The Top 100 Places to Eat Near Piccola Piedigrotta

Near the Teatro Municipale, this pizzeria channels southern Italian technique through a northern Italian lens, with a dough the kitchen clearly obsesses over. The menu travels the peninsula for regional combinations that rarely make it outside their home towns, like a Rossini pizza dressed with a custom mayonnaise and caper-dusted eggs. Seasonal toppings, territorial pride, and a tall, pillowy crust that holds up under all of it.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Tortello stuffed with Neapolitan ragù is the tell: the chef grew up in Campania and cooks in Emilia, and the menu lands squarely between both regions. This hotel restaurant in a central park has its own entrance and tall windows onto the greenery, which gives it the feel of a standalone place. The kitchen covers meat, fish, and vegetarian with equal attention, and the pasta alone makes a case for lingering over a second course.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Wrought iron, wood, and a biodynamic kitchen garden stretching out back set the tone at this Michelin-starred restaurant in the Emilian countryside. The chef runs several tasting menus, each with a distinct lens, from a regional tribute paired with Lambrusco to a vegetarian garden menu, all built around reinterpreted local recipes and produce grown steps from the table. Dress accordingly for a long, considered meal.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The dining rooms are frescoed, except for the old lemon house, which keeps its wallpaper of citrus trees as a quiet nod to what stood there before. This Michelin-starred osteria sits inside a medieval fort in the centre of Rubiera, where the chef cooks a deeply Emilian menu rooted in the traditions of Parma and Reggio. The wine list runs long and reaches into France. Romantic in the way that frescoed ceilings tend to make things.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Massimo Bottura's three-Michelin-star fine dining restaurant on Via Stella keeps contemporary art on the walls and an Eduardo De Filippo quote at the top of the menu, which tells you something about how seriously the place takes the idea that tradition is a springboard, not a shrine. The tasting menu changes each year around a new theme, with classics like tortellini in Parmigiano broth holding their ground on the à la carte. The World's 50 Best Restaurants gave it its Icon Award in 2025.

1. Michelin Guide 3 Stars
2. 50 Best Woodford Reserve Icon Award 2025 · The World’s 50 Best Restaurants · Massimo Bottura and Lara Gilmore
3. 50 Top Italy 2026 · Miseria e Nobiltà · Best Tasting Menu

The kitchen at this contemporary restaurant inside Massimo Bottura and Lara Gilmore's country estate runs almost entirely on fire, with chef Jessica Rosval building her menu around live embers and the farm on the property. The smoked meat selection moves through various cuts before landing on a wood-grilled beef rib that earns its place at the end. A Michelin star and a spot on the World's 50 Best list, and the room still feels like a house.

1. 50 Best #92 · The World’s 50 Best Restaurants
2. Michelin Guide 1 Star
3. 50 Top Italy #4 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Luxury

Enzo Ferrari bought this old farmhouse to feed his factory workers, and it has been a proper restaurant since the 1950s. Today it holds a Michelin star and runs on the creative lineage of Massimo Bottura, with his protégés reworking Emilian classics in a dining room that feels warmly, unapologetically vintage. The tortellini are the thing to order, and the wine list leans generously toward by-the-glass pours.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
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Glass walls on the top floor of a hotel catch the hills and the Sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin of the Castle, which is a view that earns its keep. This is a Michelin-starred fine dining room from chef Mattia Trabetti, built around two tasting menus or à la carte, with a small map on the menu tracing each ingredient back to Modena, the Apennines, or the broader Emilia. A thousand-label wine list leans regional but reaches France.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Nine tables inside a restored palazzo near one of Modena's oldest churches make L'Erba del Re feel more like a dinner party than a restaurant. Contemporary paintings on white walls, a Michelin star on the door. The kitchen works two registers at once: a tasting menu rooted in classic Emilian cooking and a second that follows wherever the chef's head is at. Both are available, along with vegetarian and à la carte options.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The bread arrives before you've decided anything, and it's the kind that makes the rest of the meal feel like it has something to live up to: sourdough baked in a cast-iron pot, serious crust, improbable lightness. This is a Michelin-starred creative restaurant in a city that takes its food very seriously. The chef pulls from an international background to build menus that feel personal rather than academic, the wine list stretches to sake and craft beer, and Parma's culinary ego is cheerfully, quietly challenged.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Sit outside long enough in this tucked-away hamlet and you'll forget the city exists, which is probably the point. Trattoria Ai Due Platani is a Bib Gourmand trattoria rooted in Emilian cooking, the kind of place where the menu reads like the surrounding countryside. The kitchen stays traditional but lets a quiet creative streak surface in plating and flavor. Book ahead, because the province has already figured this one out.

