September 2025

We are in a nice walk-up apartment in this very touristy town located onshore in the centre of Como Lake. Bellagio supports (seasonally I guess) about a  hundred restaurants, ranging from waterfront tourist traps to one quite phony high-class fine dining place. You can search sites like TripAdvisor and see ordinary people’s opinions, but in all the little pasta and pizza places we tried you get nicely prepared signature dishes like carbonara, ameritrizia and pizza. This one we found happened to serve up especially good such local goodies.

We were seated for lunch outside at a little table balanced on the cobblestones along the restaurant’s quaint pedestrian sidestreet. Servers were in their 20s and spoke enough English to do business. We started with a mixed seafood antipasto that had a wonderful rose of sliced smoked fish and a couple of other tasty lake fish items.

While we were waiting for our main course a very loud conflict erupted in the kitchen. We couldn’t see the combatants but some female employee was getting shouted at by another lady. A non-Italian girl at a nearby table rolled her eyes. Eventually this local colour settled down.

The mains arrived and they were a delicious Neapolitan pizza for Robin and pasta carbonara for me. The pizza was crisp and loaded with cheese and mushrooms. My carbonara was fabulous with a lot of salty guanciale under perfectly al dente spaghetti anointed with egg sauce. All washed down with a drinkable rose for about $40. I think we paid about C$160 for that and lunch.

I’m assuming this place has found its way into some guidebooks for good reason. Walking by in the evening there are a dozen young people are standing around waiting to get in.

Food 8.8, service 7.9, ambience “informal”, value 8.7, peace and quiet come natura.