The Top 39 Places to Eat Near Le Grotticelle

A pizzeria sitting a thousand meters above sea level on the border of Campania and Basilicata, where the kitchen forages the surrounding hills, ages its own cheeses in on-site caves, and grows vegetables in a high-altitude garden. The wood-and-stone dining room feels rooted in its landscape, and the panoramic terrace makes the drive up feel obvious in retrospect. Ranked in the 50 Top Pizza Italy and World lists.

1. 50 Top Pizza #37 · 50 Top Pizza World
2. 50 Top Pizza #34 · 50 Top Pizza Italy
3. 50 Top Pizza 2026 · Forno Verde · 50 Top Pizza Italy Special Awards

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A four-hectare farm in the Cilento hills supplies most of what this artisan pastry shop turns into chocolate. The team grows their own ingredients, then sources obsessively for the rest, blending cacao into pralines perfumed with mountain oregano or wild violets steeped in cream. The panettone ferments in three stages and lands fragrant and barely sweet. Ranked among Italy's top praline makers by 50 Top Italy, which also named it Pastry Shop of the Year.

1. 50 Top Italy 2026 · Pastry Shop of the Year
2. 50 Top Italy #3 · The Best Pralines

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A kitchen dating back centuries anchors this old-school tavern a short walk from Maratea's main square, its walls dressed in Vietri ceramics and its shelves stacked with around 400 wine labels, many from small Italian producers and France. The chef leans into local cooking, including a stewed octopus that regulars know by name. Small parties of six can eat in the wine cellar among bottles that collectors would eye with envy.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The oven is visible from the dining room, which tells you where the priorities are. Strabordo is a contemporary Neapolitan-style pizzeria sitting at the far edge of Salerno province, practically at the Basilicata border, and the dough shows the soft, airy crust that style demands. Seasonal local ingredients get serious attention, and the fried things, especially the croquettes, are not an afterthought. The room is bright and modern, the kind of place that knows exactly what it is.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The name comes from a Cilento dialect word for homemade tomato extract, which tells you everything about where this pizzeria's loyalties lie. Tomatoes run through the whole menu, from the appetizers to the pies, with the local Cilentana topping hers with cooked sauce and goat cacioricotta. The crust spreads thin and wide, leaning crispy, and lands lighter than it looks. The room is bright and a little colorful, the oven is in plain sight, and the service is warm without being fussy.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

The oven is right there at the entrance, so you know exactly what you're walking into. This is a pizza spot in the center of Praia a Mare, where a 24-hour dough produces a soft, fragrant crust topped with Maratea sausage and Calabrian broccoli. The small fried pizzas in carbonara and Nerano styles are worth the detour on their own. Service moves fast, the outdoor space fills up, and a reservation is a reasonable idea.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A restored stone farmhouse in Cilento, with its own mill on-site and a vegetable garden just outside the door. The pizza here is built around the ammaccata, an old local flatbread tradition, made with ancient grains and kept deliberately simple so the ingredients can actually speak. The dough is light and fragrant, which sounds like a given until you eat one. It landed on 50 Top Pizza Italy, a ranking worth knowing.

1. 50 Top Pizza #49 · 50 Top Pizza Italy
2. 50 Top Pizza 2026 · Forno Verde · 50 Top Pizza Italy Special Awards

A sandwich shop and wine bar on the main square of a small Calabrian coastal town, where the menu changes often enough that locals have a reason to keep coming back. The fillings lean hard into regional pantry staples, capocollo, caciocavallo, and 'nduja tucked into house-made pitta or ciabatta, with vegetables that track the season. The sandwiches even have names worth reading. Ranked seventh on 50 Top Italy's Best Sandwiches list.

1. 50 Top Italy #7 · The Best Sandwiches

Stone vaulting from an old monastery frames the dining room at this seafood-forward restaurant on the Marina di Casal Velino promenade. The chef grows some of his own produce and, on occasion, catches his own fish, which is either admirably dedicated or quietly unhinged depending on your point of view. The cooking pulls from Campanian tradition and bends it with a personal touch, making it the most ambitious table on a stretch of coast that doesn't have many.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Neapolitan pizza spot tucked into Casal Velino Marina by a chef who built his name in the States before bringing it home. The dough is contemporary Neapolitan, long-fermented and light, with a proper puffy crust, and you can order the wide "ruota di carro" style if you want the full wheel. Local Cilento ingredients mix with ideas carried back from America. The fried starters hold up, the drinks list is unfussy, and the front of house runs warm without trying too hard.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A pizza shop in a new space on Via Ruffilli, Fa' Tu is run by a team obsessed with fermentation and long leavening, which sounds technical until the crust arrives: light, fragrant, and clearly the point of the whole operation. The dough uses 100% Italian wheat at 70% hydration, and the toppings lean into Calabrian ingredients, 'nduja, Tropea onion, local pecorino, the kind of pantry a region spends centuries building.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A wood-fired oven faces the sea on Scalea's lungomare, and the dough here gets the long, careful leavening that makes Neapolitan-style pizza feel light rather than heavy. This is a straightforward pizzeria, the kind where the crust does the talking, with a fluffy cornicione, a well-balanced sauce, and a crisp underside. The fried pizza pulls its own weight too, in both the classic and the contemporary styles.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Mormanno lentils have been simmering in this kitchen long enough to become a local shorthand for the town itself. Osteria del Vicolo is a family-run trattoria tucked into the old village center, where one generation cooks a deeply Calabrian peasant tradition and another works the room with the warmth of someone who knows every story behind every dish. The room is small and unhurried, and the ingredients rarely travel far.

1. 50 Top Italy #37 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Modern Trattorias And Bistros

A pizzeria on the Calabrian coast where the dough gets a 36-hour rise before it sees any heat, which gives the Neapolitan-style crust a lightness that tends to make people pause mid-slice. The menu splits into traditional, special, and margherita categories, but the local options are where things get interesting, pulling in 'nduja, peperone crusco, and octopus marinated in cedar from the surrounding territory.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A hilltop pizzeria outside Paestum where the terrace takes in a sweep from the Cilento mountains to the sea, which is a fine thing to be looking at while waiting for your pizza. The dough leans rustic, the toppings lean local, and you can order by the meter if you're feeling ambitious or feeding a crowd. A relaxed, no-fuss room where a summer evening can disappear quite pleasantly.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A pizzeria in the historic center of Capaccio Paestum, where the dough is made with ancient grain flours and given a long, slow fermentation before it sees any heat. The signature move is the Farruoto, a wheel-shaped pizza built on spelt flour dough. There's an outdoor terrace in summer, a dedicated dessert menu that people take seriously, and a wine and beer list chosen to match. Named on 50 Top Pizza Italy's Excellent Pizzerias list.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A pizzeria in the small piazza of Sicignano degli Alburni that has quietly become the go-to spot for the province of Salerno. The dough is soft and well-leavened, and the menu runs from pizza by the slice to fried homemade dishes. Local crusco peppers show up on the house pizza, which is a good reason to skip the deliberating and just order it. Young staff, decent wine and beer, no fuss.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A centuries-old olive grove frames this rustic farmhouse restaurant tucked into the Mediterranean scrub above the Cilento coast. Stone walls and heavy beams set the room, and a small terrace opens things up in summer. The cooking is regional but updated, the kind of place where the wine list runs deep and the pasta is the main event. Quiet enough to feel like a secret, far enough from the highway to mean it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The restaurant sits on the Capodifiume estate, where the source of the Trabe river runs alongside a working hydroelectric station that powers the whole property. Aperitifs start in the wine cellar before dinner moves to an elegant dining room built around seasonal Campanian cooking, holding a Michelin star. Two tasting menus draw on the region's larder, and the sommelier runs the floor with the kind of attention that makes a long dinner feel effortless.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A pizza shop on Agropoli's port square where the menu runs from classic rounds to padellino and Quadrotti, the team's take on Roman-style paddle pizza. The dough is made with biga and rests at high hydration, landing somewhere noticeably light without fuss about it. The Cilento coast does the decorating through the window, and the philosophy in the kitchen is careful without being precious about it.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The kitchen garden behind the Savoy Beach Hotel supplies much of what lands on your plate here, a Michelin-starred gourmet restaurant where the chef's tasting menus read as a love letter to the Cilento coast. The cooking is contemporary but rooted, with Mediterranean flavors shaped by what's growing that week. Sommelier Roberto steers the wine, and the service is the attentive, quietly professional kind that doesn't hover.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. 50 Top Italy #36 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Luxury

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A rural trattoria outside Potenza where the farm supplies the cheese and the menu reads like a plea for Sunday to last a little longer. The kitchen recovers old Basilicata recipes without fuss or theater, so the lamb comes marinated and slow-baked the way it always has, and the pasta dough is still made by hand. A small cellar leans local. The room is calm in a way that feels intentional rather than sleepy.

1. 50 Top Italy #36 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Modern Trattorias And Bistros

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A dough built from type 0, wholemeal, and wheat germ flours gives the pizzas here a crispness and lightness that quietly sidesteps the pillowy Neapolitan orthodoxy everyone else seems to be chasing. This is a casual, neighbourhood pizzeria in Potenza with an informal, young energy and a menu rooted in Lucanian identity. The fried starters are worth the detour, and the craft beer selection leans local. Named among Italy's excellent pizzerias by 50 Top Pizza.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

Jasmine overhead when the weather turns, a palazzo address in the town center, and a kitchen with a Michelin star that still calls its own cooking good value. Il Papavero is a modern Campanian restaurant where the menu leans heavily on fish and seafood, with the surrounding countryside filling in the gaps. Dishes stay close to what the menu actually promises, a short list of ingredients allowed to be themselves.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A pizzeria in Potenza where the dough choices are genuinely the draw: the whole-grain multigrain arrives toasted and fragrant, while the tomato-water version produces a golden, lightly crisp crust that somehow still feels clean on the palate. The kitchen takes fermentation and hydration seriously without making you sit through a lecture about it. Fried starters are the right way to open, the service keeps everything moving, and the wine and beer list pairs sensibly with the rest.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A contemporary pizza spot just off the Salerno-Reggio Calabria highway, Robertino Cupo makes the case that pizza is a form of regional identity. The dough is high-hydration with biga, the crust slightly pronounced, and the toppings lean into local tradition without letting them overwhelm the base. The fried menu and a potato-focused section celebrate the Alburni hills. A spacious, well-kept room with a new outdoor terrace that handles aperitifs and small events.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias