- Written by: Mona Biedrzycka
We were picked up at Milano Centrale in a black minibus - three writers and me, familiar enough for stories, not the silence. It was an easy start: forty-five minutes of flat. Then it turned, climbing, coiling into the Orobic Alps. Near the end, the road narrowed, steepened, until it rose like a wall. I was relieved not to be the one driving. It was not a road for rented cars or confidence.
At the top, there was no gate, no welcome sign. Just a gravel patch, a low stone fence, and the kind of stillness that calms your heart. The air smelled of sun, hay, and herbs. Somewhere nearby, a dog barked once. Someone was chopping wood. The rest, fields, slopes, roofs tucked into hills, just waited. I’d heard of restaurants being hard to find. This one didn’t want to be found at all.
But someone chose it. Not for the view or the silence but for the chance to build something from scratch. To belong to the land that raised him.
The Golden Boy Who Took the Harder Way In
Most chefs his age are still chasing something - the right city, the right kitchen, the top position on whatever beauty list. They want to cook faster, louder, sooner. To make their name before they’ve found their voice.
Michele Lazzarini didn’t. He could have gone anywhere, Singapore, Copenhagen, or stayed on with Norbert Niederkofler. Any of those would have meant pace, prestige, and a fast track to success in fine dining. But that was never the goal. “My direction was always precise,” he said. “That journey was part of a bigger plan.”
After a decade in the best kitchens in the world, he returned to a place just kilometres from where he grew up. Not to escape the spotlight, but to build something that didn’t depend on it.
By then, Giacomo Perletti had already begun transforming the near-abandoned Contrada into something livable again, rebuilding walls, reviving terraces, laying foundations where nature had taken over.
Michele joined to give the project coherence, to turn the parts into a whole. And today, cooking is almost inseparable from the place. Not because it’s about terroir, but because the field, the dairy, the livestock, and the garden form the mise en place. Dishes don’t just express a chef. They express the logic of a system. One that moves with the mountain, through seasons and setbacks alike.
"My mindset didn’t change,” he said. “The mountain teaches discipline — whether at St. Hubertus or here. But what shifted was awareness. When you milk the cow, churn the butter, dig the soil — the kitchen isn’t just a stage. Every gesture carries weight. And that weight makes you cook differently."
The Builder Behind the Flame
Giacomo Perletti began the Contrada Bricconi project in 2014, driven by the conviction that abandoned rural areas could be repopulated not through nostalgia, but through viable and sustainable models of living. His background in social and environmental entrepreneurship shaped the core vision: a working farm, a restaurant, and a regenerative ecosystem built in symbiosis with the mountain.
From the beginning, the goal wasn’t just to restore land, but to redefine what it means to be a mountain farmer in the 21st century. Giacomo and his team envisioned a space that preserves tradition while building a new culture around it: a place where agriculture becomes education, livelihood, and a form of contemporary identity.
Together with Matteo Trapletti, the first to join Giacomo’s vision and now known as the operational arm of the Contrada, they rebuilt it stone by stone -starting with shelter, then livestock, and finally soil. Infrastructure came first: the barn, housing, fencing, the dairy. Then came the garden seeded from scratch, planted terrace by terrace.
Michele joined a few years later. “When I arrived,” he recalls, “everything was missing.” The kitchen ran with just four people, the front with only two. The budget was thin. The expectations, though, were high. The first six months were quite challenging. But he knew they would grow, and the direction of that growth was clear.
The kitchen wasn’t added on top; it was woven in, once the ecosystem could support it. “In every area - kitchen, dining room, field, or dairy - everyone took responsibility,” Michele said. When something failed, no one passed the blame. The team absorbed it and carried on. This wasn’t a hierarchy or a platform for solo genius. It was, and still is, a framework of mutual reliance and daily, deliberate delegation. A model that rewards presence more than ambition and asks more than most kitchens dare.
The core team — Giacomo, Matteo, and Michele — isn’t bound by titles. One has a background in environmental entrepreneurship, one grew up working the land, and one trained in Michelin kitchens. What unites them is a shared belief: that farming isn’t an outdated way of life, but a radical, relevant craft — one worth rebuilding from the ground up.
"Contrada isn’t just a place to cook,” Michele said. “It’s a model. A way to prove that regeneration, not nostalgia, can bring people back to places like this — to live, to work, to grow. If we want to keep cooking at all, we have to change. This is my way of starting that shift.”
It's the kind of effort you can’t fake, and the type of culture that leaves its mark. Places like this don’t emerge by chance. They’re built, quietly and insistently, out of discipline, sweat, and a patience that becomes identity. The brilliance of Contrada is that it doesn’t advertise its ambition. It wears its integrity like work clothes: scuffed, honest, unironically practical. And the moment the door to the restaurant opens, you understand precisely what that means.
