Osteria Sottoriva

This guide to Osteria Sottoriva in Verona traces one unbroken house rule under fourteenth-century arcades on a street that once sat level with the Adige: wine, or water, nothing else, held to since 1739. You'll hear how boatmen once drank here between hauls, why locals treat the rule as something close to a superstition, and how the poet Berto Barbarani used to trade verses for a glass at this same counter. Order the horse meatballs or a boiled egg, and take your drink standing, the way everyone before you has.