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2. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Rolling carts of hand-carved prosciutto and boiled meats do the heavy lifting here, the way they have been doing at this old-school Emilian dining room in a fifteenth-century palace for longer than anyone cares to count. Sfogline roll fresh pasta every morning, and the dessert cart arrives with zabaione to pour over pears in red wine. The whole meal reads like someone's grandmother made the menu and refused all suggestions.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The dessert counter sits right at the entrance, so you're picking your finale before you've even been seated. This is a well-worn, deeply traditional Emilian trattoria a minute from the motorway, serving gnocco fritto, tortellini, and fritto misto the way people around here expect them. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the prices have stayed honest through everything.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

An old mill just outside Modena doing its best impression of Puglia, and pulling it off. This trattoria-style restaurant leans hard on the heel of Italy: stuffed peppers, fava purée with chicory, eggplant parmigiana, and meats cooked over live embers. Sitting in egg-pasta country and ignoring most of it takes some nerve. Desserts arrive in a basket, a pile of small sweets with dried fruit and chocolate, which is a fine way to end anything.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A few kilometres outside Parma, this trattoria sits in the kind of quiet countryside that makes you wonder why you ever eat in cities. The cooking is old-school Emilian, the sort where tortelli alle erbette arrive because someone made the ricotta locally and the pasta that morning. The Michelin Guide gives it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks. The owner circulates the room and genuinely knows what to order, so let him.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A family-run trattoria in Carpi where the pasta is the whole point and nobody pretends otherwise. The menu runs deep into Emilian tradition, the kind of place where tortellini in Parmesan cream and gramigna with ragu feel less like choices than obligations. Desserts follow suit with sbrisolona and zuppa inglese. The room is warm, unhurried, and loud with the particular happiness of people who know exactly what they ordered.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A wood-fired oven running through the dining room signals what kind of place this is: a polished contemporary Italian restaurant tucked into a hotel in the Modenese countryside, where the kitchen plays both sides, handmade pasta with ragù alongside fresh fish and aged grilled meats. The sommelier navigates a serious wine list with quiet confidence and will pour even the coveted bottles by the glass.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Tortellini in Parmigiano cream and bollito misto are the kind of dishes that remind you why Emilian cooking has a reputation to defend. This is an old-school trattoria doing the regional classics without modernizing the soul out of them: fresh egg pastas, cotechino with stewed beans, and the celebrated zuppa inglese to finish. When the weather cooperates, tables spill into the intimate Piazza della Pomposa, and the meal gets considerably harder to leave.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Named after the chef's mother, this tasting-menu restaurant in central Modena shifts its lighting, music, and room details in step with the menu as the seasons turn, which is either charming or a lot, depending on your tolerance for concept dining. The kitchen draws on a wide spread of references and cultures without any apparent anxiety about what goes with what. Counter seating puts the young team's storytelling right in front of you.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Four tables tucked behind a delicatessen that has been selling cured meats in Modena since, roughly, forever. The menu at this tiny trattoria is a straightforward argument for Emilian cooking: gnocco fritto, tortellini in capon broth, slow-cooked beef with mashed potatoes. The charcuterie comes from free-range Mora Romagnola pigs, which is the kind of detail that separates a place from its imitators. Book ahead, because four tables fill fast.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The smell of warm bread hits you before you've sat down, which tells you something about how Massimo Bottura runs this casual Emilian trattoria. The menu moves from deeply rooted regional cooking, aged pancetta, handmade tortellini, into quieter moments of creativity. Lambrusco gets an entire page of the wine list, as it should in Modena. The room is intimate and a little buzzy, and the whole place feels like a love letter to the region rather than a résumé.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Parma is prosciutto country, so a restaurant that splits its attention evenly between land and sea is a quiet act of defiance. Parizzi is a comfortable, colourful dining room on a central street, serving contemporary takes on the local canon alongside a proper seafood side of the menu. The kitchen leans on good sourcing and clean technique over flourish, which in this part of Italy is basically a philosophical statement.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The name comes from an old-school tradition of selling wine for 36 cents a litre, and the spirit of that transaction, good things at fair prices, still seems to be the point. This Parma osteria serves Emilian classics with the occasional contemporary detour, and the wine list is the kind that someone clearly thought hard about, built to move alongside the food rather than show off beside it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A small seafood trattoria on a quiet piazzale, with a terrace that earns its keep on warm evenings. The kitchen leans hard into fish in every form, raw and cooked, with homemade pasta pulling its weight alongside the main plates. The sparkling wine list, mostly Italian with some Champagne threaded in, is available by the glass, which in Parma, a city that lives for its cured meats, feels like a quiet act of rebellion.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Portholes punctuate the walls of this sleek seafood restaurant in Ferrari country, which is either a bold design statement or a gentle reminder that you're nowhere near the coast. The kitchen leans modern but stays honest, letting the catch carry the meal. A daily selection of raw and simply prepared fish anchors the menu, and the tagliolini with langoustine, caviar, and a Martini-spiked cabbage purée shows where the chef's ambitions surface.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The walk from the car park is part of the deal: stone houses, a castle overhead, and then a first-floor trattoria serving the kind of Emilian cooking that makes the drive out to Torrechiara make sense. Stuffed pasta with herbs and a board of local salumi, including Parma ham, anchor the menu. Service is informal without being sloppy, and the wine list covers enough local and Italian bottles that nobody leaves unhappy.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A high-crust sourdough pizza place in the Pomposa neighborhood, where the dough ferments for up to 36 hours before it ever sees a flame. The toppings lean heavily on Modena's pantry, so expect the region's producers to do most of the talking. Wines and beers are well chosen. Skip dessert and order another slice instead; the kitchen seems to know which battle it wants to fight.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A small pizza spot in central Parma where the chef works with high-hydration, long-fermented dough in a style that doesn't answer to Naples. The crust sits at a moderate height, and toppings lean toward Campanian ingredients or pasta-sauce classics like carbonara, ragù, and amatriciana. Tables are close enough that you'll learn your neighbors' order. A newer "fried and deconstructed" menu has since joined the lineup.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

