Visitors sometimes think “grotto” is just another word for a country inn. Not quite. Before it is a place to eat, a grotto is a cellar.
A cool room under the rock
In the valleys of Ticino, where the mountainsides are scattered with huge fallen boulders, families dug or built small cellars against the rock, often outside the village, in the shade of the chestnut trees. Cool air comes out of some cracks in the rock and keeps the temperature low and steady even in high summer.
That is where people kept what goes off in the heat: wine, formaggini, cured meats, butter. For centuries, the grotto was the village fridge.
The name comes from there too: grotto, from grotta, cave.
From the cellar to the table
People who went to the grotto to fetch wine were happy to linger: a piece of cheese, a salami, a glass in the cool. Granite tables and benches appeared in front of the cellars, then pergolas for shade. Over time, some grotti began serving food to people outside the family as well.
That is how the grotto as we know it was born: a simple place, outdoors, with a kitchen of just a few dishes.
How to recognise one
There is no written rule, but there are a few signs:
- the cellar is real, and the wine comes out of it;
- people eat mostly outdoors, at stone tables, under a pergola or under the trees;
- the menu is short: cured meats, formaggini, minestrone, polenta, risotto, a few daily dishes;
- the wine comes in a boccalino and is drunk from tazzine;
- many grotti are open only in the warm months and stay closed in winter.
And ours
The Grotto ai Tre Lumi follows the same rules. The cellar is under the big boulder behind the courtyard: in August it is thirty degrees outside and just over ten inside. There are eight tables, all granite. We open in mid-April and close at the end of October, with the castagnata.
The three lanterns on the pergola are our sign: when they are lit, we are open.