Hooked Venice

The Cafe Nico is the order: a 2005 Vivace-style orange cocoa drink, pulled at a coffee counter set inside a Venice fish-and-burgers restaurant.

Natural processed coffee, kept simple

Hooked is an independent coffee concept operating within the walls of Dudley Market, conceived by Christopher “Nicely” Alameda. The idea runs parallel to natural wine: natural and experimental processed coffees, read through process, texture and espresso rather than through café staples.

The programme centres on those coffees and on how they behave with milk. The lots that make the cut are the ones that gave Alameda his own moments of surprise, which is a narrow filter to buy on, but an honest one. The bar runs a La Marzocco Linea PB, with shots pulled at 45 or 50 grams to balance the extraction against the milk that follows, and competition-level drink ideas turn up in ordinary service. The two that show it best are a natural Gesha cappuccino made with goat’s milk and the orange cocoa Cafe Nico.

A counter inside a Venice restaurant

Setting defines Hooked as much as the drinks do. This is a compact coffee counter inside Dudley Market, a beachside fish-and-burgers restaurant in Venice, rather than a café with its own front door, so the visit picks up the ocean air and the natural-wine context of the room around it.

The counter is low-key by design, small enough that the barista is the whole operation. Alameda’s background runs through Vivace, Intelligentsia Venice, Handsome Coffee Roasters, Menotti’s and Dayglow, with a reputation as a standout latte artist, and it shows in how the drinks are finished. The Infatuation Coffee Guide included Hooked in 2026.

Order the Cafe Nico first

Start with the Cafe Nico, the drink most clearly tied to what Hooked does: a 2005 Vivace-style orange cocoa espresso drink that sits beside the natural Gesha goat’s milk cappuccino as evidence of what can be poured in a short service window. Those two explain the counter better than any menu description.

Stay in the natural and experimental espresso lane rather than treating this as a pastry-first stop. The strengths are natural processed coffee, milk texture, latte art and compact, high-touch counter service, where the drink is built in front of you and handed over rather than called out across a room.