The Top 100 Places to Eat Near Etra

The glazed walls open straight onto Genoa's Old Port, which makes the deliberately spare dining room feel like a sensible choice rather than an oversight. Il Marin is a Michelin-starred contemporary seafood restaurant where the kitchen leans hard into Ligurian waters, then complicates things with modern technique. Chef Marco Visciola finishes a spaghetti dish tableside like a bartender. Tasting menus run the show, though à la carte exists for the commitment-averse.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
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Inside a palazzo off Genoa's grandest square, Etra hides its entrance deep in the building's courtyard, which is either annoying or atmospheric depending on your mood. Once inside, the dark, minimalist dining room doubles as a rotating art gallery, the name itself being an anagram of arte. Creative Italian tasting menus run the kitchen's ambitions, built around technical precision and an obvious restlessness to keep things moving.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A short climb from Piazza De Ferrari leads to this old-school Ligurian trattoria where the kitchen treats trofie al pesto alla genovese and brandacujun as articles of faith. Book ahead, because the dining room fills with people who know better than to show up without a reservation. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand, and the menu reads like a regional argument for never straying far from tradition.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Near Brignole station, this Michelin-starred restaurant holds the flag for Ligurian cooking with a quietly elegant room and a kitchen that runs on family instinct rather than trend-chasing. The menu moves between old Genoese traditions and more personal riffs on local ingredients, all plated with contemporary care. The wine list is an event in itself, with a dedicated volume for Italian and French sparkling wines that suggests someone takes this seriously.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Sitting near the alleged birthplace of Christopher Columbus, this seafood-forward trattoria is run by the Scala family, who also operate the well-regarded San Giorgio nearby. The menu leans on the market and the region, with cappon magro appearing often, though meat dishes get a careful, lightly modern treatment too. A covered outdoor terrace opens onto a pedestrian street, and the wine list handles itself well by the glass.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A contemporary tasting-menu restaurant on the first floor of an old palazzo above Genoa's ancient port, with views that do half the work before the kitchen starts. The cooking leans Ligurian but arrives through a fine-dining lens, with three menus that move through composed, technique-driven plates. The kind of place where the chef's philosophy gets spelled out on the plate rather than the menu cover.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Neapolitan-style pizza restaurant in central Genoa where the lighting is soft enough that you'll notice someone actually thought about it. The dough and the bake are the team's main argument, and the menu plays it out through a wide range of toppings, including the option to stuff the crust itself. Cocktails, wine, and beer round things out, and the service moves with the kind of ease that doesn't call attention to itself.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

Tucked into the arcades of Sottoripa, a short walk from the Porto Antico bustle, this casual sandwich and fried-food counter also runs a fish-forward cocktail menu sized for aperitivo hour, with the raw and poke options changing on whatever came in that day. It landed at number ten on 50 Top Italy's best sandwiches list, which is a good reason to stand in line. The team is young and moves fast, so you won't be there long unless you want to be.

1. 50 Top Italy #10 · The Best Sandwiches

A modern bistro near Via XX Settembre where the menu changes with whatever looked good at the market that morning. The chef works squarely in Ligurian tradition, so expect the kind of cooking that has always belonged to this coast, potato cream with sea snails prepared Genoese-style, minestrone served in a small pot. The room is warm and informal, the sort of place where the daily specials are the real point.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A trofie al pesto that the kitchen takes seriously enough to reimagine from scratch sets the tone at this intimate Ligurian fine-dining room tucked down a quiet side street in the Carignano quarter. Three tasting menus run from classic to vegetarian, but à la carte works too. The wine list leans into Ligurian labels, which makes sense here. The business lunch is a quietly generous deal that regulars have clearly already figured out.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A tiny doorway on via Assarotti opens into a handful of tables, just enough to fill with regulars who called ahead. This intimate seafood restaurant in Genoa runs on the chef's instinct for pairing classic technique with unexpected combinations, with the focus almost entirely on whatever came off the boat. The cappon magro, a layered Ligurian seafood salad, has its own following. Book before you leave the house.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Mirrors and silverware set the tone at this classic Genoese seafood restaurant, where the menu leans heavily on raw fish and whatever came off the boat. The mupa, a deep-water Mediterranean species most menus have never heard of, shows up here alongside prawns in season and handmade pasta with sauces that suggest someone's grandmother is involved. The table near the arte povera dresser at the back is the one to ask for.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A pizza spot in central Genova where the menu starts before any topping discussion, because you first pick one of four doughs, each made with whole salt from Mothya. Seasonal ingredients get paired with enough care that the combinations feel considered rather than clever for its own sake. The room fills up fast, and the service keeps pace without losing its manners. Good local craft beers and a decent wine list round things out.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A seafood-forward restaurant near the Expo Fiera area with the kind of pressed-tablecloth formality that tells you the fish will be serious. The kitchen leans on classic Ligurian technique, so expect grilled whole fish, warm seafood salad, and fish braised with potatoes and Taggiasche olives rather than anything trying to surprise you. Meat exists on the menu, quietly, for the one person at the table who always orders it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A flower-scented courtyard in Albaro's quiet residential streets sets the tone before you've even sat down. Inside, this contemporary Ligurian restaurant trades on the pleasures of careful sourcing, steering between the coast and the hills as the season dictates. The room is warm and unhurried, the kind of place where dessert is not an afterthought but a small event in itself, which the menu will remind you of more than once.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Thin-crust pizza is the draw at this Quinto neighborhood spot, an old-school institution that regulars treat as a given rather than a destination. The staff will steer you toward something good if you let them, but the craft beer list is where the real conversation starts, and the owners are the kind of knowledgeable that makes you want to linger over a second round.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Carlo Cracco's fine dining outpost sits right on the harbor in one of the world's most photographed villages, in a room that once held the legendary Il Pitosforo. The kitchen leans into Ligurian ingredients, many from a mountain garden nearby, with an unusual cold-aging setup for fish. Tasting menus run seven or eleven courses. The terrace, open evenings in good weather, has the kind of view that makes you order another glass. It holds a Michelin star.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Vegetables from the family's own garden and orchard end up on the plate here, at a multigenerational Ligurian trattoria that's been an old-school institution in the Apennine interior for as long as anyone can remember. The menu follows the seasons closely, moving through mushrooms, truffles, and chestnut lasagnette with local cheese fondue, with daily market specials folded in. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand, and the welcome is the kind that makes you linger.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The 4.5km of switchbacks to reach this farm-to-table restaurant on a Ligurian estate might make you question your choices, but the Tyrrhenian Sea view from the table has a way of settling that debate. The kitchen leans on its own garden, local fish, and carefully chosen meat, and the cooking is bright and seasonal, occasionally pulled off the barbecue in the way that makes simple things taste like a point being made.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Tucked into the Ligurian hills of Ne, this family-run trattoria has been feeding the valley on herb ravioli and slow-cooked suckling pig with chestnuts for longer than most regulars can remember. The wine cellar downstairs holds over a thousand labels, which explains why people drive this far from anywhere. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand, and the cooking stays rooted in the kind of local recipes that don't need updating.

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2. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The open kitchen runs the length of the room, and the minimalist design makes no apologies for it. This is a Michelin-starred tasting menu restaurant in a small Ligurian coastal town, where nearly everything on the plate comes from small local producers. Three menus move through different registers of the region: coast to inland hills, deep sea, or purely vegetable. The cooking frames Liguria as a landscape worth exploring rather than a backdrop.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The focaccia di Recco on the menu here isn't a nod to local tradition; it's the reason there is a local tradition. This old-school Ligurian restaurant in Recco has been in the same family for generations, and part of the building still runs as a focacceria so nobody has to wait for the good part. The main dining room goes further, with fish-forward cooking that leans traditional but takes the occasional modern turn.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

An old-school osteria just outside Masone that sat dark for years before two young chefs decided to bring it back, cooking the border country where Liguria tips into Piedmont. The room feels pleasantly contemporary without forgetting what the building is, and the kitchen does the same, taking regional recipes and pressing them forward with technique that earns its keep. A Michelin Selected Restaurant.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Brandacujun, the old Ligurian salt-cod-and-potato mash, is as good a reason as any to find your way to this family-run seafood trattoria on the coast road near Chiavari's waterfront. The kitchen leans into the region without apology, and in summer the tables move outside so you can eat calamari grilled on a stone slab with a sea breeze doing its thing. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Large windows that open onto the Rapallo promenade in summer set the tone at this seafood restaurant inside a small seafront hotel. The room is intimate and softly lit, the kind of place where the service is quiet and unhurried without being invisible. The kitchen lets the fish and seafood speak, keeping preparations clean enough that the ingredients do the persuading. A sensible choice when you want the Ligurian coast on a plate without a lot of theatre around it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Wrought-iron tables spill onto one of Portofino's tiny squares, with the castle-crowned promontory framing the view like someone staged it. This contemporary Italian restaurant is run by the Cerea family, who also oversee the three-Michelin-starred Da Vittorio in Bergamo, so the kitchen takes the food seriously even when the scenery is doing most of the heavy lifting. Book ahead; the tables are few and the square is famous.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A fifth-generation family restaurant on the Ligurian coast, Rezzano has a Michelin star and a veranda aimed squarely at the setting sun over the central square. The kitchen leans into seafood and garden produce across three tasting menus, with dishes that manage to be delicate and genuinely flavourful without trying too hard to impress. The kind of place where the view and the food arrive at the table in roughly equal measure.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A trattoria on Ovada's main piazza that doubles as a wine boutique, so the Barolo list is organized by subzone the way serious shops do it. The menu is a tour of Piedmontese tradition: hand-rolled tajarin, beef braised in local wine, and the chocolate bunet that closes most meals in this part of the region. The finanziera, that old-fashioned offal stew almost nobody makes anymore, turns up occasionally if you're curious or brave.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Neapolitan-style pizza spot right on the Chiavari seafront, with bright, colourful rooms that lean into the holiday-town energy rather than fighting it. The dough is light and carefully sourced, and the kitchen pairs San Marzano tomatoes and Campanian fior di latte with combinations that wander well beyond the classics. The wine list holds its own, and the craft beer selection is taken seriously. Young staff who seem to enjoy being there round out the picture.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A trattoria in a tight Ligurian seaside village that started life as a fishing-net warehouse, and hasn't tried very hard to forget it. The room is simple and old-school, with tables outside on a characteristically narrow street. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand for the kind of generous, unfussy seafood cooking that's been arriving from the kitchen for generations: fish soup a permanent fixture, fish tartare turning heads lately.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Tucked into the backstreets of Chiavari, this pizzeria gives you a choice most places don't: a low, crispy crust or a high, pillowy one. Either way, the dough is worked for lightness rather than bulk, and the toppings lean on local Ligurian products rather than reach for novelty. The Margherita 44 is the one regulars keep ordering. Good craft beers and wines by the glass round out a room that's cozy without trying too hard.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

The restaurant sits inside a wine estate, so the list leans hard on Barbaresco and Barolo, with Champagne as the only outside voice. La Gallina is a contemporary fine dining room with a rustic-elegant feel, the menu circling Piedmont and dipping into Liguria and the chef's native Campania. A dessert that arrives disguised as a cappuccino and focaccia breakfast suggests the kitchen has a sense of humor about where it draws its references.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A 180-hectare biodynamic farm outside Gavi, producing much of what lands on the table, is a pretty good argument for eating where you sleep. This restaurant on the La Raia estate serves contemporary Piedmontese cooking rooted in local tradition, with tasting menus that follow the property's own wines from Gavi to Langhe. Organic, art-forward, and quietly serious, it's the kind of dinner that makes ordering off a regular menu feel lazy.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The summer terrace at this modern Italian restaurant inside the Villa Riviera resort frames a sweep of Ligurian coastline that looks best when the sun goes down. Inside, the veranda dining room keeps things minimal and calm, a nice contrast to the view. The kitchen works in a contemporary register with the region folded in throughout, right down to a dessert that pairs basil and olives with white chocolate and pine nut ice cream, which sounds stranger than it eats.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A 17th-century palazzo in the village square sets the stage for a traditional Piedmontese trattoria that takes agnolotti seriously, serving the stuffed pasta three ways: plain, cooked in wine, or with meat sauce. An open fire runs in winter, a courtyard appears in summer, and a handful of guestrooms sit out back for anyone who didn't plan to stop but did anyway. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand, and the wine list is long enough to make that an evening commitment.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The garden terrace faces the beach close enough to hear the sea, and that alone explains why tables fill up in summer. This is a modern seafood restaurant inside Hotel Mare, where the kitchen leans heavily on whatever swam recently, prepared with enough contemporary technique to keep things interesting without losing the plot. The wine list runs deeper than you'd expect at a coastal spot. A Michelin Selected Restaurant.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Olive wood does the heavy lifting here, sending smoke through the stone walls of a former oil cellar that dates back to the late 1500s. It's a contemporary grill restaurant just a short walk from the sea in Sestri Levante, with its own kitchen garden out front and a dining room that leans pleasantly rustic and romantic. No fish on the menu, which makes a statement in Liguria, the kitchen favoring self-grown vegetables and meat cooked over the coals.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The wood-fired stove has been running this country restaurant for generations, and nobody has seen much reason to change that. Set in the hilly Piedmontese countryside outside Cartosio, Cacciatori serves deeply local, seasonal cooking in the kind of room where the wine list skews toward serious Langhe verticals. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and guestrooms if you'd rather not navigate those hills after dinner.