Through the Door, Into the Flame
Michele opened the door himself, grinning like someone genuinely happy to see you, not just trained to look it. He had the kind of energy that doesn’t need caffeine and the type of charm that makes you forget you were a little carsick.
We stepped through thick stone walls, the kind built to hold in heat and secrets, and passed a modest bar that held what looked like a dozen quiet miracles. Cheeses. Lined up like characters in a play. Made just uphill, aged right here, and carrying the scent of whatever the cows had grazed. I slowed down. Made eye contact. Whispered, “I’ll come back for you. And I meant it."
We were led to a smaller room on the ground floor. Cosy in the alpine sense — stone all around, vaulted ceiling above, and a long table set without fuss or flourish. Just a plank of polished wood and a folded napkin, and a small jug with a couple of wild flowers, as if the stage had already been lit. Dishes started to come after a moment of classic writers' inspection, where the light is best.
Char ceviche and tomatillo opened the main part of the meal, the acidity clean and full of bite, the fish silky and cold. The tomatillo, brought as a seed from Mexico by Michele, was grown just metres away under the watchful eye of Maria Cecilia Giamprini, who manages the garden and its sixty-plus varieties of vegetables, herbs, and fruits. Each season, she selects and starts seeds by hand, many of them rare, tracked, and archived in the LAB, the research engine behind the menu that experiments with biodiversity, adaptation, and long-term viability in mountain agriculture. That fruit wasn’t chosen for colour or shape. It earned its place by surviving the mountain. By tasting right.
Snails on skewers, glazed and grilled, came next. The texture: between bounce and chew. Each one brushed with a lake fish garum that gave off just the right hint of funk.
Then: bread gnocchi with onion reduction, horseradish, and calf’s brains. Soft. Dense. Slightly feral. It didn’t ask for your approval. It dared you to admit how good it was.
Bottoni, small, cute buttons filled with aged Reserva cheese, came next. They carried a mellow sweetness and a hint of spice. Around them, a kefir-bright lovage sauce, the sharpness of fresh rue, and a scatter of sorrel and grilled sage. Bitter, green, and clean. Just flavour and nerve.
There were more dishes, of course: fusilli with red fruits and blackcurrant oil, quail with Jerk sauce, trout with curry, a corn tortilla with green fig and kimchi, and a bite of black garlic ice cream with lupin coffee and Jerusalem artichoke. And selection of homemade cheeses.
And to close: a brioche with black walnuts, toasted and served warm, with a texture more like cake than bread. Simple. Precise. No garnish. Just memory and heat.
What I Carry Home
After dessert, of course, the coffee. And in places like this, in summer, it would be a crime not to go outside. We stood on the terrace in front of the restaurant, then moved into the sun near one of the old farm buildings, now used as staff housing. Below us, more buildings, not yet fully restored, but close. Soon, they’ll be apartments for guests.
I left with no cheese. Just the taste of it — and the certainty I’d need to climb back one day soon to make it right.
Every cheese here has been made, not bought. Every function here has been carved back into place by effort that runs through everything. In the kitchen, in the field, and in the way guests are asked to receive it. Presence matters. So does patience. Stamina, too.
What do you take from Contrada besides the memory of a dish and a view? It's the sense that everything you tasted belonged to the place, to the season, to an idea carried through without compromise. The clarity of something built to last. A low, steady flame — the kind that changes you slowly. And stays.
CONTRADA BRICCONI
Address: Via Bricconi, 3, 24020 Oltressenda Alta (BG), Lombardia, Italy
Telephone: +39 375 506 6113
Bookings available via the website or by phone. Reservations requiredWebsite: www.contradabricconi.it
Opening Times: Lunch: Friday to Sunday, 12:30–14:00; Dinner: Friday and Saturday, 19:30–21:00
AWARDS:
- 1 Michelin Star — Awarded in the 2024 Michelin Guide
- Michelin Green Star — Recognised for sustainable, eco-conscious gastronomy
- The Best Chef Awards 2024 – “Best NextGen” — Michele Lazzarini honoured in 2024 for his role at Contrada Bricconi
- The Best Chef Awards 2024 – 1 Knife
- 50 Best Discovery — Featured as a sustainable “destination dining location”
- No. 41 at OAD Top 100 Restaurant Europe 2024
- Gambero Rosso — Gamberi Verdi (Green Shrimp) — Included in their 2024 “Greenest Restaurants in Italy” list
- Identità Golose – “Worth the Journey” — Showcased in the 2024 guide of must-visit world-class restaurants (sourced earlier)
Photos: @alexmoling courtesy of Contrada Bricconi, if not mentioned otherwise.
