From our kitchen, to yours.
Hi, we’re Fabio and Agnes, a Leiths trained cook and a stylist and writer, and the voices behind the Venetian Kitchen.
Who we are
We grew up in the Venice area, Fabio just across the Ponte della Libertà and Agnes in the Venetian countryside beyond it.
We grew up surrounded by a landscape that changes constantly: the lagoon, the rivers and plains, the hills, and the mountains we would visit to ski, hike, or simply stop at a small farm on the way home to buy cheese and butter.
And through all of it, food was there. In our mothers’ and grandmothers’ kitchens, we learned without realising we were learning: that ingredients matter, that seasons matter, and that a meal is never just a meal.
Venice itself was simply part of everyday life. University, work, restaurants, hotels, offices, boats across the lagoon. Beautiful, of course, but familiar too.
For us, it was never a postcard. It was just life.
Twelve years ago, Fabio’s work with ships brought us to another island, the UK, and eventually to London, which we have come to love too. We have been here ever since.
We are, at heart, deeply crafty people. Fabio trained as a cook and is learning pottery; Agnes trained as a stylist and has passions that span garden herbs and remedies, stitching, tablescaping and interiors. We are always making something with our hands, always learning something new.
And food has always been the thread running through all of it.
In our kitchen, food has always been more than a recipe. It’s how we find our way back to ourselves, and to each other.
The story behind the Venetian kitchen
The Venetian Kitchen began in September 2023, but its roots go back to a much harder time.
During Covid, Fabio was made redundant. After many applications and rejections, he used the last of his savings to retrain and was finally offered a new job in a completely different sector. Before he could begin, however, he had to undergo a second open heart surgery for a congenital condition he had lived with all his life.
The timing left us without an income for months, and life became frighteningly uncertain. But it also made us look closely at what mattered to us, and at the things that had always made us feel most like ourselves.
Cooking was one of them.
Note: the surgery was also part of something bigger: research into heart valve care for young adults that we hope helps others facing the same path. If that resonates with you, you can read more about Fabio’s story and the research.
From difficulty, something new
During that time, cooking became a way through. Agnes suggested that we start something together, originally as a baking blog. She had always known how gifted Fabio was in the kitchen, while she had always found her own expression through writing, styling and creating spaces: arranging tables, working with beautiful things, and bringing together the small details that make a place feel like home.
It felt natural to bring those things together. Fabio could cook, Agnes could write and create the visual world around the food, and together we could tell the stories behind the recipes we had grown up with.
She wanted to give Fabio’s talent somewhere to go, at a time when so much else had been taken away. But in the process, The Venetian Kitchen also gave her a place to bring together the things she had always loved.
Food became a form of care.
Where it all came together
Then came a trip to Scotland. We found ourselves on the Isle of Skye, standing somewhere that held both mountains and sea at once, and something shifted.
We had just bought a little mug from a local potter whose studio was tucked away off the beaten track, the clay pulled from the land around it.
It wasn’t just a beautiful object. It was the island, made holdable.
And we realised that the same was true of the food we had grown up with.
A recipe can carry a place. So can a plate, a piece of pottery, a table, a garden, or something made by hand. They all have a way of holding onto landscape, memory and the people who made them.
That was what we wanted to share.
Not just the recipes, but the world they came from: the Veneto beyond the tourist trails, the plains and villages, the quiet kitchens where our mothers and grandmothers cooked without fuss and with great love.
The Venetian Kitchen became our way of staying connected to those places and people from far away, and of passing a little of it on.
Some kitchens are just rooms. We like to think that ours carries a landscape.
What the Venetian kitchen is about
The Venetian Kitchen is rooted in food, but it has never really been only about food.
It is about the world around the kitchen: the ingredients that arrive with the seasons, the hands that prepare them, the objects we use, the things we make, the table we set and the people we gather around it.
Our recipes come from a very specific place: the Venetian lagoon, the Veneto plains, the villages and mountains we knew as children. They are the recipes of our families, but also the everyday food of a region that is often overlooked in favour of Venice itself.
We cook with the seasons because that is how we grew up. We use what is available, make things by hand when we can, and don’t believe that food needs to be complicated to be memorable.
Most of all, we are interested in the stories that live alongside a recipe: a particular Sunday lunch, a mother’s handwritten notes, something growing in a garden, a dish made year after year without ever needing to be written down.
Because a kitchen is never just the room where you cook.
It is where things are made, remembered and shared.
We hope to inspire you to cook with the seasons, make things with your hands, and create a home where food, stories and people come together.
Come cook with us
So this is our Venetian Kitchen.
A little piece of Veneto in London, built around the things we know, the things we are still learning, and the things we love to make together.
You’ll find recipes here, of course. But you’ll also find the stories behind them, the seasons that shape them, the places they come from and the things that surround them.
Sometimes we’ll be cooking. Sometimes we’ll be making something with our hands. Sometimes we’ll simply be setting the table.
No matter if online, in London or Oxforshire, you’re always welcome to join us.
Fabio and Agnes
Note: we are both members of the Venice in Peril Fund, the leading British charity dedicated to safeguarding the rich cultural heritage of Venice, now and for future generations. If you care about Venice as much as we do, we’d love for you to explore their work.
