L'Escale

L'Escale Trattoria & Wine Bar is the Buratti-family-run dining room on Salita Mella. The cobbled lane running from the Bellagio harbour to the medieval Piazza della Chiesa. And is the village's most photographed harbour-front modern restaurant. The space is a converted medieval townhouse with stone-vaulted ceilings, a single open kitchen at the back wall, and a south-facing summer terrace overlooking the lake-front directly.

The cuisine is contemporary Lariano with strong Lombardian-modern influences. Signatures include a hand-rolled tagliolino with Lake Como char and Mantua pumpkin; a slow-cooked Lariano lamb shoulder with juniper and braised endive; a smoked Lake Como agone with horseradish butter; a wood-fired Lake Como pesce persico with butter and sage; a Lariano risotto al limone della costa; the famous 'crostata di pere'. A Lake Como pear tart with mascarpone cream.

The wine list is one of the most interesting in the village. 350 references built around Lombardian smallholders (Franciacorta, Valtellina, Oltrepò) and a serious Italian-national section. Glass pours start at €8 and the by-the-glass programme runs a generous twelve-glass Lombardian flight. The cocktail bar at the front of the restaurant is genuinely interesting and runs a serious aperitif programme.

The dining room and terrace together hold sixty covers. Twenty in the indoor stone-vaulted dining room, forty on the south-facing harbour-front terrace. The summer terrace is one of the most photographed view-driven dining settings in the village. Service is family-run. The Buratti siblings rotate the floor and the captains have worked the property for years.

L'Escale is the easy-first-date room in Bellagio. Quieter than Mistral, less formal than Salice Blu, and the south-facing harbour-front terrace is among the most photographed dining settings on Lake Como. The lunch-into-late-afternoon format gives a date a long, unhurried mid-day window without committing to a full evening. Book the corner two-top closest to the harbour view; order a half-bottle of Franciacorta and the perch risotto.