Grandmother Erminia's recipes still run the kitchen at this family trattoria tucked into the hills above Felino, in the Parma countryside. The Leoni family has been doing regional Emilian cooking the old-school way for generations, salame aged in their own cellar, rabbit alla cacciatora boned and slow-cooked into something that makes you understand why this corner of Italy has such a high opinion of itself.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A pocket of Naples transplanted into a Parma piazza, with plastic chairs outside and Neapolitan spirit inside. This pizzeria turns out classic and contemporary pies in the Neapolitan style, with toppings that follow the season and a finishing drizzle of good olive oil on every pizza. The fried snacks are worth ordering alongside. Seasonal ingredients do the heavy lifting here, and the kitchen clearly sweats the small stuff.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A farm estate east of Modena that also produces balsamic vinegar sets the scene for this countryside restaurant. The menu moves between Emilian tradition and the chef's own instincts, so tortelli in capon broth might sit alongside something more inventive, depending on the season. The room is quiet in the way that only fields can make a room quiet, which is either deeply restorative or deeply alarming, depending on your relationship with silence.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Culatello ham ages on the premises here for up to 38 months, and the curing rooms are open to visitors, which tells you something about how seriously this Emilian restaurant takes the subject. The menu runs from gran lesso to tortelli with a faint sweetness, and the cheese trolley alone could occupy a pleasant half hour. Lambrusco fans will find the wine list flattering; everyone else can lean on the French section.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A fire crackling at the back of the room is your first hint: charcoal-grilled meat is the main event at this old-school Emilian trattoria, which has been feeding the neighborhood across from the Abbey of Nonantola for generations. Fresh pasta, outstanding charcuterie, and a dessert trolley that comes to you round out the menu. The rooms are homely but cared for, with fresh flowers on every table, and the wine list runs deep.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Perched in the oldest corner of a hilltop village in Lambrusco country, this is the kind of inn-restaurant where the hand-rolled tagliatelle with ragù feels less like a menu choice and more like a foregone conclusion. The kitchen splits its attention between deep Emilian tradition and a lighter seafood side, and in warm weather a small terrace looks out over the main street, which moves at a pace that makes you order another carafe.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Hong Kong-born chef and her Suzzara-raised partner run this quietly personal restaurant where the menu splits between regional Italian, fish-forward traditional plates, and openly Asian cooking, sometimes on the same table. The room reflects their shared eye for applied arts, and the wine list travels as freely as the food. Seasonal, local sourcing underpins both sides of the menu, which keeps the whole thing from feeling like a gimmick.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Castelfranco Emilia is tortellini country, and this modern Emilian restaurant leans into that with zero embarrassment. The chef grew up here, and the menu reads like a love letter to the region, fresh pasta folded by hand, bollito misto served with serious sauces. The dining room is contemporary without being cold, and the service runs warm enough that you don't notice how long you've been sitting there.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

