La Casa degli Spiriti

A Farmhouse Above the Lake

The approach to La Casa degli Spiriti sets the register before you reach the door. The road climbs above Costermano sul Garda through olive groves and dry-stone terraces, and by the time the restored farmhouse at Via Monte Baldo 28 comes into view, Lake Garda has already spread itself across the horizon below. The Chignola family has been receiving guests here for almost thirty years, and the building carries that duration without strain: thick walls, frescoed interiors, a ground-floor veranda that opens toward the water through a frame of mature greenery. It is the kind of setting that other restaurants spend small fortunes trying to approximate.

The Garda shore sits in a broader conversation about where northern Italian fine dining is heading. The region between Verona and Brescia has long been overshadowed by the headline addresses further afield, the starred registers of places like Dal Pescatore in Runate, Le Calandre in Rubano, or Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence. But the lake district has its own logic, built around proximity to produce rather than proximity to a metropolitan press corps. La Casa degli Spiriti operates inside that logic, and the Michelin recognition in 2024 and 2025 confirms that the guide takes the kitchen seriously.

What the Region Puts on the Plate

Lake Garda's culinary identity is genuinely composite. The western shore leans Lombard; the eastern shore, where Costermano sits in the Veneto province of Verona, draws on a different pantry: Valpolicella wines, Monte Baldo herbs, freshwater fish from the lake itself, and olive oil pressed from groves that represent the northernmost viable olive cultivation in Italy. That last detail is not incidental. Garda olive oil has protected designation of origin status and a flavour profile, delicate, low in bitterness, that behaves differently in cooking than the more assertive oils of Tuscany or Puglia. Kitchens that know how to use it are telling you something about their sourcing instincts.

Chef Filippo, who follows his father's path through this kitchen, works with cuisine that the venue describes as rooted in the region. In practice, that means ingredients sourced from the surrounding territory shape the menu's structure, rather than acting as garnish to a more globally assembled tasting sequence. This approach places La Casa degli Spiriti in a different conversation from the creative-abstraction track followed by destinations like Atelier Moessmer Norbert Niederkofler in Brunico or the progressive Italian register of Osteria Francescana in Modena. The ambition here is territorial coherence rather than conceptual rupture. Among the broader northern Italian fine dining circuit, which also includes addresses like Piazza Duomo in Alba and Enrico Bartolini in Milan, that is a considered position, not a default one.

Two Formats Under One Roof

The house divides itself into two distinct experiences. On the ground floor, the veranda restaurant faces the lake and operates as the main dining room: tablecloths, considered service, the full wine list, and Filippo's kitchen at full register. Upstairs, the Osteria Spiritino runs a looser programme, both in cuisine and in atmosphere. The bifurcation is a pragmatic response to a site with a view this persuasive: not everyone arriving wants a long tasting menu, and funnelling every visitor into one format would mean turning away the kind of casual trade that sustains a restaurant through thirty years. Venues further along the Garda shore, and comparable addresses on Italy's other great lakes, have made similar calculations. The two-room model also allows the kitchen to pitch at different price points within the same property without diluting either offer.

Verona, forty minutes south by car, holds Casa Perbellini 12 Apostoli, which operates at a different scale and ambition level. La Casa degli Spiriti is the Costermano option at this price tier.

The Wine Cellar as a Room

The cellar at La Casa degli Spiriti is not a footnote. The space is housed in a room lined with eighteenth-century frescoes, and the list runs to more than 1,300 labels. Sommelier Lorenzo Chignola oversees it, and the emphasis on Champagne is notable for a restaurant this far from France, it signals a cellar built on deliberate acquisition rather than regional default. Garda's own vineyards, including the Bardolino and Custoza appellations directly east of the lake, are logically well-represented, and the broader Veneto and northern Italian selection would be expected. But a cellar of this depth at a Michelin Plate venue, rather than a starred one, is an unusual ratio, it suggests the wine programme is a genuine priority rather than an ancillary. For context, wine programmes of this ambition in northern Italy typically sit inside addresses like Uliassi in Senigallia or Reale in Castel di Sangro, both carrying Michelin stars. The cellar here punches above the kitchen's current recognition.

Planning Your Visit

La Casa degli Spiriti sits at Via Monte Baldo 28 in Costermano sul Garda, in the Verona province of the Veneto. The address is a €€€€ property, which at Garda prices positions it at the serious end of the local dining market, though still well below the starred benchmark set by three-Michelin-star peers elsewhere in northern Italy. Driving from Verona takes roughly forty minutes; from Brescia, slightly longer around the lake's southern tip. The ground-floor restaurant is the formal option; the Osteria Spiritino upstairs works for those who want the view and the cellar without the full fine dining commitment. Advance reservations are essential, particularly for terrace seating in the warmer months.

For those using this meal as part of a broader northern Italian fine dining circuit, the comparison addresses worth tracking include Quattro Passi in Marina del Cantone to the south and, for a sense of the international register that modern Italian cuisine can reach, Frantzén in Stockholm or FZN by Björn Frantzén in Dubai.