If you have the travel itch, Goodnight Hospitality has just what you’re looking for: For the next season at its Michelin-starred restaurant March, diners will be transported to Venice, Italy, starting February 7.

The upscale Montrose restaurant, which opened in 2021, explores the Mediterranean region through food, cocktails, and wine with a tasting menu that changes twice a year. The restaurant offers a six-course discovery tasting for $185 or a nine-course exploration tasting for $245, accompanied by optional wine pairings for an additional $125 and $170, respectively.

Last season, which concluded January 4, March’s tasting menu explored the Republic of Genova. Goodnight chef de cuisine Chris Davies says the intention was to have the two maritime republics back-to-back, so expect plenty of seafood on the Republic of Venice menu.

“One really interesting thing about the project for me is that we’re really trying to tell a story through these dishes, through these snapshots,” Davies says. “We’re focusing on things that are very important to the region.”

Every season, diners begin their experience in the lounge area, where they are given a cocktail menu and snacks that are unique to the area being showcased. The staff asks whether they’ve previously eaten at the restaurant, which helps them understand more about how to frame a guest’s visit. This season, the bites include a foie gras and caramelized onion tart, crab polpette, frico (a potato and cheese pancake) with black truffle on top, and sarde in saor, featuring sardines with sweet-and-sour onions.

As guests move into the dining room, they are given a hand towel with an aroma that captures the essence of the city. The Venetian fragrance has notes of grapefruit, chamomile, and linden trees. Davies jokes that Felipe Riccio, chef-partner of Goodnight Hospitality, becomes a bit of a “mad scientist” to achieve the perfect scent.

The tasting menu’s dishes differ depending on the number of courses a guest signs up for. The nine-course menu features a risi e bisi, a classic Italian dish of risotto with peas. But Riccio promises you won’t just be getting rice and peas—the kitchen melds aromatic carnaroli rice with a pea tendril and green plum puree, topped with shrimp, lardo strips, and pancetta furikake. Another dish, the Laguna de Venecia, combines hamachi, tuna, clams, and scallops with celery, apple, and a drizzle of prosecco grape vinaigrette.

Goodnight Hospitality’s pastry chef, Micaela Victoria, helps diners end the night on a sweet note. The six-course menu’s pre-dessert is inspired by the flavors in an Aperol spritz, made with Aperol jelly, bitter orange sorbet, grapefruit meringue, and rhubarb confit. The main dessert, influenced by the colors of the Carnival of Venice, features a strawberry pink pepper crémeux, goat cheese mousse, almond dacquoise, and strawberry tuile on top.

The pre-dessert in the nine-course menu is a play on Murano glass, crafted using a candy apple sphere stuffed with apple tarragon jelly, black olive caramel, and tonka coconut yogurt. And for the main dessert, diners can dig into the profumo di osmanto, which explores the scents from the trade routes in Venice using an osmanthus flower crémeux, an apricot compote, a honey madeleine, and candied amaranth clusters, as well as an edible spray.

Riccio says the goal of the tasting menu is to challenge everyone who walks through March’s doors. While they could Google Venetian food and get an idea of what the menu might look like, he aims to dig deeper. The process for bringing everything to life takes about eight weeks of extensive research and development. It starts with Riccio creating a well-rounded guide to present to the team. From there, discussions about different dishes and ingredients begin, complemented by the staff’s own research.

“We have to give them something that people can latch onto, but also surprise them,” Riccio says. “That’s super important.”

The restaurant also closes for a month between seasons. The staff is given a well-deserved break the first two weeks, then they come right back for the next season’s training, which involves meetings and a total of four tastings. Gabriel Fontenier, the general manager of March, is responsible for making sure everyone is up to par in the front of house. Throughout training, he helps the staff understand the history of the region and how to tell a story that will make the menu more approachable.

“They translate [the history] to make sure the guests can absorb it in a way that is very casual,” Fontenier says.

He even brings in someone from the Houston Ballet to give the staff a lesson on how to move seamlessly across the floor—making it all an almost choreographed movement.

Of course, when it comes to the menu, it can get tricky to find everything the restaurant needs to execute its dishes. Luckily, Riccio says they can direct-import ingredients thanks to some vendors who are willing to help. The carnaroli rice from the risi e bisi, for example, comes from Meracinque, a tiny grower in Veneto.

They also work with Goodthyme Farm in Bellville, which is owned by Goodnight Hospitality partners Bailey and Pete McCarthy. Riccio says when an herb or vegetable is needed but has no commercial market, the farm will help them out by planting and growing it for them. However, after the derecho and Hurricane Beryl last year, the farm is currently in rebuilding mode, so things were a bit different this time around.

And despite now having a Michelin star under their belt, Riccio notes that this recognition from the esteemed guide changes nothing. He and his staff are only worried about competing with themselves to make each season better than the last one. Riccio jokes that he has no clue whose idea it was to start such a detail-oriented, time-consuming tasting menu at March, because it’s exhausting work—but he knows it’s what keeps folks coming back.

“We know the challenges of a tasting menu—they’re expensive, they’re lengthy, [but] most of the time, they’re compelling, they have a story to tell,” Riccio says.