You book by email at least a day ahead and choose your menu before you arrive, tradition, land, or fish, which tells you everything about how seriously this Parmesan Apennines trattoria takes the whole enterprise. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and has been an old-school institution in the hills outside Parma for generations, still run by the same family, now with a Japanese cook folded into the kitchen adding the occasional modern note.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A handsome old palazzo in Noceto's center, right at the edge of Emilia-Romagna's legendary food belt, now runs as a multi-floor dining destination with a bar and bistro on the ground level and a more formal gourmet room upstairs. The tasting menus lean creative and contemporary, with à la carte available alongside a serious wine list. The kind of place where the building does half the work, and the kitchen seems to know it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Tortellini made with cream skimmed straight from the family dairy is the detail that explains everything about this old-school Emilian osteria. The kitchen cooks in the tradition of the region with a wood grill doing heavy lifting on the secondi, and nearly every ingredient traces back to the farm next door. You can buy the same dairy products in the shop on your way out, which feels either very convenient or very dangerous.

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

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A family trattoria tucked into the Modenese Apennines, where the parents cook and their daughter works the room. Mom handles the hand-rolled pasta and desserts, dad tends the meats, and the whole operation holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand. Truffle scent drifts through in season. The drive up from Modena on the SP3 takes an hour of switchbacks through green valleys, which regulars treat as part of the meal rather than a detour.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

At Christmas, an ornate tree rises among mirrors, chandeliers, and stacked books in a room that treats maximalism as a design philosophy. This is a fine dining restaurant in the Mantuan countryside, where the kitchen draws on local tradition and, occasionally, the Renaissance. The signature dessert, a chocolate salami with warm zabaglione poured tableside from a copper pan, is reason enough to make the drive out to Quistello.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

You enter through the shop, past shelves of wine and house-made sauces, before reaching the dining room of this old-school Emilian trattoria in the hills outside Bologna. The menu follows the seasons without making a fuss about it, built around lasagne with a tomato-free ragù, pumpkin-filled pasta, and tortellini in broth on the coldest days. Tigelle flatbread arrives alongside the ham. One Michelin star.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

An old-school trattoria in Emilia-Romagna that traces its roots to a post-war wine shop, Entrà has been feeding the same kind of hunger for generations. The kitchen's guiding rule, stated plainly: no reinvention when the original works. Pumpkin tortelli with meat ragù and roast guinea fowl on seasonal salad are the things people drive out to località Entrà for. Around 400 wines to keep you at the table longer than planned.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A pizzeria sitting out in open countryside, which already tells you something about the regulars who make the drive. The menu breaks pizzas into revisited, award-winning, and chef's specials, and the fish options are taken more seriously than you'd expect. Wines and beers run deep, service is warm without being fussy, and 50 Top Pizza Italy has it among their Excellent Pizzerias.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