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2. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A Michelin-starred restaurant inside a 15th-century bishop's palace, with a terrace that looks out over a small Ligurian bay. The chef builds an elegant, minimalist menu around local catch, listing the fish in dialect so the menu doubles as a vocabulary lesson. The family runs every corner of the room, including a cheese trolley stocked with nothing but regional producers and a wine list that treats Liguria as its own continent before acknowledging the rest of the world.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A family trattoria in the Piedmontese hills where the weekly menu changes to follow the season rather than the other way around. Fausto runs the room, his wife Rosella cooks, and daughter Gaia handles dessert, so the agnolotti and the fiordilatte ice cream come from people who have opinions about them. The wine list leans on the family's own Pinot Nero. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the kind of place that earns one quietly.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The menu changes daily at this family-run trattoria in Altare, where the kitchen sits at the border of Liguria and Piedmont and takes that geography seriously. Both regions show up on the plate, from plin and rabbit tortelli to vitello tonnato, all given a modern reinterpretation without losing their footing. The wine list leans the same direction. An old-school institution that has quietly kept up with the times.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A terrace overlooking the Ligurian coast is the reason to navigate the narrow, winding road up to this rustic hotel restaurant in Finale Ligure. Call ahead to book a sea-view table, because the room itself is simple and unassuming. The kitchen leans into regional cooking, with seafood and classic meat dishes rooted in the local tradition. The kind of place that rewards the effort to find it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A young chef cooking Ligurian to its bones, right at the tourist marina in a tiny clifftop village where the sea view alone makes the GPS confusion forgivable. This is a tasting-menu restaurant, though you can order à la carte, built around the region's produce: Albenga artichokes, Pigna beans, pine nuts, local seafood, and the foraged herb mix called prebugiun. Everything on the plate is an argument for staying in Liguria forever.

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2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Three snug rooms in a former convent, walls hung with lively paintings and vintage odds and ends, serving the kind of traditional Emilian cooking that makes you wonder why you'd eat anywhere else in the valley. The menu is short by design, four choices per course, rooted in local tradition with the occasional playful detour. The wine list runs to a thousand labels, with vertical selections that will delight anyone who takes that sort of thing seriously. Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Maccheroni alla bobbiese, the pasta shape that put this small Emilian hill town on the culinary map, is what the kitchen here has built its reputation on. It's a traditional trattoria-style restaurant near Bobbio's historic centre, cooking squarely from the local pantry and the season, not the trend. The room feels like a place where the menu changes when the produce does, not when the PR department does.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The dining room is a 17th-century olive oil press, stone mill and wooden press still in place under vaulted ceilings in a medieval village that looks like it was designed by a tourism board. The restaurant leans into its setting with Ligurian seafood given an imaginative push, the catch of the day landing in an Italian-style ceviche, local ingredients doing most of the talking. The simpler bistro around the corner, I Torchietti, is run by the same team if you want a lighter commitment.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The veranda's retro curve stops park walkers mid-stride, which is a reasonable way to find a restaurant. Inside, the Billis twins run an osteria that calls its approach "new tradition," meaning Piedmontese cooking refracted through wider influences. Local ingredients stay, but the techniques roam. The room has the kind of unhurried atmosphere that makes an extra glass feel inevitable, which is probably the point.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The vaulted dining room used to be a celebrated local address called Cavallino, and the bones of that history still set the mood. Ciccio Bistrot is a Piedmontese trattoria that takes its regionalism seriously, running a menu of traditional dishes with playful names, a daily handful of off-menu specials, and agnolotti del plin you dress yourself. The owner steers the wine pairings with the confidence of someone who has heard every wrong answer.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A pizzeria on a proper town square, Groove Tortona runs two styles side by side: a soft, Naples-leaning round and a thin, crackling C-Rock version, each on its own semi-wholemeal dough. The kitchen aims for roughly half its toppings to be vegetable-led, which sounds like a policy statement but plays out in combinations like a vegetable ragù with prosecco and vegan stracciatella. Local Derthona wines and a pair of house craft beers round things out.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

An 18th-century farmhouse in the Alessandria countryside, stripped back to clean lines and pale walls inside, which makes a quietly dramatic frame for Piedmontese cooking with a modern lean. This is a proper sit-down restaurant, meat-forward and rooted in the region, with a chef who adds just enough of a twist to keep things interesting without losing the thread. The kind of place where the room itself feels considered, and the food follows suit.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Set inside an agricultural research estate in the Oltrepò Pavese hills, this Michelin-starred restaurant draws the region into focus through modern Italian cooking that still lets Sicilian olive oil and Sardinian lamb dumplings wander in. The wine list leans heavily into local Oltrepò Pavese bottles without neglecting the rest of the country. Soft lighting and unhurried service make the glass-walled dining room feel like a genuinely civilized evening out.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Tucked into the old town's narrow lanes, Machettö is a small contemporary restaurant where the chef, a Campanian transplant now firmly rooted in Liguria, folds the region's traditions into each dish with a light hand. The dining room runs warm and elegant without fuss. The brandacujun, that old Ligurian salt cod classic, gets finished tableside by the chef himself, which is either charming or theatrical depending on your mood.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A seventeenth-century monastery in the Langhe hills, now a fine-dining room carrying one of Piedmont's most storied names in regional cooking. The chef works in a tradition built by the Alciati family, pulling Piedmontese classics into a modern frame without making them unrecognizable. One Michelin star. The wine cellar, stacked with verticals and rare bottles, is its own argument for lingering over dessert.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A rambling trattoria in the Monferrato hills where the menu reads like a regional catechism: bagna cauda, vitello tonnato, tripe, braised veal in Barbera d'Asti, all of it exactly as it should be. The wine list runs deep through Langhe and Asti, then keeps going through the rest of Italy and into France, which feels a little ambitious until you sit down. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and in warm weather there's a terrace.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Facing Nizza Monferrato's main piazza, this Piedmontese trattoria has been brought back to life by a young couple with a clear point of view: keep the classics, then quietly push them. The kitchen turns out carne battuta, plin, and braised Fassona alongside the occasional surprise, like an onion stuffed with sausage and Castelmagno cream. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and regularly full, so book ahead.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A grandmother built this family trattoria, her granddaughter now runs the kitchen, and her parents still work the dining room with the kind of attention that makes 1960s wallpaper feel like atmosphere rather than neglect. The menu is Monferrato through and through: vitello tonnato, hand-folded agnolotti, tajarin with porcini. The wine list follows the same logic. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the prices stay honest enough to order a second carafe.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Ligurian pizza spot in the center of Levanto where the dough is kept deliberately light, the kind that makes you forget you've eaten three slices. The toppings lean into local pantries, and the staff steers you through them without the usual fanfare. Craft beers and regional wines round out the short list. It's a small, tidy room, and the whole thing has the quiet confidence of a place that doesn't need to explain itself.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

Tucked into the alleyways of central Levanto, this pizzeria builds its reputation on a thin, crispy crust kept deliberately light, so the toppings have somewhere to land without turning everything soggy. The menu leans into local ingredients and the craft beer and wine list is chosen to match rather than compete. Staff move quickly and the room stays convivial, which in a Ligurian beach town is saying something.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The glass walls of this Michelin-starred dining room in the Barbaresco hills frame a view that, on clear days, reaches the Alps, so the terrace between courses is not optional. The kitchen runs refined tasting menus alongside a generous à la carte, leaning on Piedmontese meat and fresh fish. The wine cellar, lined with shelves that read more like an art installation, is particularly serious about older vintages.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A glass-walled kitchen lets you watch the chef work while you eat, which either relaxes or unnerves you depending on your table. This small, quietly modern restaurant in Voghera's historic centre earns a Michelin Bib Gourmand with Lombardian cooking that leans local but bends the rules just enough to keep things interesting. The co-owner steers wine choices toward the Oltrepò Pavese, and half-portions are on offer for anyone exercising restraint.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

One wall here is carved straight into the cliff face, which sets the tone. This seafood restaurant in Monterosso al Mare climbs above the village on the salita dei Cappuccini, and the upper terrace has the kind of Ligurian coastline view that makes you forget to order. The menu changes daily by blackboard or by whatever the server recites, leaning heavily on the sea but never ignoring the land. Book the terrace; the walk up is short.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A modern Italian restaurant set inside an old monastery, with a wine cellar dining room and a courtyard terrace when the weather cooperates. The chef cooks personal, Italian-rooted food with the occasional South American lean, a nod to his Ecuadorian wife, who runs the front of house and keeps the wine list unusually interesting. Colorful, generous plates in a setting that makes the slightly out-of-the-way drive feel like exactly the point.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant