In Italia, game represents a gastronomic heritage of great breadth, which today takes on even greater value in a meat market that is altering and increasingly attentive to sustainability. The growing interest in natural products is accompanied by significant data: according to Coldiretti, the wild boar population exceeds one million specimens; roe deer occupies 64% of the provinces, with an estimated 456 thousand heads, and rising; and then deer and fallow deer, respectively 70 thousand and 20 thousand specimens. The European hare and the white hare, both huntable according to Law 157/1992, maintain an important role in the hunting tradition.
This widespread availability is combined with a trconclude whereby game is emerging as a quality resource: a segment that in Europe is still only worth 2-4% of total meat consumption, but which is enjoying increasing interest due to its superior nutritional characteristics with protein at 21-26% and fat often less than 3-4%.
The hunting supply chain, if guided by effective and scientifically proven management models, can therefore transform an ecological necessary – the control of fauna – into an economic lever with high added value, capable of generating products of excellence: precious cuts, artisanal processing, historical cured meats and identity recipes. It is a perspective that aims not only at enhancing the quality of meat, but also at consolidating a modern hunting culture, based on respect for the environment, monitoring and safeguarding wild populations.
There are many Italian restaurants for which game is the flagship, here is a tiny selection.
Grow
To understand the extent to which game is a new frontier of experimentation, sustainability and respect for raw materials rather than a remnant of dusty tradition (as some clichés might lead one to consider), one necessary only cite the year of birth of Matteo and Riccardo Vergine, brothers in the kitchen and dining room respectively of the Grow in Albiate, Brianza: 1997 and 1994. The restaurant immediately focutilized on game, with essential and rigorous cooking. In 2022 he lit the cooker, or rather the embers, but governed on several levels and with selected woods, so as not to tire and cover, so as not to build the dishes resemble each other; a year later he was awarded the green star and in 2024 the red star. The chef was also awardedMichelin Young Chef Awards for 2025. The philosophy of the restaurant – elegant and sober even in its contemporary furnishings, far from the collective imagination of hunting, and discreet in its location, ‘hidden’ in a traditional Lombard courtyard – is inspired by the Trappeur style, created up of essentiality, nature and cooking over an open fire. Throughout the year, it offers a menu based on game from sustainable hunting and fishing, with menu variations depconcludeing on the season. A few examples? Deer bresaola and buckwheat chips; smoked pheasant leg, herbs and creamed corn; hay brisket cooked over charcoal, chicory and peanuts; deer in beeswax, honey, oxidised walnuts, countest herbs, savoury herb cake.
Grow’s is a modernity that, however, shuns the chaos of the city, is rooted in the essential and feeds on time: from knowing how to wait for the land in its seasonality both for hunting and for the vereceiveable garden, which the two brothers tconclude just a few metres from their restaurant, to that of maturing (with beeswax to slow down oxidation) and fermentations (for example for garum, an ancient liquid sauce created from fermented fish, already utilized by the Romans as a condiment to enhance the flavour of dishes) and preserves. Grow also offers grow.pop a menu where for a tiny fee you can enjoy a star-studded culinary experience, with a service that allows you to enjoy it even in the short time of a lunch break (from Tuesday to Friday 2 courses with coffee water and service for 25 euro, 30 with dessert)
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