I Tenerumi : The Michelin-Starred Glasshouse Restaurant on Sicily’s Last Active Volcano
Plenty of restaurants claim to have spectacular views. Most restaurants that promise spectacular views are talking about a skyline, a coastline or, if they’re fortunate, a mountain on the horizon, I Tenerumi – The Vegetable Restaurant, the two-Michelin-starred restaurant is operating on an entirely different scale.
Dining at the Edge of the Aeolian Islands
Location is everything at I Tenerumi. The restaurant sits on Vulcano, one of the seven Aeolian Islands, a UNESCO World Heritage Site shaped by volcanic activity over thousands of years. High above the Tyrrhenian Sea with front-row views of the Aeolian Islands, the Michelin-starred restaurant is accessible only by boat, making the journey itself part of the experience.
| Vulcano is the southernmost of Sicily’s Aeolian Islands, reached only by boat from Milazzo or the neighbouring islands, there’s no airport, no bridge, nothing to shortcut the arrival. |
Set within the gardens of the beautiful Therasia Resort Sea & Spa, I Tenerumi has become one of the most exciting culinary destinations, not because it follows the rules of fine dining, but because it confidently rewrites them. Forget the usual fine-dining furniture of white linen and hushed lighting. I Tenerumi is built like a glasshouse set directly into a garden, its walls largely glass, its roofline low enough that the eye goes straight past it to what’s behind – The View.
The restaurant looks west across the Tyrrhenian Sea toward a horizon scattered with islands. Lipari rises directly ahead. Salina catches the evening light. As evening falls, Stromboli’s active volcano can sometimes be seen in the distance, adding another layer of theatre to an already unforgettable experience.
There are two ways to sit. Couples take the tables, angled so the sunset sits behind whoever you’re facing. Solo diners and curious eaters take the kitchen counter instead, trading the horizon for a front-row seat on the pass, watching young cooks work under natural light until the sky runs out of it.
The Chef Who Came From Noma
Under the direction of Chef Davide Guidara, I Tenerumi earning two Michelin stars for a menu that places vegetables at the centre of the conversation, it is not a substitute. Guidara’s training reads like a tour of European fine dining’s hardest kitchens, Alfonso Iaccarino, Nino Di Costanzo, Fabio Ciervo in Rome, the French technical canon at Michel Bras, and finally a stint at Noma under René Redzepi, the kitchen that did more than any other to make “what grows nearby” a legitimate culinary argument rather than a constraint. He brought that argument to Vulcano in 2021 and has spent every year since refining it.
Much of what lands on the plate is grown in the restaurant’s own garden, in volcanic soil that’s unusually mineral-rich and gives the vegetables a depth most produce never gets the chance to develop. Because when a perfectly ripened tomato grown in volcanic soil is transformed into something unexpectedly complex, or when a humble vegetable like radicchio arrives at the table carrying layers of flavour built through fermentation, ageing and technique, you begin to understand what makes this I Tenerumi different. This isn’t about showing off, it’s about revealing what’s possible with vegetables.
Two Stars, One Garden
I Tenerumi picked up its first Michelin star in 2022, alongside a Green Star for sustainable gastronomy that recognised the closed-loop nature of the operation. Here produce is grown steps from the kitchen, a supply chain built around organic ingredients, power drawn from the resort’s own solar and photovoltaic systems. The second star followed in November 2025, making it, by most counts, the only strictly vegetarian restaurant in the Western world to hold two.
The tasting menu (there is only one; ordering à la carte isn’t really the spirit of the place) unfolds in three deliberate phases. First, preservation, whatever Guidara has fermented, pickled, or jarred from the previous winter, brought back out in summer. Second, pure expression, produce from the garden right now, treated with minimal intervention beyond fire, salt, and technique. Third, dessert. It’s a structure that turns dinner into something closer to a seasonal essay than a simple sequence of courses, and the bread course alone, a rotation of buckwheat, rye, durum wheat, and ancient Sicilian grains.
Drinks pairing follows the same logic, rather than wine by default, the kitchen built its own pairing of kombucha and herbal cordials to run alongside the menu, on the theory that a fermented, plant-driven drink list belongs with fermented, plant-driven food. The cellar is still there for anyone who wants it, close to a 1,000 bottles, weighted toward sparkling wine but it isn’t the default, and that confidence says something about how seriously the kitchen takes its own internal logic.
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