Dal Pescatore

The story

Crafted with passion, served with love

A Family Table, a Hundred Years in the Making

Dal Pescatore began in the 1920s when Antonio Santini and Teresa Mazzi opened a simple riverside osteria called Vino e Pesce in Runate, a hamlet in the Mantuan countryside along the Oglio river. Antonio fished from a boat and worked the tables; Teresa cooked. The menu was river fish — mostly fried — and lambrusco made by Antonio himself. That intimate connection to the land and water of the Po plain has never left the restaurant.

Four generations of the Santini family have since shaped the place into one of the most recognised Italian restaurants in the world. The second generation, Giovanni and Bruna, deepened the kitchen's roots in the local tradition: hand-rolled egg pasta, agnoli in chicken broth, the celebrated tortelli di zucca. The trattoria grew, the dining room filled with guests from Milan and across Lombardy, and the name changed in 1970 to Dal Pescatore.

The Turning Point

In 1974, Antonio Santini — third generation — married Nadia, and their honeymoon became a formative journey through France: Paul Bocuse, the Troisgros, the Haeberlin. Returning home, they renovated the space — more glass, more light, a dialogue between the dining room and the garden — while holding firm to one conviction, in Nadia's own words: "rimanere fedeli all'Italia, nel cuore e nei piatti" — to remain faithful to Italy, in heart and in the dishes. Antonio went on to co-found both Linea Italia in cucina and Le Soste, associations dedicated to promoting Italian cuisine internationally.

The result is a restaurant that has held three Michelin stars since 1996, earned membership in Relais & Châteaux and Les Grandes Tables du Monde, and appeared consistently in the World's 50 Best Restaurants list across multiple years, reaching as high as 23rd in the world. In late 2025, Dal Pescatore was awarded third place globally in La Liste 2026, with Alberto Santini accepting the honour in Paris.

The Kitchen Today

The fourth generation — Giovanni in the kitchen since 1996, Alberto in the dining room since 2000, alongside Valentina — carries the work forward. The menu and the carte change daily according to what the market offers, a practice that keeps the cooking honest and seasonal.

Current dishes show the full range of this Mantuan Italian kitchen: tortelli di zucca with butter and Parmigiano Reggiano (pumpkin, amaretti, mostarda), agnoli in chicken broth, grilled eel with garden radicchio, saffron risotto with spinach and milk fondue, and saddle of venison with cabernet and blackberry sauce. Alongside these classics sit more ambitious preparations — lobster terrine with Oscietra Royal caviar, foie gras with passito wine sauce, sea bass with citrus.

Much of the raw material comes from Cascina Runate, a certified organic farm founded in 2020 by Alberto, Giovanni and Valentina on land adjacent to the restaurant. It encompasses vegetable gardens, orchards, eleven bee colonies, fifteen pasture-raised heifers, fifty laying hens, and an FSC-certified woodland of more than six hectares within the Parco Oglio Sud. The farm is not a concept — it is the same logic Teresa and Antonio started with, brought into the present.

The Room and the Cellar

The dining room opens onto the garden, the cellar holds wines from across the world, and the atmosphere is one of considered calm rather than formality. A century after that first osteria, Dal Pescatore remains, above all, a family restaurant — one that happens to cook at the highest level of Italian cuisine.