A family from Providence, Rhode Island — third-generation Italian-American, with roots that trace back to a small town outside Siena — spent part of their Lake Como stay in Torno, a quiet village on the eastern shore few visitors even know to look for. Their grandparents had cooked Tuscan food their whole lives, built on the same real, regional ingredients this family had grown up hearing about. Being based in Italy, the chef works with international guests, but also with Italian clients closer to home — and browsing the website before the trip, this family searched through everything on offer and found something in the regional menu section: Percorso Toscana, built for Italian clients, never adapted for a foreign palate, and asked for exactly that.
Regional roots, reinterpreted
- Percorso Toscana isn’t a menu that simply reproduces tradition — it’s built on strictly regional ingredients, the ones that made Tuscan cooking what it is, but the dishes themselves are reinterpreted into something more gourmet, more curious, without ever losing the flavor that made the originals great in the first place. It’s one of the regional menus on the chef’s own site, built for guests who already know the cuisine and want to be surprised by it, not just served it. Available to anyone who asks, regardless of where they’re from, it was served here exactly as written:
- Seared red mullet bites, cannellini bean purée, summer truffle and wood sorrel
- Tuscan kale risotto, with a cream of aglione — the region’s giant, mild garlic, cooked slow rather than raw
- Dry-aged ribeye, carrot purée, roasted salads and a finishing drizzle of raw olive oil
- Zuppa inglese with chickpea and anise-soaked sour cherries — the traditional Tuscan trifle rebuilt with chickpeas as the base for both the chocolate and vanilla creams instead of the usual custard, an unexpected substitution that still lands as unmistakably zuppa inglese, just more curious for it.
Nothing on the menu was softened or explained away. The truffle, the aglione, the chickpea reworking of a classic dessert — all of it was built to entertain the palate, not just satisfy it, the same instinct that shaped the traditional dishes to begin with.
More than a taste of something typical
For most visitors, a regional menu like this answers a simple want: eat something genuinely local. For a family with real roots in the region, it does something more. Many Americans carry Italian heritage a generation or two back, often with only a rough sense of what that heritage actually tasted like — a menu built specifically around a region’s real ingredients and technique, reinterpreted rather than simplified, becomes a way of rediscovering that origin through food itself, not just eating a meal that happens to be Italian.
How the evening came together
- The menu was chosen from the site itself, before any conversation with the chef — the family had already found Percorso Toscana and knew exactly what they wanted.
- A short conversation to confirm ingredients and sourcing — summer truffle availability, the specific cut for the ribeye, and any final preferences, but no adjustments to the dishes themselves.
- The chef arrived about an hour before the agreed dinner time, unloading, setting the table, and getting the kitchen ready to serve.
- Dinner served exactly as written on the menu, course by course, with the same explanation and care as it would get for an Italian guest who grew up eating this way.
- Kitchen cleaned and reset, leaving the evening as the only trace of it.
Why this matters more on Lake Como specifically
Torno is small enough that most visitors pass through without stopping, which suited this family perfectly — a quiet village, away from the more touristic stretches of the lake, for an evening that had nothing to do with sightseeing and everything to do with a specific memory of home. But the deeper point goes beyond Torno itself: so many American guests carry Italian heritage somewhere in their family history, often without ever having tasted a real, unadapted version of the region their family came from. A regional menu, cooked with genuine ingredients and reinterpreted rather than dumbed down, can do something a monument or a museum can’t — it can hand someone back a piece of where they’re actually from, through the one sense that carries memory better than almost any other.
Good to know
- Regional menus, including Percorso Toscana, are available to any guest, not only Italian clients — nothing about them is off-limits, they’re simply not built to appeal to a general audience.
- Dishes are reinterpreted around traditional, strictly regional ingredients — never simplified, and often built to surprise a palate that already knows the classics.
- Ingredients like summer truffle are sourced seasonally, so availability is confirmed ahead of time rather than assumed.
- Particularly well suited to guests exploring their own Italian heritage, region by region, rather than a generalized “Italian” experience.
- Works in any villa or apartment kitchen in Torno and across Lake Como.
If your family has real roots in a specific Italian region and wants a menu built for that region, not for visitors, get in touch — regional menus like Percorso Toscana are there to be requested exactly as written, wherever you’re staying on Lake Como.