Al Vecio Pipa, Burano

The islands of the Venetian lagoon are like children from the same family who share common parents but have developed their own characters and gone their separate ways. Murano is industrial and commercial, still churning out glass in its furnaces located a safe distance from the city. Atmospheric San Michele, the island of the dead, groans under the weight of Venice's departed (but only temporarily, until they are removed and deposited in the ossuary, in readiness for the next inevitable occupants). Torcello exudes abandonment: a portent of Venice's own eventual fate, perhaps. So Burano, with its brightly painted houses and displays of delicate lace, feels the most cheerfully wayward of the offspring, even on a misty autumn day.

The bright colours of the houses were traditionally employed, apparently, to help the island's fishermen find their way back home on murky days and nights. Days like this. Today they have become a design statement. Philippe Starke owns three houses here, apparently. So it's hard, when wandering Burano's streets, to know what's real and what's pastiche. Those nets and sticks outside that small house, are they awaiting a fisherman's next trip or just there for effect? The fishing boats tied up at the side of the canal; do they really fish any more, or just take tourists on safe little rides into the lagoon? That lace in the window, is it really made by hand here, or on some machine in China?

And then we stumbled upon 'Al Vecio Pipa' for lunch, and all seemed real again. An elegant wood panelled dining room. A reserved but efficient waiter; older, wiser. And very good food. This place must host tourists by the boatload, but seems to have resisted any temptation to lower itself to the common denominator that so often results. We ate risotto with a brisk taste of the lagoon and drank crisp white wine. An elderly, elegant French couple were the only other diners. After lunch the mist thickened and even the bright colours of the houses were subdued in the greyness. We chugged back across the water as if surrounded by cotton wool, the dim votive lamps of the Fondamente Nuove appearing suddenly as we docked.

Behind us, the cemetery, the foundries, the forsaken church and the colourful houses out there in the lagoon had slipped away: receded into the insubstantial fragments of our imagination.

Al Vecio Pipa, Via San Mauro 397, 30012 Burano

Tel 041 730045

Even the website seems to have disappeared in the mist.