Grow – Albiate's Michelin star built from the hunt, not the farm

Grow stands behind a plain door on a quiet street in Albiate, a small town on the right bank of the Lambro river in the Brianza hills, roughly forty-five minutes by car from Milan. It holds one MICHELIN Star, awarded in 2024, a year after the restaurant had already won a Green Star for its approach to sustainability. Opened in January 2022 by the brothers Matteo Vergine, chef, and Riccardo Vergine, maître and sommelier, the project runs on a rule the menu rarely needs to spell out: no farmed meat, no farmed fish, only what hunters, freshwater fishermen and the restaurant's own kitchen garden can supply. Behind five tables and twenty covers, Matteo cooks the game, lake fish and wild herbs of a pre-industrial Brianza through a thoroughly contemporary lens, a body of work that in 2025 earned him the MICHELIN Young Chef Award.

01The room and the setting

From the outside, Grow is almost shy: a sober door on a silent side street that you could easily walk past without noticing. Inside, everything changes, with warm, enveloping tones, soft lighting and close attention to detail replacing the discretion of the façade. The solid wooden tables, inlaid with metal, face a rectangular window cut into the dividing wall, through which guests can watch the kitchen brigade at work. Reviewers consistently point to the soft lighting and elegant colour palette of both the small dining room and the outdoor space as part of what makes a meal here feel considered rather than staged.

02The chef

Matteo Vergine, from nearby Seregno, began his working life behind the ovens of a bakery rather than at a stove. He trained at catering school, initially dreaming of cooking aboard cruise ships, before working in kitchens including the Hotel de la Ville in Monza and a stage at Enrico Bartolini's L'Andana. His brother Riccardo, a former mechanical surveyor, found his own way into hospitality through catering work and luxury-hotel experience before taking charge of the dining room and wine list. Before Grow existed, the two spent almost two years running a bakery called Grani, baking bread, pizza and focaccia, until they opened Grow Restaurant in January 2022 with a project built, by their own account, on a transparent supply chain and zero waste.

Insider tip

Book ahead; only five tables and the menu is chosen when you reserve.

03The cooking

Grow's kitchen is organised around two seasons rather than four: Terra for autumn and winter, Acqua for spring and summer, each built on ingredients at their peak rather than a fixed calendar. The restaurant works roughly 2,000 square metres of land itself, and, as Matteo Vergine has explained, the vegetable garden is tended partly by former prisoners and people with disabilities, in a project run with the Lombardy Region and local voluntary associations, covering almost all of the kitchen's vegetable needs. Meat and fish never come from farms: the brothers deal exclusively with hunters and freshwater fishermen, which means using every part of each animal. In the dining room, Riccardo has noted that no salt is added to dishes; seasoning instead comes from the natural balance within each plate, a method applied even to produce as fragile as the local quail, now almost vanished from the countryside around Albiate.

04What to order

Dinner currently runs on two tasting menus. At lunch, Grow.pop offers a shorter, weekly-changing menu for 25 euros with two courses or 30 euros with dessert included, built so a starred meal can fit inside an ordinary lunch break.

05Wine and drinks

Riccardo Vergine curates a wine list that is deliberately small but personal, built exclusively on natural, nationally-sourced labels rather than the obvious international names. The selection favours small producers who work by traditional, often near-forgotten vinification methods, and gives real space to minor grape varieties that larger commercial cellars tend to overlook, a choice that mirrors the kitchen's own preference for the overlooked and the local.

06When to go and booking

Grow serves dinner Tuesday to Saturday from 19:30 to 22:00 and lunch Tuesday to Friday from 12:30 to 13:30, and is closed on Sundays and Mondays. With only five tables, reservations are essential, and the menu must be chosen at the time of booking, a discipline the brothers use to keep waste to a minimum given how much of the produce depends on the rhythms of hunting and fishing seasons rather than a wholesale order. Beyond the restaurant itself, the team also builds private dinners and tailor-made catering for villas and historic residences across Lombardy, including properties on Lake Como.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.