L'Argine a Vencò

L'Argine a Vencò is a restaurant with guest rooms in Vencò, a hamlet of Dolegna del Collio in Friuli, less than 1.6 km (1 mi) from the Slovenian border. Its chef and owner, Antonia Klugmann, holds a Michelin star here.

Klugmann grew up in Trieste in a family of doctors and was reading law when a few pastry classes turned her toward the stove. Her first four years of professional cooking were at Harry's Grill, with Raffaello Mazzolini as her mentor, and she then ran a place of her own, Antico Foledor Conte Lovaria in Pavia di Udine, together with her partner Romano. A long recovery after a car accident led her to plant a vegetable garden, a habit that stayed with her. She later worked at Il Ridotto in Venice and at Venissa on the island of Mazzorbo, then settled in Dolegna and opened L'Argine in 2014.

The restaurant sits in a modern building next to an old mill, with its own kitchen garden around it. Aromatic herbs from that garden return in dish after dish and have become something of a house signature. Wild greens, vegetables, things gathered in the woods and produce from the vineyards nearby shape the menu. One plate joins lamb neck with whey, raw tomato and truffle; another spreads morchia, which combines toasted cornmeal with hazelnut butter, over a flatbread made from corn. Both start from plain country ingredients and let one strong note, the sour whey or the truffle, lead the rest.

Wines from the Collio and the Colli Orientali del Friuli, the two wine areas of this corner of Friuli, take a large share of the cellar list. Gambero Rosso awards the restaurant Tre Forchette, and Klugmann reached a wide audience in Italy as a judge on MasterChef Italia. In November 2025 the Judrio river flooded the building, filling the kitchen, the dining rooms and the guest rooms with mud. It was the second flood to strike the house in about a year and a half.