Cuisine and restaurants
The big variety of the territory reflects also on the gastronomy
of this area. The cuisine is strictly connected to the territory
and the food resources come from the lake itself and the mountains
and is simple, natural and popular.
Within the variety of dishes of the Lake we find ‘fish
in carpione’, smokey trout in oil, eel, fish soup ‘alla Tremezzina’. Very
popular are the missulit, a kind of fish ‘agone’, dried
up, often served with ‘polenta’, the dried or smoked‘Lavarello del Lario’
and the ‘Pigo’. The risotto served with fillet perch cannot be missed!
Along the banks of the lake there are also several cultivations,
that produce high quality vegetables and products, like olive
oil and asparagus of Tremezzina.
In the mountain inland and in the valleys we find homemade
dishes which are poorer. Nowadays in the typical ‘crotti’,
fresh cellars carved out from the rock, we find many restaurants, that
serve in many cases fresh local products like cheese
(‘Taleggio’, ‘Bitto’, the ‘Formaggelle’, goats cheese, cottage cheese
and butter) and cold meats. The main dishes are: polenta
(yellow that is traditional plain, ‘taragna’ that is with melted cheese,
and ‘cunscia’ with garlic), white meat, goat-meat, mushrooms and up the
north part of the lake, meat from wild animals. On the east shore of the
lake, instead, towards Valtellina, you have to try the famous pizzoccheri.
Among the sweets, there is the cotizza,
a kind of homemade flat bread with lemon rind, the "Resta de Comm",similar
to the tradition Italian Christmas cake, and the Miascia,
a mixture of dry bread, eggs, apples, almond biscuits, pinoli, currants,
butter, flour and dark chocolate.
Here is a list of some restaurants listed per area of
the different towns: