Sottovento

Sottovento Wine Bar & Restaurant is the chef-driven mid-village dining room on Via Garibaldi. The medieval lane running parallel to the lake-front, three streets back from the harbour. And is the village's most reliable wine-led modern dinner. Chef Andrea Pucci took over the room in 2018 and built a programme that is half wine-bar and half serious modern-Italian kitchen.

The menu is short and seasonal. A dozen à la carte plates rewritten monthly, plus a five-course tasting at €85. And unapologetically Lombardian in sourcing. A hand-rolled tagliolino with Lake Como char and Mantua pumpkin; a slow-cooked Lariano lamb shoulder with thyme and Polenta; a smoked Lake Como agone with horseradish butter; a wood-fired Lake Como pesce persico with butter and sage; the famous 'tortino alla nocciola'. A Piedmontese hazelnut cake with Bellagio-honey gelato.

The wine list is the most interesting in the village. 400 references built around Lombardian and Piedmontese smallholders, including a few Valtellina cult bottlings (Ar.Pe.Pe, Sandro Fay) that no other village cellar carries. Glass pours start at €7 and the corkage philosophy is forgiving for a guest who wants to bring their own bottle. Sommelier Pucci himself runs the floor and is one of the village's most engaging by-the-glass commentators.

The room runs at a moderate volume. The cellar walls absorb sound, the booking math caps at thirty-eight covers, and the wine-bar format is a meaningfully different experience from the village's traditional brasseries. Sottovento is the room that the village's serious cooks (the chef teams from Mistral, Salice Blu, the Villa Serbelloni) take their nights off in. It is, by quiet local consensus, the most reliable mid-tier wine-led dinner in Bellagio.

Sottovento is the close-a-deal room in Bellagio. High wine-list integrity, chef-driven cooking, and a quieter volume than the harbour-front rooms. The five-course tasting at €85 is the right length for a wrap-up business dinner; the Valtellina-led wine programme is the most distinctive in the village; the booking math is forgiving outside summer peak. Book the chef's-counter four-top.