turns the city into a crush of photographers, water taxis and auteur hunters, and even the critics covering it rarely get a proper meal. One writer's answer this year: skip the crowded trattorias of San Marco entirely and host a private dinner on Isola delle Rose, a quiet island belonging to the JW Marriott Venice Resort & Spa, about 20 minutes away by boat.
The hotel runs this as a white-glove service available at JW Marriott properties worldwide. It starts with a consultation: guests pick between menu options and table styling, from polished and formal to something more rustic but still refined. The author went rustic in sage green, a natural fit for an island covered in olive groves and gardens. Two menus were offered, both built around local produce and Venetian seafood; the garden-forward one won.
The evening itself leaned on details sourced from steps away. Name cards rested on vegetables pulled from the island's gardens, and the candles at each setting were actually herb-infused butter, lit by staff when the bread arrived. Dinner ran through Venetian standbys with a garden twist: farm egg with chanterelles and aged Montasio cheese, grilled baby cuttlefish in light tomato sauce, charred zucchini rosettes with smoked ricotta, then a risotto of garden herbs, lemon and rose shrimp. Dessert was fig with honey and vanilla, and guests left with wildflower honey from nearby Vignole Island and local olive oil.
The setting did a lot of the work. Guests, including journalists from Variety, IndieWire, the Associated Press and New York Magazine, arrived by hotel-arranged water taxis to a lawn overlooking the lagoon, with live guitar, signature cocktails and hors d'oeuvres at sunset. The island itself, dotted with modernist sculptures among the olive trees and looking back toward Venice's skyline, offers the hush the festival strips away. Rooms sit in secluded outbuildings in soft earth tones, many with private terraces facing the Mediterranean greenery.
For travellers, the takeaway goes beyond celebrity-watching. Venice in high season, festival or not, is famously overwhelming, and the piece describes a familiar anxiety about picking the wrong restaurant with the wrong view. Booking a private dinner on Isola delle Rose solves that: someone else handles the food, the styling and the logistics, and you get a guaranteed table with a lagoon sunset. It works just as well for a milestone birthday or a group trip as it does for an industry gathering. And the hotel's own boat transfers mean you can dip into Venice when you want the crowds and retreat when you don't. It is a splurge, clearly, but it reframes a trip to one of Europe's busiest cities around calm rather than endurance.
