Territorial identity and sustainability: restaurants where game is at the centre of the menu

Piatto del ristorante La Presef

Even in Florida, in Valtellina, game enters a dimension of sustainable haute cuisine. The restaurant La Presef, led by chef Gianni Tarabini and awarded one Michelin star and one green star, constructs a gastronomic journey that combines technical elegance and environmental care. Meats such as deer, roe deer and wild duck are 'lightened', supplemented with spontaneous herbs, roots, berries, natural extracts, resulting in essential but profound dishes. The forest becomes a creative palette, the raw material an element respected and reinterpreted with contemporary sensitivity. A proposal that makes nature and cuisine dialogue with rare balance.

Una creazione della chef Valeria Piccini

At Da Caino, a self-taught chef since the 1970s has been putting the best of the deepest Maremma into her dishes: a rural heritage transformed into gastronomic excellence, worth two Michelin stars. The legendary Valeria Piccini at the hob, with her son Andrea Menichetti - who in the dining room brings his visceral passion for the wines he selects for his very deep cellar, well beyond his role as sommelier - have built a method that is now a national reference: absolute respect for the hunting industry, punctual selection of animals and calibrated cooking that enhances the biodiversity of an area where wildlife management is part of the local economy. A game that speaks of landscapes, tradition and nature. Hare, wild boar and roe deer are treated with a technical rigour that cleanses the taste of any rustic excess, restoring clean, elegant meat with a complex but readable aromatic profile.

La sala accogliente del Casin del Gamba

Since 1976, the Dal Lago family has run Al Casin del Gamba, one of the most authoritative voices in Vicenza's local cuisine, specialising in 'wild meat'. Chef Antonio Dal Lago, a self-taught chef of great sensitivity, signs a cuisine rooted in tradition but not afraid to innovate. Mushrooms, snails and game have become iconic dishes, loved by fans all over Italia. In the dining room, Daria Cerato greets diners with elegance, while Luca Dal Lago looks after a rigorously constructed wine cellar of great labels and small local producers. Theuninterrupted Michelin star since 1992 testifies to a perfect balance between continuity, identity and the ability to renew itself without losing its soul.

At Malga Panna, in Moena (Tn), game is not a seasonal off-menu, but the lintel of a cuisine that interprets the Alpine arc as an ecosystem. Deer, venison and feathered animals come from a short and controlled supply chain, managed according to wildlife plans that guarantee balance and constant quality. Thestarred chef Paolo Donei processes the meat with Nordic precision: clean extractions, targeted maturation and delicate cooking that preserves the aromatic verticality of the mountains. The result is a virtuous model of high-altitude catering, where game becomes an ambassador of the territory and a lever of attraction for a gastronomic tourism that supports, in a concrete way, the economy of the valleys.

Eating at Lokanda Devetak is a plunge into the most intense Friuli. Wild game is the living heritage of a border area, where gastronomic identity is born from the meeting of cultures. Grawn meat, wild boar and hare are processed in the Karst tradition: long marinades, slow cooking, skilful use of wood and fermentations that amplify the depth and texture of taste. The Devetak family guards ancient knowledge, transforming game into a cultural as well as gastronomic preserve. A cuisine that makes sustainable management of fauna an element of identity. The winery - one of the most solid in the North-East - completes an experience that enhances rural economies and small cross-border supply chains.

Locanda del Daino #casadicaccia

In a secluded portion of the Apennines between Pieonte and Liguria (at Grondona), where the territory of the Quattro Province is cloaked in the silent woods of the farming and hunting reserve Cascina Emanuele - created in 1947 by Edoardo Garrone to protect this dense and wild nature - stands the Locanda del Daino #casadicaccia, a place that seems to guard the very breath of the landscape.
In the kitchen work the chefs Giacomo dell'Aglio and Tommaso Picollo, young interpreters of a tradition that here is not memory, but living continuity: intense backgrounds, slow cooking, aromas of undergrowth that intertwine with game treated with absolute respect. Deer, roe deer, hare and wild boar thus become the authentic tale of a territory that is offered without filters, transformed into dishes that speak the language of the mountain and its ancient rhythm. A pure, sincere cuisine of the territory that makes the inn a garrison of flavour and identity.

At Ostaria Siracusa, the real star is the Josper oven, which allows perfect cooking for all Dry Age meats, yielding fragrant crusts and juicy interiors. Here, game is often the star of the "off the menu", so hare and venison find masterful interpretations: full flavours, never loaded, enhanced by light smoking and an almost sartorial attention to temperatures. Supporting the gastronomic proposal is an ample and well-curated wine cellar: in addition to Sicilian wines, it is rich in Nebbiolo, Amarone, Brunello, Supertuscan and champagne, designed to accompany the aromatic complexity of matured cuts and game with character.