The Top 60 Places to Eat Near Cielo

Perched at the highest point of Ostuni's whitewashed old town, this contemporary Apulian restaurant sits inside a restored historic residence, with a barrel-vaulted dining room and a small citrus courtyard for summer evenings. The kitchen takes regional ingredients and reworks them with a light, modern hand. The terrace catches the sunset in a way that feels almost unfairly cinematic. Dinner runs formal; lunch shifts to something easier.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Vegetables grown a few kilometers away in the family's garden end up on your plate the same day, which sets the tone for everything at this cozy Apulian restaurant on Corso Cavour. The kitchen works through tasting menus and à la carte, reinterpreting regional traditions without losing sight of where it is. Service runs warm and precise, the kind that anticipates without hovering. A good spot for a long, unhurried lunch in Ostuni.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A pastry shop in Forio that locals and summer visitors have been stopping into for generations, Pasticceria F.lli Calise is best known for its cornetto ischitano, a brioche-meets-puff-pastry hybrid that is essentially the island's calling card. The babà here, ranked among Italy's finest by 50 Top Italy, is well-risen, pillowy, and soaked in fragrant syrup. A Mediterranean garden out back makes lingering over a coffee feel less like a detour and more like the whole plan.

1. 50 Top Italy #7 · The Best Babà

A domed ceiling of lime and stone sets the room in Carovigno's old town, once you've threaded through the lanes to find it. This is a Michelin-starred trattoria-ish dining room where the chef runs modern Apulian cooking on good instincts and serious local ingredients. In summer, a terrace opens up over the rooftops with a sliver of sea beyond. The wine list pulls from Puglia and well past it.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The dining room at this rural Apulian masseria sits inside whitewashed stone walls thick enough to keep out the heat, and the menu leans hard into whatever the surrounding organic gardens are doing that week. Chef Giorgia Eugenia Goggi runs a set menu built mostly on vegetables, plated with enough color to look almost suspicious. A short list of natural Italian wines keeps things honest. Six rooms upstairs mean you don't have to leave, and people rarely want to.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Baroque palazzo on a quiet piazza, with a fine staircase leading up to a quietly stylish dining room, is the kind of setting that could coast on atmosphere alone. This fine dining restaurant doesn't, though. The kitchen turns out creative regional cooking built around local meat and fish, served as a four, eight, or more course surprise menu. Book the terrace table for two early, very early.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Barrel-vaulted ceilings and a courtyard tucked under old stone porticoes set the scene at this Apulian trattoria in Ceglie Messapica's old town. The kitchen works through regional recipes with the kind of conviction that makes a menu hard to navigate quickly, in the best sense. The Michelin Guide has given it a Bib Gourmand. Book ahead; the locals already know about it, and they got there first.

1. 50 Top Italy #31 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Modern Trattorias And Bistros
2. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Vegetables get top billing at this Michelin-starred fine dining restaurant inside the Borgo Egnazia resort, where the kitchen treats a heritage Puglian carrot or fava bean with the same seriousness most chefs reserve for prime cuts. The team works closely with local growers, and the cooking tends toward intense, concentrated flavors with elegant plating. Even confirmed carnivores rarely seem to notice what's missing.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. 50 Top Italy #24 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Luxury

Apulian trattoria that grew out of a family butcher shop and never really left those roots behind. Meat still anchors the menu, and the kitchen garden supplies vegetables that show up in a long procession of antipasti and fresh pasta. The wine cellar runs to over 300 labels, which is serious for a town this size. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and there's a small B&B next door if the meal stretches, as it tends to.

1. 50 Top Italy #49 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Modern Trattorias And Bistros
2. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A Michelin-starred dining room inside a castle-turned-wine-resort outside Manduria, with tall windows looking onto an olive grove that makes you feel the meal itself is growing around you. The chef came back to Puglia after time at serious restaurants elsewhere, and the kitchen garden shows up quietly in dishes that read as modern but taste unmistakably local. Tasting menus only, one of them fully vegetarian, so this is a plan-ahead, dress-a-little night out.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A Neapolitan-style pizzeria in San Vito dei Normanni that takes its cues from the alleys of Naples: cartwheel-format pies, wide and thin in the center, with a soft, properly leavened crust that doesn't overplay its hand. The room is simple, with a snug outdoor terrace, and the pasta frittatas make a strong case for arriving hungry before the pizza even lands. Fried and folded options round things out, and the babà is a tidy way to finish.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A cluster of trulli beside a small vineyard sets the scene at this rustic trattoria tucked behind a relais outside Martina Franca. The kitchen leans into Apulian tradition, with wood-fired cooking and a menu that shifts with whatever the market offers that week. The same team behind a nearby gourmet spot runs the stoves here, though the register is looser and the food earns a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Three separate tasting menus, one each for meat, fish, and vegetables, give away what kind of dinner this is: a modern restaurant where the kitchen is the whole point. The room in Fasano is warm and convivial, the cooking precise and sensory-minded, and the story behind it, started by the chef and his partner after years in Australia, gives the place an unusually wide-angle outlook for a small Apulian town.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The veranda opens fully in good weather, roof and all, so the sea air genuinely runs the room. This is a classic seafood restaurant near Martina Franca's town square, built around raw preparations and high-quality fish handled with care. New management has freshened the direction without losing the old-school character. The front garden and private parking are small graces that add up, and the menu stays loyal to clean, fragrant, coastal cooking.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A vaulted ceiling, an open kitchen, and a terrace beside the church of San Carlo Borromeo: the setting alone does a lot of the work. This modern restaurant in a small Apulian village cooks entirely from local ingredients, with herbs from its own kitchen garden. The chef spent formative years in Bologna, and the house-made stuffed pasta remembers that. A Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A few tables and a fireplace under a vaulted stone ceiling in a 16th-century building tucked into the old-town alleys of Putignano: the room alone sets the tone for this Michelin-starred fine dining restaurant. The chef's cooking draws on Apulian tradition without being enslaved to it, and his son runs the floor and a wine cellar deep enough to occupy two volumes and roughly three thousand labels.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. 50 Top Italy #23 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Grand Restaurants

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A family-run pizzeria tucked into the historic center of Martina Franca, where the dough is Neapolitan but the toppings take a creative turn, anchovies with mint and powdered licorice being the kind of combination that sounds like a dare until it lands. The room is small and cozy, the service attentive without hovering. A solid wine and beer list, plus cocktails if the mood calls for it.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A pizzeria in the Puglia heel of Italy that can't quite decide between Neapolitan and thin-crust, so it simply does both. You pick your style at the order, and the kitchen pairs every pizza on the menu with two or more beers. Seasonal ingredients lean hard into southern Italian producers. Ranked 63rd on 50 Top Pizza Italy, and the locals who fill it seem to know exactly what they're ordering before they sit down.

1. 50 Top Pizza #63 · 50 Top Pizza Italy

A family-run pizzeria outside Bari that has been turning out Apulian pizza for decades, the rolled-pin style that sits somewhere between Roman and something the region has claimed entirely as its own. The Lococciolo family's latest chapter involves sourcing with genuine care, from Martina Franca capocollo to Andria stracciatella, and a quiet obsession with allergen-free ingredients that most places don't bother with.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A centuries-old masseria outside Polignano a Mare, surrounded by ancient olive trees, sets the scene for this one-Michelin-star tasting menu restaurant. The chef reads Apulian tradition through a creative lens, with five or seven courses that move between the familiar and the unexpected. The wine cellar holds over a thousand labels, and a communal table sits right among them, which is either romantic or slightly unhinged, depending on your group.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A deli and bakery that grew a gazebo and became a pizzeria, which is an origin story that explains the room. Sit-down pizza spot on the outskirts of Brindisi, leaning modern rather than Neapolitan classic, with a menu that wanders into broader Italian territory. The wine and beer lists are taken seriously. Charcuterie shows up, though nothing too artisanal. Staff are easygoing, the vibe is low-key, and the cash register has been known to have its own ideas.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A pizzeria on Piazza Dante where the dough is the whole argument, worked for digestibility and cooked in separate ovens depending on style. The toppings are restrained and local, letting the crust do the talking rather than burying it. The room keeps it simple, the service pays attention, and lunch and dinner both run daily. A solid neighbourhood pizza shop that takes the craft seriously without making a show of it.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

Tiramisu arrives in a baking dish, served tableside the way it would be at home, and that tells you most of what you need to know about Botteghe Antiche. It's a country trattoria in Putignano, all checkered tablecloths and hanging pots, built around Apulian cooking that leans hard into Sunday-lunch memory: eggplant parmigiana, fresh orecchiette, slow ragu. The room smells accordingly. It landed on 50 Top Italy's list of modern trattorias and bistros.

1. 50 Top Italy #24 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Modern Trattorias And Bistros

A Neapolitan-style pizza spot on the edge of Taranto where the dough is soft and airy and the fried starters, stuffed with cheese and pepper or mortadella and pistachio, disappear fast. The team puts care into sourcing local ingredients, and the combinations on the pizza read thoughtful rather than fussy. Bring your own wine, though, because the drinks list is essentially a shrug. Listed among 50 Top Pizza Italy's Excellent Pizzerias.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A tuff-stone building on the Gianfranco Fino wine estate, with picture windows framing the vineyards and a terrace for when you need even more countryside. The restaurant upstairs serves modern meat and fish dishes, many cooked with the estate's own wines, alongside a vegetarian menu built around produce from the kitchen garden. The wine list is essentially the winery's back catalogue, which makes ordering feel less like a decision and more like a tasting.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Homemade pasta rolled out every morning sets the tempo at this old-school trattoria in Taranto, where the menu leans heavily toward the land rather than the sea. Antonio works the room while his sisters cook, and the move is to skip the printed menu entirely and let him narrate whatever came in that day. Regulars know this and order nothing; newcomers figure it out fast. A place where the informality is the whole point.

1. 50 Top Italy #48 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Modern Trattorias And Bistros

A large outdoor terrace fills up on warm Taranto evenings, and the pizza here is the crispy, contemporary kind that holds its own without needing a manifesto. The fried starters and meatballs with various toppings give you good reasons to arrive hungry. Beer is taken seriously; the wine list leans on a single producer, so order accordingly. The room is relaxed and the service knows when to disappear.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A no-frills pizza spot in Taranto where the dough menu splits into classics, multigrain, and a protein-rich line aimed at athletes, which is either very niche or very Puglia. The atmosphere is casual and the service moves fast, so nobody lingers over the menu descriptions, which are admittedly sparse. The pistachio croquette has been known to distract from everything else on offer.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

Parked along the waterfront with the Aragonese castle filling the window, Baroné is a Taranto all-day spot running from breakfast pastries through to dinner pizzas. The dough gets a long, slow rise that keeps it light, and the menu moves between straightforward classics and more composed options. The 50 Top Pizza guide lists it among Italy's excellent pizzerias, which tracks for a place this committed to its flour.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A bright, modern pizzeria on Viale Magna Grecia with big windows and a menu that wanders cheerfully past pizza into burgers, sandwiches, and salads. The crust is thin in the center, soft and airy, with a satisfying crunch at the edge. Toppings lean toward combinations like eggplant parmigiana with buffalo mozzarella, or gorgonzola with caramelized pears. A young, attentive crew keeps things moving. Listed among 50 Top Pizza Italy's Excellent Pizzerias.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Grilled fish and a view of the Ionian Sea from a table right on the Salento coast, which is about as direct a statement of intent as a seafood restaurant can make. The kitchen keeps things uncluttered: the best of the catch goes over the grill, while shellfish get preparations spare enough to stay out of their own way. It's a room that has no interest in cleverness, which, here, is exactly the point.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Stone rooms that feel genuinely old sit alongside a glassed-in dining room and a garden made for slow summer evenings, which gives this Conversano pizzeria an unusual range of moods for one address. The sourdough crust runs light, and the team leans on local sourcing with the seriousness of people who've thought about it. Parking is easy, the staff can talk you through the menu, and the beer list has room to grow.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A Neapolitan-style pizzeria in a small Puglian town, DaMa builds its reputation on a 72-hour dough that arrives thin in the center and pillowy at the crust. The room is split between a larger open space with a visible oven and a quieter, more modern side room. Toppings stay largely classic, which suits the dough fine. Beer selection is a work in progress, so wine might be the safer call.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Seasonality shapes everything at this contemporary pizzeria in Conversano, where the toppings shift with what's good and the combinations are clearly thought through rather than thrown together. The pan-fried pizza comes thick and crunchy outside, cloud-soft within, and a rotating weekly pizza keeps things honest. Small local producers supply much of the pantry. The crowd tends to linger, which the attentive service seems to quietly encourage.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

Seven versions of the Margherita on the menu, and that's before you get to the rest. Brando is a contemporary pizzeria in Gioia del Colle where the dough leans toward the refined end, the local DOP mozzarella shows up everywhere it can, and the wine list takes itself as seriously as the pizza does. The room is comfortable and put-together, the kind of place where ordering a cocktail with your slice feels completely natural.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A seafood restaurant in Porto Cesareo where the menu follows the catch rather than the calendar, and a raw platter arrives before you've quite settled in. The chef runs the room with her daughters and a staff that's polished without being stiff. Homemade bread and a quiet reverence for olive oil set the tone early. Ranked seventh on Italy's 50 Top Fish Restaurants list, if that helps you decide.

1. 50 Top Italy #7 · The Best Fish Restaurants

A young Puglian chef with a Michelin star and a very strong point of view runs this intimate contemporary restaurant in Lecce's historic center. The kitchen leans deep into the region, then takes a sharp left turn, reinterpreting Apulian tradition through a personal, visually striking lens. Tasting menus run seven or eight courses; an à la carte exists for anyone who rebels against the format. The room is the kind of quiet that lets the food do the talking.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Stone columns and vaulted ceilings from a centuries-old Dominican monastery frame a dining room that goes firmly minimalist, with pale floors and a glass-fronted wine wall as the main decoration. The contemporary menu leans into Puglian ingredients without making a fuss about it. Service is the kind that's attentive without hovering, which in a room this old and serious is exactly what the architecture already asks of everyone.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Lecce pizzeria spread across two floors with a big outdoor terrace for summer, 400 Gradi has become the city's go-to for Neapolitan-style pizza built on a slow, 24-hour indirect dough. The menu shifts with the seasons while keeping the signatures intact, and the staff can actually talk you through the wine and beer list without making it a performance. The desserts are unexpectedly creative for a pizza place, which is either a bonus or a trap, depending on your appetite.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

The thin, crackery crust is the whole argument here: this small, informal Lecce pizza shop has built a following around a lighter-than-expected dough that the team tops with combinations running from straight-ahead Margherita variations to a coffee-inflected house creation. The room is compact and the staff actually pays attention, which is rarer than it should be. A tight but considered wine and beer list rounds things out.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A contemporary pizzeria near Lecce's center where the drink list is built around the pies, not bolted on as an afterthought. The dough leans on heritage cereals and sits light, and the menu moves between DOP-anchored classics and more modern combinations using creams and marinated raw ingredients. The room is warm and closely set, and the service knows the menu cold.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A pizza restaurant in Lecce where the dough is made entirely with type 1 flour, kept thin and light enough that a second pie feels like a reasonable choice. The room has a vintage-meets-contemporary look that someone clearly sweated over, and the wine list runs past a hundred labels, which is ambitious for a pizzeria by anyone's measure. Seasonal toppings, a proper dessert menu, and staff who actually know the list. It ranked on 50 Top Pizza Italy.

1. 50 Top Pizza #89 · 50 Top Pizza Italy

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Neapolitan-style pizza spot in a small town outside Lecce where the dough is quietly the whole point. The multigrain version in particular develops real aroma and a crust that knows when to stop. A tasting menu lets you work through different dough interpretations, which is a more interesting evening than it sounds. The room goes for alchemist theatrics, wood and iron and swing tables, charming in ambition if occasionally less so in practice.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A pizzeria in a small Salentine town where the kitchen turns out both Neapolitan and Pugliese-style pies, and takes both seriously enough to run a separate production lab for pan pizzas and gluten-free options. The appetizers, frittatas and croquettes among them, are worth the table wait. In summer, tables spill into the square. The wine list is well chosen, the beer selection broader than you'd expect this far south.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

The Queen Wheel arrives larger than a standard pie, cooked in three stages, and finished with your choice of raw Puglian extra virgin olive oil. This is a contemporary Bari pizzeria where the dough itself is the point, rotating through cereals, black rice, beer must, and citrus variations depending on what the team is working with. Round, white, red, and rectangular versions all share the menu, and the toppings balance the traditional with the quietly inventive.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias