Dining

Tables, and thepeople who keep them.

Where to eat, who will cook at your house, and how to get a table in August. Held current by people who eat on this lake all year, not only in season.

Reservations Private chefs Long tables

We do not publish restaurant names. The places on the list are small, and the whole value of it is that it stays workable.

What we will publish is how each village works at different hours, which is what actually determines whether you eat well there.

01What we do

Western shoreSix places we use

Lunch you can arrive at by boat

All with a mooring, all worth the crossing.

Central basinReservations

The quiet tables

Held for members at short notice, including in August.

At your houseFourteen cooks

Private chefs

From a single dinner to a full season.

Como and MilanSourcing

Cellar and wine

Stocking a house, or finding one bottle.

Gardens and terracesTwelve to eighty

Long tables

Birthdays, weddings and the dinners in between.

An evening terrace under striped awnings

Across the lakeOff-hours

Early and late

Breakfast before the ferries, dinner after eleven.

02A short list

Six places wesend people.

Deliberately unnamed here. Members get the name, the number, and the person to ask for.

A terrace with eleven tables

Lunch, arriving by boat. No sign from the road.

Tremezzina

The kitchen behind the church

Six covers, one sitting, booked by telephone only.

Bellagio

The old grotto

Lake fish, cooked plainly, since the 1940s.

Cernobbio

Four hundred metres up

Twenty minutes of hairpins for the best view of the lake.

Above Menaggio

A dining room with no menu

You are told what there is. Take it.

Como

Late, on the eastern shore

The kitchen stays open for members until midnight.

Varenna

Reservations

Eight of you,arriving by boat.

Give us the date, the number and roughly where you would like to be. We will hold two tables and tell you which one to take.

Request Something Membership

Questions

Which Lake Como restaurants can you reach by boat?

A number along both shores have their own jetty or a mooring within a short walk, but far fewer than photographs suggest, and several will only take a boat below a certain length.

Arriving by water is the best way to eat on this lake and the easiest thing to get wrong. We confirm the mooring, the length limit and the time before we send anyone, because turning up by boat somewhere that cannot take you is a long way to have come.

Can you get a table on Lake Como in August?

Yes, but not by trying on the day. The places worth eating at are small, and in August they are full.

We hold standing relationships rather than block bookings, which means we can usually place members at short notice, including on the evenings when a village looks entirely booked.

Can you have a private chef at your villa on Lake Como?

Yes. We work with a small number of cooks who will do a single dinner, a week, or the whole season.

For a house with a domestic kitchen this is often better than going out: you eat on your own terrace, the children eat earlier, and nobody drives. We match the cook to the kitchen as much as to the menu.

Eating, village by village

Where to eat in BellagioThe village on the promontory where Lake Como divides. The most visited address on the lake, and still one of the hardest to buy into.

Where to eat in CernobbioThe first town north of Como on the western shore, close enough to the city to live in properly and far enough out to be on the lake.

Where to eat in MenaggioThe town at the western end of the mid-lake crossing, with a working piazza, a golf course above it and a road out to Switzerland behind it.

Where to eat in TremezzinaNot a village but a shoreline: four former comuni strung along the western bank, holding the greatest concentration of gardens and grand villas on the lake.

Where to eat in VarennaThe eastern-shore village at the mouth of the Lecco branch, small, steeply built, and the only address of its kind on the lake with a railway station of its own.

Where to eat in ComoThe city at the foot of the western branch. Roman in plan, silk in trade, and the one address on the lake that works as a place to live rather than a place to summer.

Where to eat in LaglioA narrow shelf of houses on the western shore between Moltrasio and Brienno, where the mountain comes down almost to the water and everything is reached by steps or by boat.

Where to eat in MoltrasioThe village the lake was partly built from, a quarry town on the western shore between Cernobbio and Laglio, stacked in tiers above a small harbour.

Where to eat in TornoA compact medieval village on the eastern shore that steps down to two harbours and turns its back on the road, the last piece of the lake still organised around the water.

Where to eat in BlevioA villa shore rather than a village: a string of hamlets on the steep eastern bank immediately beyond Como, close enough to the city to be useful and separate enough to forget it.

Where to eat in NessoBuilt around a gorge and a waterfall on the eastern side of the Como branch, and arranged as a single long descent from the road to a harbour at the bottom.

Where to eat in LezzenoThe longest shoreline on this side of the branch, made of many small hamlets rather than one village, with the western shore in the sun opposite and the mountain behind taking the winter light.

Read first

Where to Eat on Lake ComoEating well on this lake is less about knowing names than about knowing the pattern: how far from the ferry quay to walk, when the kitchens close, and what the lake itself actually produces.

Lake Como by BoatThe lake was laid out to be travelled on the water, and it still works better that way, provided you understand the wind, the timetable and where you are actually allowed to land.

Where to Stay on Lake ComoPosition decides more about a stay here than the house does: which shore, which branch, how you arrive and what you will actually do with the day.