The Top 40 Places to Eat Near Da Fausto

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Named for the classic postwar film whose director was born right here in Fondi, this contemporary Italian restaurant sets its creative cooking across elegant dining rooms and a courtyard that earns its keep on warm evenings. The kitchen leans modern without losing the thread, pairing southern Italian instincts with enough invention to keep things interesting. The wine list is short but clearly chosen by someone paying attention.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Michelin-starred creative Italian restaurant in a small Pontinia town square, where the kitchen takes the Agro Pontino's local ingredients seriously enough to let them argue with Indian spices, a nod to the region's large immigrant community. The dessert course skips sweet entirely in favor of olives, basil, and artichoke. One half of the couple runs the room with warmth and a wine list she clearly knows cold; the other cooks.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Neapolitan-style pizzeria that's been around forever, sitting right on the Gaeta waterfront with a gulf view that does a lot of heavy lifting before the food even arrives. The dough is the traditional kind, high and well-leavened, and the menu runs from old classics to more inventive combinations alongside solid fish dishes. The bill lands somewhere around what you'd expect for a harbourfront table with a view like that.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A pizza spot in Priverno where the toppings read like a love letter to the Monti Lepini hills, broccoli cream and Marzolina fondue doing more interesting things on a pie than most kitchens manage with a full menu. The room runs to warm light and natural materials, the kind of place that actually absorbs sound instead of amplifying it. Ranked on 50 Top Pizza Italy, which the locals probably already knew.

1. 50 Top Pizza #88 · 50 Top Pizza Italy

A modern pizza spot in Formia where fermentation is taken seriously enough that the dough gets its own moment of quiet contemplation before it becomes your dinner. The open oven anchors a room that feels youthful and deliberate, and the menu leans into unusual ingredient pairings without tipping into novelty for its own sake. The staff walks you through it all with genuine enthusiasm rather than performance.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

The Falia, a tall, thick-crusted pizza from nearby Priverno served by the slice, tells you immediately where this pizzeria stands: deep in the ingredients and traditions of the surrounding territory. High-hydration doughs, local artisan producers, and fried starters that earn their place before the pizza even arrives. The wine list runs by the glass, the staff actually know it, and 50 Top Pizza Italy and the World list both took notice.

1. 50 Top Pizza #84 · 50 Top Pizza World
2. 50 Top Pizza #42 · 50 Top Pizza Italy

A 48-hour leavening process and a strict no-modifications policy set the tone at this contemporary pizzeria in Pontinia. The chef treats the pizza as a platform for serious ingredient work, with a light, airy dough and a well-defined crust carrying toppings assembled with the same care as a tasting menu. The fried starters are worth ordering, golden and greaseless. The wine list runs deep, and the staff knows it.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The two wood-burning ovens sit in plain sight, which tells you most of what you need to know. GianPà is a contemporary Neapolitan pizza spot just outside Cassino's centro storico, where the dough follows tradition but the kitchen doesn't stop there. The beer list is carefully chosen, the ingredients clearly fussed over, and if you eat spicy, ask about the heat option, because it isn't 'nduja. Listed among 50 Top Pizza Italy's excellent pizzerias.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Wooden tables, soft lighting, and chamber music drifting through a small dining room in Latina: Elementi is the kind of quietly confident restaurant that doesn't need to announce itself. The menu moves between land and sea, with house-marinated anchovies and a duck breast that shows real precision. The cooking has a personal stamp, rooted in the flavors of Lazio and the Mediterranean, and the whole evening feels unhurried in the best possible way.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The road into Acuto curls through enough bends to feel like a test of commitment, which is fitting for a one-Michelin-star restaurant built around a chef who operates on his own terms. Salvatore Tassa's tasting menus lean heavily on vegetables and cold extraction techniques, landing somewhere between Lazio tradition and something harder to categorize. The room is quiet; the cooking does the talking.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

There is no printed menu at this trattoria in the hill town of Acuto; there is Salvatore, who runs the room and tells you what's happening that day. The kitchen leans into local game and the olive oils alone smell worth the detour, with a licorice edge that catches you off guard. Dishes shift constantly, which keeps the regulars guessing alongside first-timers. Ranked among Italy's top modern trattorias by 50 Top Italy.

1. 50 Top Italy #11 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Modern Trattorias And Bistros

A Michelin-starred restaurant in an old farmhouse on the road between Ciociaria and the Arcinazzo plateau, where almost everything on the plate was grown or raised on the surrounding estate. The chef works in the creative-contemporary mode but keeps Lazio's culinary traditions close, so the cooking feels rooted rather than restless. The wine list leans heavily into Champagne, which is either a delightful contradiction or perfectly on-brand, depending on your mood.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The cannelloni here, filled with young beef and finished with fior di latte, have been on the menu long enough to be considered a local landmark. This is an old-school Lazio trattoria in the hill town of Olevano Romano, family-run for generations, with interiors that feel genuinely lived-in rather than staged. The kitchen works through offal, lamb, and farmyard ragù without any detour toward the tourist-friendly middle ground.

1. 50 Top Italy #5 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Modern Trattorias And Bistros
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Michelin-starred restaurant inside a building that looks like it belongs at an architecture biennale, set in the Vallefredda countryside outside Rome. The rooms are gallery-scale, hung with art, and deliberately at odds with the classically rooted Italian cooking on the plate. In summer, tables spill under old chestnut trees on the lawn, which is the kind of contrast the whole place seems to be going for.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A seasonal tasting menu built around the Agro Pontino region, with a kitchen that treats the local terroir as the whole point rather than a selling line. The outdoor room doubles as a winter garden, all bamboo and soft lighting, and an actual Roman archaeological site sits a few metres away should dinner leave you feeling historically curious. Modern country cooking, and a long drive from anywhere, but that's rather the idea.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A 16th-century convent in the hills between Abruzzo and Molise, which is already an unlikely address for a fine dining restaurant, let alone one ranked in the World's 50 Best. Niko Romito's tasting menus run on bitterness as a through-line, with vegetables and Abruzzo tradition doing most of the heavy lifting. Bread arrives out of sequence, which sounds eccentric until it doesn't. The chef's table turns the meal into something closer to a seminar.

1. 50 Best #18 · The World’s 50 Best Restaurants
2. 50 Top Italy #13 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Luxury

A former monastery on the hilly edge of Castel di Sangro is the right setting for Niko Romito's three-Michelin-star fine dining, where the cooking runs on rigorous minimalism and a near-obsessive commitment to Abruzzo. Dishes use very few ingredients and land with surprising depth. The bread arrives before the meal proper and is, by most accounts, a quiet argument for rethinking everything you assumed bread could do.

1. Michelin Guide 3 Stars

Bread arrives as a course in its own right here, which tells you most of what you need to know about how seriously this all-vegetarian restaurant takes itself. The team, both trained under Niko Romito, runs a tightly focused kitchen in central Isernia where technique does the heavy lifting. Nothing on the plate is decorative; everything earns its place, and the cooking has a clean, unshowy confidence that a lot of meat-forward restaurants would envy.

1. 50 Top Italy #6 · The Best Vegetable Bistros
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Cardoncelli mushrooms grown in local caves, lake fish, and herbs from the surrounding hills anchor the menu at this Michelin-starred contemporary restaurant in Ariccia, where the cooking lands somewhere between precise and quietly alive. The room feels modern rather than rustic, which may surprise anyone expecting the old Castelli Romani tavern vibe, but the chef's seasonal tasting menu has its own strong argument going, especially when the grill gets involved.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Giacomo Garau's third pizzeria is the one where he started, and the dough shows it: firm enough to hold generous toppings, light enough that you don't regret the second slice. The crust is the point here, a proper raised cornicione that actually does something. Modern, warm room, pleasant service, and the kind of pricing that makes you feel like you've gotten away with something.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A small grotto cut into tufa rock anchors the courtyard, with a handful of tables tucked inside, which tells you immediately that this isn't a place for a quick lunch. The young couple running it, Flavia and Alessio, have shaped a regional Italian restaurant around dishes with names like "The Journey I'll Never Forget," poetic in a way that somehow doesn't embarrass itself. The cooking follows suit, rooted in the landscape but with enough imagination to keep it interesting.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A modern trattoria in the heart of Marsica where vegetables hold the center of the plate and fermentation shows up in careful, measured doses rather than as a statement. The room is spare and bright, the kind of place that earns its seriousness without announcing it. The cooking follows the season and the territory, and the flavors are clean in a way that suggests someone in the kitchen actually knows when to stop. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

1. 50 Top Italy #23 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Modern Trattorias And Bistros
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Roman-style pizza shop in Velletri where the crust is thin, crisp, and built on pre-fermented doughs and carefully chosen flours. The team fries well and takes the dough seriously, which shows in how the slices hold their structure without going rigid. It's a young operation that already draws a local following, and 50 Top Pizza named it Young Restaurant of the Year for Italy in 2026. The room is cheerful and unpretentious, and the staff seem to mean it.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias
2. 50 Top Pizza 2026 · Giovane dell’Anno · 50 Top Pizza Italy Special Awards

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Perched above the port of Anzio, this old-school seafood restaurant has been running on family tradition and whatever came off the boats that morning for longer than most regulars can remember. The raw platter arrives with just oil and salt, which is either confidence or a dare. A deep wine list leans toward natural producers. It ranks fourth on the 50 Top Italy fish restaurant list, which should tell you something about the queue for a table.

1. 50 Top Italy #4 · The Best Fish Restaurants

A pizzeria named for a date that matters to the chef, which tells you something about how personally he takes all of this. The menu runs from straightforward classics to more inventive combinations, with housemade appetizers, including croquettes and small fried montanaras, worth ordering before the pies arrive. The selection stays tight, which in practice means everything on it has earned its place.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A small, intimate osteria tucked into the historic center of Zagarolo, where the cooking starts with Lazio pantry staples and then quietly wanders elsewhere, pulling in ingredients that have no obvious business being this close to Rome. The menu reads local until it doesn't. The terrace is worth requesting in good weather, and the room is small enough that booking ahead is less a suggestion than a fact of life.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A pizzeria in Casal di Principe that dedicates an entire menu section to don Peppe Diana, a priest killed by the Camorra, is doing more than selling pizza. The place is part of a project reclaiming confiscated land, and the ingredients come from those same fields. The contemporary pies, including a smaller round version, use a well-hydrated, airy dough and land on the 50 Top Pizza Italy list. In a town short on gathering spots, it fills that gap too.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

Tucked into the old alleys of Isernia, this pizza spot runs on a Neapolitan soul with Molisan roots, which is a combination the region doesn't let you forget. The dough is well-leavened and evenly baked, and the toppings lean hard into local ingredients, San Biase potatoes, Molise truffle, local pancetta. Outside tables in summer, a tidy interior in winter. Listed among 50 Top Pizza Italy's Excellent Pizzerias.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

Abate takes your reservation seriously before you've even walked in, which sets the tone for everything that follows. It's a pizzeria in the Abruzzo hills, leaning into local tradition with regional antipasti before the main event. The dough comes in three forms, including a double-baked seed focaccia, and each one is notably light without feeling austere. The combinations stay honest rather than clever, which turns out to be the point.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias