Garda Trentino - a culinary trail

Getting to know new places from the inside is our favorite element of our travels. When choosing a restaurant, we always seek advice from the locals, and we also ask the staff for help in choosing the most typical dishes for a given region. Thanks to this, we get to know the "culinary showcases" of the visited area.

During our stay in Garda Trentino, we found that the owners of many local restaurants are willing to support the local market. They pay great attention to ensuring that their dishes are prepared only from local ingredients, from small farms and family production. We liked it very much. Moreover, we are convinced that this is what makes the local food so delicious. We understood why restaurants are so crowded during the season that it's hard to get a table without a reservation. And where did we eat? We invite you to travel along a culinary trail around the region.

Wandering through Italian flavors

The first place is Caffè Ristorante Pizzeria Casa Beust in Torbole. The restaurant is located in such a picturesque location that it appears on most postcards! To be able to enjoy the landscapes, we booked a table especially by the window - from it we can see a romantic bench on the promenade and Lake Garda. Casa Beust is run by a family, and the well-being of the guests is ensured by the owner who serves the tables himself. Thanks to the kindness of the hosts, our two-year-old could have fun in their private garden, which can be accessed straight from the restaurant.

And the food? We were enchanted by the food here. We can confidently recommend the tasting menu, consisting mainly of local fish. For dessert, you must try the homemade tiramisu or panna cotta.

The next place we visited was Ristorante Pizzeria Bar e Gelateria L'Ora in Riva del Garda, the largest and probably the most popular town in the region. We spent our second evening here. The restaurant has a great location - right next to the port and a large parking lot. They serve huge portions, so if you want to order two dishes, it's better to do it together. Moreover, the prices are very affordable. We especially liked seafood and recommend it to everyone.

The next place charmed us with its interiors. Ristorante Pizzeria Ai Conti is located in Arco, in the Palazzo Marchetti building from the 15th century. Even if you sit outside to enjoy the sun, we highly recommend going inside and checking out all the rooms. They are truly beautiful and unique. We especially recommend this restaurant to families with children (the little ones have their own outdoor corner) and large groups. Ai Conti has long tables outside - they can easily accommodate many people.

We only ate wood-fired pizza, but if we had stayed on Lake Garda longer, we would definitely have come back for more. Everything we saw on the neighboring tables looked delicious.

Great places are worth returning to

The next point on our culinary map is unique because of two things. The first one is the location - Agritur Calvola required a more than 20-minute climb by car along serpentines. The view that awaited us was worth it! The second thing, of course, is the excellent food. It's not just about the meal itself - the way the food was prepared was also extremely important. All the dishes on our plates, from lettuce through pasta and meat to ice cream, were prepared exclusively from ingredients grown and farmed by the owners.

The lovely Madame Lucia, who personally serves guests, served us ALL the dishes on the menu, so we could get to know their cuisine really well. We especially recommend the antipasti: cold cuts and carpaccio. Primi: pasta with olive oil and bacon. Secondi: polenta with rabbit. And for dessert, apple pie.

We were surprised and completely enchanted by this place. You must, you must come here! By the way, take some time to visit Canale di Tenno itself, the charming medieval town where Agritur Calvola is located.

In the above-mentioned Riva del Garda, there is another restaurant worth recommending - Ristorante Pizzeria Leon D'Oro . We visited it twice last year. We wrote about it in the articles: 11 things you must do in Garda and Food & Wine holidays in Garda Trentino . Since we were there, we couldn't resist stopping by this time. The owner, Luca, met us after a year. He knew that we were "those who write about camping from Poland".

This time we went there for lunch. For an appetizer, we ate baked St. Clams. Jakuba, scallops, the plate also included mussels. For the second course, we chose my favorite risotto with pumpkin and monkfish and bigoli with sardines.

A journey through the vineyards

We also visited vineyards, including Azienda Agricola Gino Pedrotti . It is a small vineyard that has been run by the same family for three generations (since 1912). Giuseppe, the owner, personally looks after each vine branch and supervises the entire production. It is based on the knowledge acquired from its ancestors, and it is also undergoing continuous training. He adapts wine production to local weather and geographical conditions, thanks to which he extracts the best from his grapes. The vineyard's employees are only family members.

Thanks to the lovely Sister Giuseppe, who showed us around the vineyards and cellars, we learned, among others: how the famous Vino Santo is produced. The grapes are aged in wooden boxes in the attic, where every day the Ora wind blowing from Garda flows through the wide windows. This is how nature is used to dry grapes.

If you would like to visit vineyards, learn how wine is made and try wines from a small vineyard, this is the perfect place. It is worth making an appointment for a tasting before purchasing, and at the same time learn more about wine production - still at the vine stage.

And if someone would like to taste wine from various vineyards, olive oil, local cheeses or meat, we recommend a visit to Agraria Riva del Garda Cantina & Frantoio . You can not only arrange a tasting here, but also buy sweets, pasta and many other products. Visiting such a place is a fantastic opportunity to get to know the taste of olive oil or wine before purchasing it. And to learn new things - during the tasting we learned, for example, how to recognize high-quality olive oil. A very interesting trip.

Campsites in the Garda Trentino region

If you are looking for proven campsites in the north of Lake Garda, we recommend starting your search in our campsite search engine on Lake Garda . We stayed in Arco at Camping Zoo , which we highly recommend.