Osteria Contemporanea

There is a particular kind of restaurant that announces itself without effort. No monogrammed awning, no valet, no bar trolley in the window. At Via Francesco Mattai 4, in the centre of Gattinara, the former butcher's shop that now houses Osteria Contemporanea does exactly that: the conversion is spare and deliberate, the bones of the original space still legible in the room's proportions and its undemonstrative elegance. You understand before you sit down that the cooking will work the same way.

The Italian Art of Restraint

Italian contemporary cuisine has spent the last two decades pulling in two directions at once. On one side sit the laboratories — multi-course architectures where technique is the subject, represented at the far end of the price spectrum by rooms like Osteria Francescana in Modena or Le Calandre in Rubano. On the other side, a smaller and quieter cohort of cooks has returned to the principle that undergirds all good Italian cooking: the fewest possible ingredients, handled with absolute attention. Osteria Contemporanea belongs to that second tendency. The Michelin Plate awarded in 2025 is a signal of quality rather than spectacle — the guide's notation for cooking that deserves a visit, independent of stars , and it places this room in a peer set defined by considered simplicity rather than ambition measured in courses.

Gattinara itself sets the terms. This is a small Piedmontese town whose culinary reputation has long been overshadowed by its wine , the Nebbiolo-based DOCG that competes directly with Barolo and Barbaresco for the attention of serious collectors. The restaurants that do well here tend to work with the grain of that identity: ingredient-led, regionally anchored, structured around what the land and the cellar produce rather than what a brigade can construct. Osteria Contemporanea fits that pattern, and the proximity to Gattinara's wine producers is part of what makes the front-of-house wine list coherent rather than merely comprehensive. For a full picture of eating and drinking in the area, the Gattinara restaurants guide and the Gattinara wineries guide are the practical starting points.

The Quinto Quarto: Tribute Through Technique

In Italian culinary tradition, the quinto quarto , the fifth quarter , refers to offal: the parts of an animal that remained after the four prime cuts were divided among those who could afford them. Roman cooking turned this into high art; the trattorie of Testaccio built entire reputations on rigatoni con la pajata and coda alla vaccinara. What Osteria Contemporanea does with its dedicated Quinto Quarto tasting menu is different in register but continuous in spirit. The building was a butcher's shop, and the menu reads as a direct acknowledgement of that history , not as theme-park nostalgia but as a serious engagement with what the space once meant to the people who used it.

This kind of conceptual coherence between setting and menu is rarer than it should be. At the price point of €€€ , a tier below the flagship Italian contemporary rooms like Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence or Enrico Bartolini in Milan, and considerably more accessible than Uliassi in Senigallia or Dal Pescatore in Runate , it represents a proposition that is genuinely unusual in northern Italy: tasting-menu rigour applied to traditionally humble ingredients, in a room small enough that the kitchen's attention is never diluted across a large cover count.

Format and Flexibility

The menu structure at Osteria Contemporanea is worth understanding before you book. Rather than a fixed procession of courses with no deviation, the format allows guests to select two or three courses from the tasting menu , a structural flexibility that is more Italian than it might first appear. The grande degustazione has its place, but so does the idea that a meal can be a focused two-act exchange rather than an endurance test. For visitors combining dinner here with a broader Gattinara itinerary , a cellar visit in the afternoon, perhaps, or an evening walk around the historic centre , the ability to calibrate the length of the meal is a practical advantage.

The front of house is managed by Davide, the chef's partner, whose responsibility extends to the wine list. In a region with a DOCG as specific as Gattinara, the decision about which producers to represent and at what depth is an editorial act in itself. The Michelin record notes his approach as elegant and competent , language the guide does not use casually. For context on the wine side of Gattinara's identity, the wineries guide covers the key producers in detail.

Where Osteria Contemporanea Sits in the Wider Scene

At a national level, the Italian contemporary category runs from the very leading , Piazza Duomo in Alba, Reale in Castel di Sangro, Atelier Moessmer Norbert Niederkofler in Brunico , down through a long middle tier of regionally important rooms that rarely appear in international conversation. Osteria Contemporanea is firmly in that middle tier by award status, but the 4.8 Google rating across 139 reviews is a meaningful data point: consistent satisfaction at that volume, in a small town, points to a room that delivers on its proposition without large-scale marketing support. Comparable Italian contemporary formats in different geographies include Agli Amici in Rovinj and L'Olivo in Anacapri , both small-room operations where setting and format shape the experience as much as the plate itself. Gattinara's other entry in the contemporary dining space, Cucine Nervi, provides a useful comparison within the same town.

The chef at Osteria Contemporanea, Agnese Loss, was born in 2001 , which means she is operating at Michelin recognition level before turning 25. That credential is noted here not as a biographical story but as a market signal: the kitchen is producing at a standard that peer restaurants in larger Italian cities would recognise as competitive, at a price point that smaller-town economics allow. That gap between quality and visibility is exactly what makes Gattinara worth the detour for a visitor already in Piedmont.

Planning Your Visit

Osteria Contemporanea is at Via Francesco Mattai 4 in the centre of Gattinara, accessible from Novara by regional train and from Milan by car in under two hours. The €€€ price range positions it as a considered dinner choice rather than a casual drop-in, and the intimate scale of the room means that booking ahead , particularly for the Quinto Quarto menu , is sensible rather than optional. Gattinara's wider hospitality offer is covered in the hotels guide, the bars guide, and the experiences guide, all of which are useful for building a full itinerary around a visit to the restaurant and the wine region it sits within. For the complete picture of where to eat in town, the Gattinara restaurants guide and Quattro Passi in Marina del Cantone offer useful points of comparison for the price tier.

What to Order at Osteria Contemporanea

The Quinto Quarto menu is the most direct expression of what this kitchen is doing: offal prepared with the precision of fine dining, in a room whose own history gives the exercise a credibility that cannot be manufactured. If offal is not your preference, the standard tasting format with the two- or three-course option allows the kitchen's broader range to come through. The wine list, overseen by Davide, is the natural companion , and given Gattinara's DOCG status, the local Nebbiolo selections are the obvious starting point for anyone eating here for the first time.