The Top 100 Places to Eat Near Acquerello
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Set inside an old Lombard courtyard in a quiet commuter town, Acquerello is a Michelin-starred creative restaurant where the chef stays firmly behind the scenes and lets the food do the talking. The tasting menu moves through delicate combinations with a faint Eastern lean, playing temperature and texture against each other in ways that feel considered rather than showy. The wine list tilts toward Alpine sparkling, but covers enough ground to keep everyone happy.
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A family trattoria in Fagnano Olona where the fourth generation now runs the room, which means the cooking has been refined over a very long time without anyone forgetting what the food is supposed to taste like. The menu leans seasonal and local, with the daily specials worth a look. The wine list gets serious attention from the owner, and the service is informal enough that you won't feel watched.
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Rank 3. Acqua
Contemporary Seafood
A Michelin-starred seafood restaurant in Lombardy where the owner pulls up a chair at the start of the evening to talk you through what's in before you look at the menu. The cooking is contemporary, the crudo is the thing to order, and a raw crustacean plate lands with the kind of generous plating that makes Champagne feel like the obvious choice. The wine list leans that direction anyway, with plenty available by the glass.
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Rank 4. Ma.Ri.Na.
Seafood Italian
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Rank 5. I 5 Campanili
Contemporary Mediterranean
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Rank 6. DEG Ristorante
Contemporary Italian
A self-taught chef who leaves the kitchen to talk you through his food is either very confident or very charming, and this intimate contemporary restaurant in a quiet corner of Busto Arsizio suggests both. Pastel interiors, no parking drama, and a menu built on fermentation and measured acidity, Italian at its core with quiet nods toward Asia. Tasting menus or à la carte, your call.
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Warm lighting and large windows onto a Gallarate pedestrian street set the mood at this contemporary osteria, where the kitchen leans meat-forward but keeps fish and vegetarian options in honest rotation. The cooking has a personal stamp without losing track of how flavors are supposed to balance. Lunch runs lighter and easier on the wallet, which is when the regulars tend to fill the room before the evening crowd arrives.
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A pizza spot in Busto Arsizio where the menu includes a short story behind each pie, which is either charming or a lot, depending on your mood. The move here is the double-cooked pizzas, fried then baked, a technique that earns its own sentence. The room is modern and tidy, the staff walks you through daily specials, and a solid wine list and craft beers round things out. Named among Italy's excellent pizzerias by 50 Top Pizza.
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Rank 9. Koinè
Contemporary Italian
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Rank 10. Soul Restaurant
Contemporary Italian
A couple who logged serious time cooking abroad before coming home to Legnano runs this intimate contemporary Italian restaurant, where the menu arrives as one of three tasting options or à la carte if you'd rather steer yourself. The cooking is imaginative without showing off about it, and the wine list has clearly been curated by someone who paid attention. The welcome is the kind that makes you feel the room was expecting you.
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Rank 11. Trattoria contemporanea
Contemporary Italian
A converted cotton mill in Lomazzo sets the scene for this Michelin-starred contemporary Italian restaurant, where the kitchen runs a fully vegetarian tasting menu alongside the main one. The young team works with modern technique on combinations that wander freely between Italian instinct and broader influences. Lunch pulls things back a register, but the ambition visible at dinner stays consistent throughout.
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The kitchen is open, so you can watch Alfio Nicolosi work while his team quietly asks, before you've even sat down, whether anything is off the table. That question matters because there's a single surprise tasting menu and no other path through the meal. A Michelin-starred creative restaurant in Saronno, it pulls from Italian tradition but leans hard into Asian and South American ideas, landing somewhere personal and hard to place, which is rather the point.
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Rank 13. Il Portico
Contemporary Italian
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Rank 14. Olio
Italian Seafood
Olio sits inside The Box, a space that somehow combines vintage cars and contemporary art without feeling like a dare, surrounded by olive trees that make the setting look implausibly serene. The restaurant holds a Michelin star for seafood cooking that keeps its ambitions in check: traditional foundations, restrained creativity, and ingredients that do the heavy lifting. Lunch runs as a bistro; evenings shift into something more considered.
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Rank 15. D'O
Contemporary Italian
A two-Michelin-star restaurant on a quiet piazza where an elm tree and a seventeenth-century church do most of the decorating. Inside, chef Davide Oldani runs a tasting-menu operation built on what you might call cheerful precision: Italian in instinct, technically immaculate, and plated with a slightly pop sensibility that keeps the whole thing from taking itself too seriously. The sommelier's pairings lean playful, which fits the room perfectly.
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Pickled whitefish with roe and bitter local greens is a fair signal of what the kitchen is doing here. Materia is a Michelin-starred creative restaurant in Cernobbio where Italian instincts meet Asian influences and a genuine fondness for sour, bitter, and hard-to-place flavors. Vegetables and aromatic herbs do a lot of the heavy lifting, and the desserts follow the same logic rather than softening into sweetness. A lighter lunch menu exists for the less committed.
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Enrico Bartolini holds three Michelin stars and runs this fine dining room on the third floor of Milan's Museum of Cultures, which gives dinner a certain gallery-adjacent seriousness before you've even sat down. The cooking is creative without being punishing about it: flavors run deep and layered, but following them is optional. Tasting menus and à la carte both available, and an off-menu cheese course with unusual pairings is worth asking about.
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The elm tree in the piazza outside gave this place its name, which feels right for a restaurant this quietly rooted in a spot. Davide Oldani's Michelin-starred project seats just fourteen across three tables, with the kitchen fully in view, and runs a single tasting menu built around seasonal ingredients and the interplay of texture and temperature. Lunch offers a shorter option at a gentler price point.
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Rank 19. Osteria Enoteca Cuntitt
Modern Italian
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Rank 20. Kitchen
Contemporary Italian
A biodynamic kitchen garden sits right at the entrance, and whatever grows there ends up on the plate, which tells you a lot about how this Michelin-starred fine dining room operates. Set in a private park outside Como, Kitchen runs two tasting menus, one of them built almost entirely around vegetables and herbs the team grew themselves. The à la carte is there if you'd rather not commit, and the wine list gives you plenty of reasons to linger.
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Rank 21. Alla Corte Lombarda
Modern Italian
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Rank 22. IYO Kaiseki
Kaiseki Japanese
Floor-to-ceiling windows flood a spare, minimal dining room at the base of a Porta Nuova tower, where a Michelin-starred kaiseki restaurant works through the full arc of Japanese cuisine, raw to cooked. The chef's menu moves from sashimi and nigiri into traditional preparations, including Iberian pork with negimiso sauce served on a magnolia leaf. A separate omakase counter runs its own show by reservation, worth booking before you arrive.
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Inside the Mandarin Oriental, Seta holds two Michelin stars and runs on the quiet confidence that comes with them. Antonio Guida's fine dining room takes Milan's cosmopolitan appetite seriously, offering tasting menus built around his classics, the season, or a single featured ingredient. Winter brings game and veal sweetbreads alongside a raspberry risotto that sounds wrong and isn't. The wine list runs deep, with magnums of serious vintages for the table feeling optimistic.
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Rank 24. Abba
Modern New American
A former brush factory in the Certosa District, now eight widely spaced tables, an open kitchen, and enough Nordic minimalism to make you sit up straight. Abba holds a Michelin star for cooking that leans modern and precise, the kind where tomato water risotto arrives looking deceptively simple and tastes nothing of the sort. The room is quiet enough that you can hear the chef think.
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Rank 25. Verso Capitaneo
Creative Mediterranean
A lift from Piazza del Duomo deposits you on the second floor, where long communal tables face an open kitchen and the brothers from Puglia run the show. This is a two Michelin star creative restaurant where the cooking moves between their southern roots and the culinary habits of their adopted Milan. Sit close to the kitchen to watch the passes, or claim a quieter table if you'd rather just eat.
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Rank 26. Corte Visconti
Italian
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The terrace drops almost to the waterline, arched openings framing the blue spread of Como and the villages across the way. This is a Michelin-starred fine dining restaurant inside the Il Sereno hotel, designed by Patricia Urquiola, and the cooking by Neapolitan chef Raffaele Lenzi moves fluidly between regional Lombard cooking, lake ingredients, vegan dishes, and Asian touches without feeling scattered. The wine list leans deep into Italian reds, with older vintages worth exploring.
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Rank 28. Andrea Aprea
Contemporary Italian
The dining room walls are lined with bucchero, the same matte black ceramic the Etruscans used for their jars, which sets a tone. This two-Michelin-star restaurant sits atop the Fondazione Luigi Rovati, reached by lift, with the whole room angled toward an open kitchen. Chef Andrea Aprea, Neapolitan by birth and Milanese by long habit, runs tasting menus that move between his latest ideas and the Campanian classics he grew up with.
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Rank 29. Berton
Contemporary Italian
Andrea Berton's Michelin-starred fine dining room sits in Porta Nuova, Milan's glassy, self-consciously futuristic quarter, which suits the aesthetic perfectly. The kitchen works with very few ingredients at a time, letting each one carry weight rather than hiding behind complexity. The "Non Solo Brodo" menu, built around broths poured tableside or served in a glass alongside the plate, has become the signature move, quiet and theatrical at once.
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Rank 30. Il Cantuccio
Modern Italian
Stonework walls in one room, clean modern lines in the next, and a kitchen with a notable fondness for seafood despite being firmly landlocked in the Brianza hills. Il Cantuccio is a Michelin-starred restaurant where the chef balances classic Italian cooking with quietly inventive reinterpretations, along with game specials that rotate year-round. The bottoni pasta in Milanese sauce with quail is the dish regulars tend to mention first.
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Rank 31. Grow Restaurant
Modern Italian
The quail comes with its own broth and a brioche, which tells you where the chef's head is: old Lombardy, hunting and foraging, ancestral Brianza flavors rebuilt with modern technique. This Michelin-starred tasting-menu restaurant outside Milan runs three evening menus, and you pick at booking to keep waste down. Lunch is lighter and cheaper, and there's a shared table for eight where you sit with whoever shows up.
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Rank 32. IYO
Contemporary Japanese
The robatayaki grill is going at this sleek, Michelin-starred Japanese contemporary restaurant in a quiet corner of Milan, which has quietly become the city's benchmark for serious Japanese cooking. The menu moves from sushi and sashimi through light tempura to the open fire, with a fusion of Japanese and European ideas that feels considered rather than compromised. Lunch runs à la carte; dinner leans into tasting menus.
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Rank 33. Il Luogo Aimo e Nadia
Modern Italian
A plate of hard wheat spaghetti with spring onion, chilli, and Ligurian basil has been on this menu since the founder was in the kitchen, which tells you something about the confidence here. It's a Michelin-starred fine dining restaurant that has been around forever, yet the two tasting menus still feel alive, drawing on both Lombard and Apulian roots. The wine list, browsed on tablets, turns up bottles that are nearly impossible to find elsewhere.
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A marble counter with velvet stools runs along the open kitchen, and before you even sit down the team steers you toward a welcome drink, because this Michelin-starred contemporary restaurant also has the soul of a cocktail bar. Chef Emin Haziri, raised in Italy after growing up in Kosovo, runs a menu that splits between inventive modern cooking and raw seafood, oysters to caviar to Sicilian shrimp. Live piano fills the room.
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Rank 35. Al Vecchio Convento
Tuscan
Cantucci and ricciarelli stacked near the entrance for sale set the tone before you've seen a menu. This is a Tuscan restaurant in a historic building on the edge of the city, the kind of place where meat is the point and fresh pasta is made the old way. The dining room runs classic and composed, service keeps pace, and the kitchen doesn't wander far from regional tradition. Private parking out front, which somehow feels like part of the personality.
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Rank 36. THE VIEW
Italian Contemporary, Modern Cuisine
Floor-to-ceiling glass frames Lake Lugano so precisely that the room feels less like a restaurant than a very refined observation deck. This fine dining room inside a boutique hotel runs on the chef's seasonal Italian cooking, where Alpine ingredients sit alongside Mediterranean ones with quiet confidence. Three tasting menus anchor the experience. The Michelin star and a spot on 50 Top Italy's international list suggest the kitchen takes the view as a challenge, not a crutch.
- Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
- Michelin Guide 1 Star
- 50 Top Italy #45 · The Best Italian Restaurants In The World
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Rank 37. Anima
Modern New American
The decor draws on Gio Ponti's mid-century Milan, all clean lines and considered restraint. This is a fine dining restaurant inside the Milano Verticale hotel, run under Enrico Bartolini's umbrella with a resident chef whose roots in Puglia show up in unusually confident vegetable cookery and housemade bread. It holds a Michelin star. The cocktail list ventures well beyond the obligatory Negroni, which is either a bonus or a warning, depending on your evening.
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A table by the arched window looks straight into the Galleria's iron-and-glass octagon, which is reason enough to book weeks ahead. This is a formal fine dining restaurant, Michelin-starred, where the kitchen works through tasting menus and à la carte built around contemporary Italian cooking, vitello alla Milanese among them. The wine list leans heavily French and runs deep, with pours by the glass for those unwilling to commit to a bottle.
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Rank 39. Olio Fishbar
Modern Seafood
A modern seafood bistro in central Saronno, connected to the Michelin-starred Olio in Origgio, which explains why the kitchen punches with more confidence than the postcode suggests. The menu leans heavily into raw preparations and clean, bright flavors, skipping pasta entirely in favor of fish-forward plates and a handful of meat options. The wine list is short and deliberate. Book ahead, even for lunch, the room fills.
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Rank 40. Sadler
Italian
The colourful armchairs are the first thing you notice in an otherwise composed, elegant dining room inside a Casa Baglioni hotel. This is Michelin-starred Italian fine dining with a leaning toward seafood, and the kitchen keeps one foot in tradition while quietly pushing the other somewhere new. The wine list runs deep into rare Italian labels for anyone who wants to go down that road.
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Norbert Niederkofler's Milanese outpost holds a Michelin star and a firm rule: every ingredient has to come from within an hour of the city. The result is a fine dining restaurant running three tasting menus that lean into the Alpine-meets-Lombardy larder with a seriousness that stops just short of a lecture. In summer, the terrace opens up a view across the Duomo spires to the Castello, which does a lot of the convincing on its own.
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Rank 42. Villa Crespi
Creative, Mediterranean Cuisine
A Moorish-style villa on the shores of Lake Orta, with elaborate ceilings and parquet floors that make you feel slightly underdressed no matter what you wore. This is Antonino Cannavacciuolo's flagship fine dining restaurant, holding three Michelin stars, where the kitchen fuses Campanian brightness with Piedmontese tradition. The menu runs à la carte or two tasting menus, and the wine list is the kind that requires a quiet moment to navigate properly.
- Michelin Guide 3 Stars
- 50 Top Italy #1 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Luxury
- 50 Top Italy 2026 · Maître of the Year · Massimo Raugi
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Rank 43. Joia
Vegetarian
Dishes named "With the Favour of the Moon" and "The Rose I Did Not Pick" give you a sense of what kind of vegetarian fine dining this is: philosophical, a little rapturous, and genuinely pretty on the plate. Pietro Leemann built the room around the idea that meatless cooking could carry the full weight of Italian fine dining, and it holds a Michelin star. Tasting menus set the pace; a five-course lunch plate keeps midday from turning devotional.
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Rank 44. Altatto
Vegetarian
A small, intimate vegetarian bistro in the Navigli area where the two chefs change the menu regularly enough that returning feels like a different meal. Tasting menus run four or nine courses, and staff walk through each dish with the kind of attention that could tip into earnest if the food weren't so good-looking. The Michelin Guide has selected it, and 50 Top Italy ranks it first among vegetable bistros.
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Rank 45. El Primero
South American Steakhouse
The building itself was Uruguay's pavilion at Expo 2015, which explains why a steakhouse in Origgio has mountain views and architectural ambition. It's a South American grill focused on Uruguayan beef, with a live parilla fire burning in full sight of the dining room. The meat traces back to certified Uruguayan farms, and the parillero works it slowly. Uruguayan and Italian wines handle the rest.
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Rank 46. Locanda del Villoresi
Mediterranean
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A courtyard tucked inside a period building gives Contraste an air of old Milan before the room itself surprises you with bold blues, reds, and greens. It holds a Michelin star, and the chef, Matias Perdomo, runs two tasting menus: one anchored in tradition, one decidedly not. The wine list leans French, the team steers pairings with genuine care, and the whole thing lands somewhere between a dinner party and a quiet dare.
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The sushi counter runs omakase only, eight to eleven courses, no à la carte wandering allowed. This is a contemporary Japanese restaurant where the chef moves between raw fish and Angus beef with equal confidence, folding miso, truffle, and yuzu into the through-line. The room reads like a serious night out in Milan, dressed up but not stiff. A Michelin Guide selection, and ranked among Italy's top sushi spots by 50 Top Italy.
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Rank 49. I Due Sud
Mediterranean Cuisine, International
Perched inside the Grand Hotel Splendide with Lake Lugano filling every window, this is classical fine dining where the view and the plate are in quiet conversation. The chef bridges his Neapolitan roots with Ticinese ingredients, and the name nods to that dual southern logic, Italian south meets Swiss south. A Michelin star sits on the shelf. The wine cellar runs deep, and the sommelier is the person to ask.
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Rank 50. Osteria degli Angeli
Mediterranean
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Rank 52. Crotto Valtellina
Valtellina Italian
A crotto is a cave-carved dining room built into rock, and this one in Malnate has been serving the mountain cooking of Valtellina for generations. Wooden tables, period furniture, and a summer veranda that looks out over a sandstone wall and garden give it a genuinely unhurried feel. The menu runs from buckwheat pizzoccheri to more unexpected pairings, the kind of traditional restaurant where the kitchen knows exactly when to stay put and when to wander.
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Rank 53. Terrazza Gallia
Modern Italian
On the seventh floor of the Excelsior Hotel Gallia, with the central station rooftops spreading out below, Terrazza Gallia is a fine dining room where the kitchen leans Mediterranean and the Campanian chef's flavors run rich and direct. Fendi and Busnelli furnished the space, which tips from glamorous at lunch to genuinely cinematic at sunset. The wine list is impressive and priced to match the view.
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Rank 54. Sine by Di Pinto
Contemporary Italian
A fried pizzetta topped with palamita fish and courgettes tells you where the chef's heart is, even if Milan is where the restaurant landed. This is a Michelin-starred contemporary Italian dining room where Naples and Lombardy argue it out on the plate, and the kitchen clearly enjoys the argument. The tasting menu, called "Sine Confini," is where the more ambitious ideas surface. Service is attentive without being stiff, and the wine list leans toward labels you won't recognize.
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Rank 55. Mezzolitro Vini e Cucina
Abruzzo Italian
A family-run trattoria tucked into the quiet pedestrian lanes of Rho's old town, cooking from Abruzzo with the kind of seriousness that makes you forget you're in a suburb of Milan. The menu reads like a letter home: handmade chitarra pasta in a deep, slow sauce scattered with tiny meatballs and sharp pecorino. The Michelin Guide picked it up for a Bib Gourmand, which tracks. Bring an appetite and nowhere to be after.
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Rank 56. Trippa
Italian
The Milanese trattoria that put tripe back on the map, bare tables and all. Offal is the north star here, from fried tripe to grilled marrow to horse tartare, though the butter and Parmesan tagliatelle has quietly become the dish regulars argue about most. The chef trained in Michelin-starred kitchens and then chose to do the opposite of what that implies. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and a waiting list that confirms Milan has opinions about lunch.
- 50 Top Italy #14 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Modern Trattorias And Bistros
- Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
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Rank 57. Ichikawa
Japanese
A sushi restaurant in Porta Romana where the case for Japanese traditionalism is made quietly, through precise knife work and clean preparations that don't need architectural plating to make their point. An omakase counter lets you watch the chef work up close. The sake selection is taken seriously alongside the wine list, and tempura with wasabi salt has a way of settling any doubts about the kitchen's priorities.
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Rank 58. Osteria San Giulio
Piedmontese
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Rank 59. Antica Trattoria del Gallo
Lombardian Italian
- 50 Top Italy #46 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Modern Trattorias And Bistros
- Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
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Rank 60. Al Sorriso
Piedmontese
A self-taught cook and her husband, a dining room maître in the old European sense, have been running this Michelin-starred Piedmontese restaurant together long enough to be considered an institution. She builds the classics from seasonal ingredients and deep regional tradition; he handles wine, cheese, and the room with the kind of unhurried precision that hospitality schools try to teach and mostly fail to. Soriso is a small village, which means you are making a deliberate trip.
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Rank 61. Felix Lo Basso Restaurant
Mediterranean Italian
A gorilla appears in the butter, in photographs, and as a full statue, which tells you something about the mood at this Michelin-starred fine dining room just outside Lugano. The chef, already a name in Italy, works Mediterranean Italian territory with a creative hand. At most a dozen guests sit at the chef's table on a given evening, so the whole thing feels less like a restaurant and more like a dinner party where someone cooks very well.
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Rank 62. Condividere
Italian
A small bistrot a few steps from Lake Maggiore's promenade, where the chef builds a seasonal menu around local Piedmontese produce with the kind of care that makes you slow down. The name comes from the opening antipasto, a sequence of small shared bites designed for the table to pick at together. The Michelin Guide has given it a Bib Gourmand, and the front of house runs with enough warmth that you notice it.
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Rank 63. Villa Baroni
Seafood
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Rank 64. La Perla
Seafood
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Rank 65. Autem*
Tuscan
The menu is handwritten and changes with whatever came in that morning, which tells you what kind of restaurant this is before you've sat down. A small, softly lit Tuscan trattoria in Milan, Autem runs on the chef's personal flair, from the open kitchen where he greets you to the table where he'll likely check in himself. The cooking is focused and unhurried, the kind that makes a short menu feel like a considered edit rather than a limitation.
- 50 Top Italy #50 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Grand Restaurants
- Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
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Rank 66. Trattoria del Nuovo Macello
Modern Italian
A cotoletta so thick it borders on a statement, this is a modern trattoria that takes Milanese cooking seriously without taking itself too seriously. Risotto alla milanese, ravioli, the classics are all here, restated with care rather than reinvented beyond recognition. The room is warm and unhurried, the kind of place where the service feels like it knows you even on a first visit. An extensive wine list keeps things moving.
- 50 Top Italy #17 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Modern Trattorias And Bistros
- Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
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Rank 67. META
Fusion Italian
A small staircase off Piazza della Riforma leads up to this quietly chic Italian restaurant, which earns a Michelin star without advertising the fact at street level. Marble tables, attentive service, and a kitchen that folds in Asian touches without making a fuss about it. The champagne list runs deeper than you'd expect, and the room feels polished without being stiff.
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Rank 68. Castagneto
Piedmontese
The terrace here looks out over the green hills above Lake Maggiore, and on a clear day it's hard to concentrate on the menu. This old-school Piedmontese trattoria has been around forever, and the room feels it, in the best way: homey, unhurried, and run with obvious conviction. The kitchen roams the whole Italian peninsula, seafood included, but the local and regional dishes are where it settles. A Michelin Bib Gourmand.
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Rank 69. Casa Celesia
Contemporary Italian
Tucked under the portico on Oleggio's main piazza, this contemporary Italian restaurant feels like a well-kept local secret that locals keep poorly. The room is warm and quietly elegant, with intimate tables and service that's polished without being stiff. The kitchen leans into Piedmontese seasons, letting produce lead while the chef's seasoning does the quiet, convincing work in the background.
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Rank 70. Trattoria La Barca
Apulian Italian
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An old country osteria tucked into the Ticino hills, where the menu follows the season and the wine list leans hard into Italian and regional bottles. The kitchen turns out traditional recipes with the kind of care that makes simple food feel deliberate, pike done à la meunière, desserts finished with yuzu limoncello and raspberry flakes. In summer, the place has the pull of somewhere you'd rather not leave.
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A Puglia-sourced pizzeria in central Varese where the dough is only the starting point. The chef builds tasting menus that move through sushi, pasta, and hot dogs, all anchored to pizza in ways that sound chaotic on paper and apparently work in practice. Burrata and stracciatella from Andria appear regularly, and the wine list leans Champagne. It landed on 50 Top Pizza Italy, which tracks.
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Rank 74. La Refezione
Italian
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Rank 75. Montalbano by Mirko Rainer
Contemporary Italian
A hilltop trattoria on the Montalbano slope with a veranda and summer terrace that do most of the convincing before the food arrives. The contemporary Italian kitchen leans into seafood crudo and grilled dishes off a Big Green Egg, with a tasting menu that swings heavily toward meat. Order Champagne and there's a decent chance the owner appears with a saber, which is either thrilling or deeply alarming depending on where you're sitting.
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Rank 77. La Brughiera
Traditional Italian
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Rank 78. Comi 107
Contemporary Seafood
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Rank 79. Rosso di Sera
Modern New American
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Rank 81. Ristorante con enoteca Origini
Contemporary Italian
A former mill on the edge of the Breggia Gorges, Origini is a countryside restaurant with three cosy dining rooms and a garden that earns its keep on a warm afternoon. The contemporary Italian menu leans traditional, running to the kind of rich, careful cooking that suits a long Sunday lunch. The wine list tilts toward Ticino, with around 200 labels and a house sparkling worth tracking down.
