Tremezzina Gastronomica 2026: the village restaurants cook the old dishes, October to December
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From 3 October to 13 December 2026 the Tremezzina holds its Rassegna Gastronomica, an event the town council and the local tourist association have been running for more than fifty years. Twenty restaurants, trattorias, osterias and one mountain refuge each put a menu of local cooking on the table for several weeks.
It helps to say what this is not, because the name misleads English speakers: there are no stalls in the square and no festival ground. These are the village restaurants, serving traditional Lake Como dishes for a set period, and you go the way you go to dinner anywhere, by booking the place you fancy.
The dishes that keep coming back, and what they are
Read through the menus and the same names appear again and again, which is rather the point: this is what people ate here before the lake became a destination.
Missoltino is shad from the lake, dried in the sun and pressed under salt, served with polenta. It is the most distinctive flavour on this shore and it divides people, because it is strong. Polenta uncia comes down from the mountains behind the villages, dressed with butter, garlic and cheese. Miascia is the farmers' pudding, built from stale bread. Then there is whitefish, perch, porcini and chestnuts, which in autumn come out of the woods directly above the houses.
The evenings worth planning around
Alongside the menus that run for weeks, a handful of dinners happen on one night only. The most unusual is at Villa del Balbianello: dinner in the historic garden with a guided visit of the interiors, reached only by boat from Lenno, with the crossing included. There are four such dates across October and November, booking is required, and each evening only goes ahead if a minimum number of guests is reached.
The bistrot at Villa Carlotta devotes three days in mid-November to an autumn menu, the Boffalora refuge opens the festival with polenta served up at altitude, and one November dinner is cooked by students of the Ezio Vanoni catering school alongside their teachers: the old recipes handled by the people who will be cooking here in a few years.
What it costs and how you get a table
Menus in the 2026 edition run from 30 euros at a village trattoria to 120 for a tasting dinner, with most sitting between 45 and 60 euros per person. Drinks are usually extra, though not always: some places include them, and the programme says which.
There is no ticket and no registration. You pick the restaurant, you ring them, you book. The full programme with every menu, date and phone number is published by the Associazione Turistica Tremezzina and updated each year: worth checking before you set out, because each restaurant has its own window and some dinners happen once only.
One of the trattorias is here in Mezzegra
The Antica Trattoria del Risorgimento, one of the places taking part, is in Mezzegra, the same village as the apartments. Its 2026 menu is built around missoltino and a risotto with fillets of perch, and the card explains that the recipe is the one Milanese day-trippers knew, with the perch breaded like a cutlet.
This is the sort of thing that makes a week here different from a day trip: nothing to organise, you simply walk out to dinner. The same goes for the rest of the Tremezzina, all of it close by, as we describe in our piece on getting around here without a car.
Why autumn is the right time to come
The festival falls exactly when the lake changes gear. The villas cut their opening hours, the ferries thin out, and anyone arriving finds the villages without the August crowds: it is the season we describe in Lake Como in autumn, and this festival is its culinary reason.
From 4 December the calendar tips into winter, with the last menus running to the 13th. Come in those weeks and you get the lake at its quietest, the version we write about in Lake Como in winter.
In short
- 3 October to 13 December 2026, across the Tremezzina
- Twenty venues: restaurants, trattorias, osterias and a mountain refuge
- Run by the Tremezzina council and the local tourist association, under the patronage of the Italian Academy of Cuisine
- Book directly with the restaurant you choose, no ticket needed
- Menus from 30 to 120 euros, most between 45 and 60
- Each venue has its own dates, and some dinners are one night only
For the current programme and the full menus, the Associazione Turistica Tremezzina publishes the festival booklet every year. If you would like help working out the dates, just ask us: we keep our local tips current for guests.
