Locanda Cavallino

Locanda Cavallino is the ground-floor restaurant of Hotel Olivedo, the 1896 Liberty-style house facing Varenna's jetty. It is also open to those who are not staying at the hotel, and has two faces: a room with 50 seats and, outside, 60 more looking at the lake and the boats coming and going from Bellagio and Menaggio. It is the handiest table if you step off the boat or are waiting for the train back to Milan.

The cooking

The menu changes with the seasons and relies on local producers, with homemade pasta and desserts, lake specialities and the odd dish from elsewhere. The house dish is perch risotto, the classic of Lake Como. The house bottles oil from the olive trees of the shore, and there is a separate wine list.

The autumn 2026 menu had, as a starter, a mixed lake-fish antipasto at €18, with lake pâté, trout smoked in-house, fish in carpione, lavarello and trout wrapped in leek and missoltino with grilled polenta. Among the first courses, potato ravioli with radicchio, speck and eel glazed with Valtellina nebbiolo, at €22, and pappardelle with veal stew and strachitunt fondue, a blue cheese from the Val Taleggio. Main courses ran from €20 to €26: guinea fowl with truffle, marinated veal flank, fish and seafood soup or potato rösti with egg and truffle. For those who eat neither fish nor meat, there is also homemade pasta e fagioli.

There are gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan and lactose-free dishes; if you have another intolerance, say so when you book.

When it opens and how to book

It is open from February to October, like the hotel. The website does not publish daily hours or the closing day: book by phone, on +39 333 203 4305, or by email, and ask then. Dogs may enter the dining room. The hotel bar also serves soft drinks, cocktails, a little something to nibble and coffee facing the water.

Getting there

It is on the piazza by Varenna's jetty. From Varenna-Esino station, where trains from Milano Centrale arrive in a little over an hour, you walk down in about five minutes. From Bellagio or Menaggio, the mid-lake ferry drops you in front in a quarter of an hour.