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Rank 82. Food Writers
Seafood
The oyster plateau arrives in three sizes and reads like a passport, with Italian, French, and Irish varieties arranged by origin. This is a seafood restaurant near San Siro, elegant enough to dress for, where the menu moves from raw shellfish to fire, the chef notably skilled on the grill. The tuna belly saltimbocca gives you a sense of how tradition gets handled here: with a light hand and a clear point of view.
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Rank 83. InGalera
Italian
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Rank 84. Casa Perrotta Restaurant
Contemporary Italian
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Rank 85. La Piemontese
Piedmontese
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Rank 86. La Piazzetta Lake Como
Mediterranean
A lounge bar at the entrance nudges you toward an aperitivo before you've even found your table, which is probably the point. This Cernobbio bistro has a retro-modern room and a terrace that catches the lake breeze in summer, and the kitchen runs a Mediterranean menu with a light, contemporary hand. The crowd tends young and local, the kind who know the pasta already.
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Three terraces hang over the water at this Michelin-starred restaurant in one of Piedmont's prettiest lake villages, so book ahead or you'll be watching someone else enjoy the view. The kitchen plays creative and precise, pairing Piedmontese meat with fish and seafood in dishes built around contrasting flavours and textures. The sommelier knows the wine list cold and seems to genuinely enjoy talking you through it.
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Rank 88. L’île Douce
French Bakery
A French-leaning pastry shop run by an Italian chef whose heart landed somewhere between Paris and Lyon. The chocolate work is the draw, with single-origin bars appearing in multiple textures across a single slice. The tiramisù ranks among Italy's finest by 50 Top Italy's count. Jar-baked leavened desserts, including panettone and babà, fill out the counter for anyone who thought they'd only stop in for coffee.
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Rank 89. La Veranda
Contemporary Italian
The terrace table with an unobstructed view of Lake Como sets the terms for everything that follows at this fine dining restaurant inside Villa d'Este. The kitchen works in contemporary Italian with a cosmopolitan lean, the kind of menu that keeps old-world instincts but isn't afraid of a detour. Dress as though someone might photograph you, because at Villa d'Este they very well might.
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Rank 90. Osteria del Borgo
Contemporary Italian
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Rank 91. Gnocchetto
Italian
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Rank 92. Osteria L'Abbiccì
Contemporary Italian
A bright, spacious dining room in the center of Seregno, where the mood manages to feel both convivial and discreet, which is harder to pull off than it sounds. This is a contemporary Italian osteria with a serious approach to ingredients and a wine list that earns its own conversation. The chef trained under a noted Lombardian hand, and the tasting menu reflects that pedigree without making you feel like you're sitting an exam.
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Contemporary art lines the walls of this intimate creative restaurant in central Seregno, the result of a longstanding tie-up with a local gallery. The cooking is modern but relaxed, moving easily between meat, fish, and vegetables without the kind of anxiety that usually comes with "creative cuisine." And in a corner of Lombardy where cheese courses have quietly vanished, this one still rolls the trolley.
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Rank 95. Blu
Italian Contemporary Mediterranean
The shaded terrace faces Lake Maggiore and the Rocca d'Angera, which is either a medieval fortress or proof that Arona has always known its angles. This is a lakeside Italian restaurant where the chef calls herself a home-style cook, and the menu backs her up with unfussy, flavour-forward dishes built around local freshwater fish. Carlo runs the front of house and takes the wine pairings seriously, so let him.
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Rank 96. Antica Osteria del Ponte
Contemporary Italian
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Rank 97. Confine
Pizza
A pizzeria where you can order a single slice à la carte or surrender to a tasting flight of four to six courses, each a different style of pizza served in sequence. The wine cellar is the quietly absurd part: a selection of bottles and champagnes that would embarrass most fine-dining rooms. Classic pies sit alongside fried and baked options, and the dough holds up its end. Ranked first on 50 Top Pizza Italy.
- 50 Top Pizza #4 · 50 Top Pizza World
- 50 Top Pizza 2025 · Best Wine List · 50 Top Pizza World Special Awards
- 50 Top Pizza #1 · 50 Top Pizza Italy
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Rank 98. Il Sole di Ranco
Modern Italian
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A sandwich shop in Milan built around one very specific idea: pork from Sienese and Chianina pigs, raised outdoors in Tuscany, smoked over fruit wood, slow-cooked for twelve hours, then finished on oak. The bread comes from ancient Verna wheat, and you pick your sauce from a short list of house-made options. The queue tends to answer any remaining questions you might have.