Olio – a MICHELIN Star amid vintage cars and olive groves

On a provincial road through the industrial outskirts of Origgio, some forty kilometres north-west of Milan, Olio occupies the ground floor of Spazio The Box, an estate built on the site of a former textile-printing works. Behind the grey warehouse façade, greenhouses, a citrus grove and vegetable beds set in stone troughs surround a garden of century-old olive trees, and the restaurant's name is drawn from the oil pressed at a mill on the western shore of Lake Maggiore. Executive Chef Andrea Marinelli, who took charge of the kitchen in July 2020, builds a seafood-led menu around the daily catch and produce picked metres from the pass. On 19 November 2025 that work was rewarded with Olio's first MICHELIN Star, entering the MICHELIN Guide Italy 2026. It is a fish restaurant unlike any other nearby: a dining room that shares its grounds with a private collection of vintage cars and contemporary sculpture, in a small Varese-province town that most drivers pass without stopping.

01The room and the setting

Olio's owner, Luigi Milini, once ran a textile-printing company on this plot; when the business changed hands he turned the site into Spazio The Box, a complex built around his own passions for cars, art and the land. Beyond the restaurant's open kitchen, the grounds hold a permanent exhibition of historic cars, forming the Box Car Collection — around a hundred vehicles, including rare pieces significant to Italian motoring history. Scattered through the gardens and dining rooms are sculptures that give the estate its own small museum feel: Giacinto Bosco's Luna, two works by the Polish sculptor Igor Mitoraj, and a monumental marble piece by the Uruguayan artist Pablo Atchugarry on the entrance staircase.

02The chef

Andrea Marinelli was born in Saronno in 1985 and trained at the Gianni Brera hospitality school. His apprenticeship ran through Armani/Caffè and MAIO Restaurant at La Rinascente in Milan, before a spell in Copenhagen and a formative stretch as sous chef at Innocenti Evasioni, Tommaso Arrigoni's one-MICHELIN-Star restaurant in Milan, where he sharpened an approach built on clarity of flavour and technical restraint. He became Executive Chef at Olio, located within The Box, in July 2020, and today also oversees the kitchen at Olio Fishbar, the group's second address in nearby Saronno. On 19 November 2025, his cooking earned Olio its first MICHELIN Star in the MICHELIN Guide Italy 2026.

Insider tip

Dinner Tue–Sat, Sunday lunch; bistro Tue–Fri lunch only; booking by phone.

03The cooking

Marinelli runs two kitchens side by side: the main pass, and a second dedicated entirely to gluten-free preparation, one of the first of its kind in Italy and part of the circuit recognised by the Associazione Italiana Celiachia. Fish, molluscs and crustaceans are chosen daily at Milan's wholesale fish market from a small circle of trusted suppliers, while fruit and vegetables come from Olio's own greenhouses, kitchen gardens and citrus groves, grown without chemical treatment. He has built his team slowly: sous chefs Alessandro Rigamonti and Nicolò Sironi in the kitchen, maître Giovanni Di Luggo and sommelier Ilaria Bignotti in the room, several of them with the restaurant since its first months in 2020.

04What to order

The eight-course tasting menu, 'At Olio's', is priced at €150 (wine pairing €80) and follows the chef's free hand across sea and garden. The shorter 'From the sea' menu (€130) opens with blue lobster, peach, almonds and basil, moves through raw-and-cooked cuttlefish and warm fettucce with baby squid, sea urchin, coconut and lime, and finishes on blackspot seabream cooked al sale with mixed baby vegetables and hollandaise. The vegetable-only 'From the garden' menu (€100) runs from a watermelon carpaccio dressed like pepper to gnocchi al pomod'oro and a dessert of strawberry, wasabi and peas. On the à la carte list, a four-course crudo di mare (€85), bluefin tuna served as akami, chutoro and otoro (€40), and Carnaroli rice with baby octopus, wild garlic and tomato marinara (€40) show the same pescatarian focus.

05Wine and drinks

Olio's cellar holds more than five hundred labels, selected for a 'well made' philosophy that favours environmentally considerate producers; the bottles sit in a large, modern refrigerated wine wall built like a bookcase at the centre of the room. Each tasting menu can be matched with a wine pairing, from €65 for the garden-only menu to €80 for the full eight-course 'At Olio's'. A bread and cover charge of €6 is added per person, which the restaurant says also covers service and its supervised car park.

06When to go and booking

The restaurant serves dinner Tuesday to Saturday from 7.30pm to 10.30pm and lunch on Sunday from 12.30pm to 2.30pm; it is closed on Monday, Saturday lunchtime and Sunday evening. A separate bistro service runs Tuesday to Friday at lunch, from 12.30pm to 2.30pm, closed Monday, Saturday and Sunday. Olio sits at SP233 Varesina 1, with its own pedestrian entrance and driveway in Origgio, a short drive from Saronno and around forty minutes from central Milan; reservations are taken by phone.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.