Farmhouse dining in the Emilian countryside, where the kitchen leans hard into the regional pantry: stuffed pastas, cured meats, and the kind of slow-cooked ragù that makes you wonder why anyone bothers with anything else. The cooking is traditional and unapologetic, the setting rural and unpretentious, and the Michelin Bib Gourmand signals generous cooking at a price that won't send you into quiet panic when the bill arrives.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Tortelli di zucca and long-braised meats have been coming out of this kitchen since anyone in Curtatone can remember. It's a family-run trattoria in a small, quietly lovely village outside Mantua, holding the line on old Mantuan cooking without any apparent desire to modernize. The portions are abundant, the prices are low, and the Michelin Guide has given it a Bib Gourmand, which seems about right for a place this straightforwardly good at what it does.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A family trattoria in a small Lombard town that has been feeding people across six generations, this is the place locals point you toward when you ask about Bassa Padana cooking. The Michelin Bib Gourmand is on the wall, but the real draw is chatting with the chef, who will happily steer you through a menu heavy with Cremona and Mantova specialities, cured meats, pumpkin tortelli, and sbrisolona to finish.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A family-run fine dining restaurant tucked into a small hamlet between Cremona and Mantua, Dal Pescatore holds three Michelin stars and has for decades. The Santini family works the room and the kitchen with the kind of quiet confidence that comes from doing the same thing, beautifully, for a very long time. Dishes evolve in small increments rather than lurches, and the desserts alone prompt the drive through the countryside.

1. Michelin Guide 3 Stars
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Pumpkin tortelli, served with butter or a tomato-and-sausage sauce, is the dish this small Mantuan trattoria is known for, and portions here run generous in the old local tradition. The chef runs the kitchen and still comes out to greet you, which keeps the room feeling personal rather than performative. The menu moves between honest regional cooking and quietly creative plates, without making a fuss about the difference.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A restored riverside fortress on the Po, the kind of place that has a culatello museum on the grounds because of course it does. This Michelin-starred restaurant roots its cooking in the wetlands and farmland around it, from frogs' legs in saffron velouté to risotto that makes a serious case for Emilia-Romagna's pantry. The chef's family once farmed this land; now they own it, which gives the menu a particular sense of purpose.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A sixteenth-century palazzo beside Mantua's historic center, with a courtyard terrace built around a fifteenth-century well that makes the whole room feel like a stage set. This is a polished restaurant where the kitchen balances meat and fish with modern technique, the kind of place where dessert arrives before you've decided whether to order it. Smart but not stiff, and the terrace fills fast on warm evenings.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A wall of wines priced to take home greets you at the door, which tells you something about where this contemporary Mantuan restaurant's priorities lie. The cooking has a clear Lombardian identity, with clean flavors and confident technique. A tortelli split half sweet, half bitter, and a trio of beef cuts served together make the case more convincingly than any menu description could.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A farmhouse osteria outside town where the beer list gets as much attention as the pasta. The kitchen covers traditional Emilian cooking with a few local turns, and the Michelin Guide has flagged it with a Bib Gourmand for the value. The owner's beer selection runs from regional craft labels to bottles from well past the Italian border, and the Birramisù, a tiramisu built around beer, commits to the bit. Book ahead.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Michelin-starred restaurant set inside a historic villa outside Bologna, where the chef builds a menu around the distance between Campania and Emilia-Romagna, two regions that don't naturally talk to each other but have plenty to say. The wine list runs deep, with multiple vintages of Sassicaia and Tignanello for anyone who wants a reason to linger. The garden is there if you need somewhere to quietly reconsider your life choices after the rabbit stew.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The wooden ceiling came from an old country haybarn, which tells you something about the room before the food arrives. This is a classic Emilian trattoria, the kind where the charcuterie board alone could end the meal, anchored by culatello di Zibello and fried gnocco. Fresh egg pasta follows, then meat, then a dessert list long enough to cause genuine indecision. The wine list is taken seriously. Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A Liberty-style frescoed ceiling inside a converted 19th-century musical café sets the scene for this Michelin-starred fine dining restaurant on Bologna's grandest boulevard. The kitchen runs Mediterranean-leaning tasting menus in three lengths, and if the main room feels too grand, the 14th-century icehouse downstairs has a glass floor looking straight into the wine cellar, which is exactly as theatrical as it sounds.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Parmigiano and mortadella turn up in nearly every corner of the menu here, which tells you everything about where this modern trattoria stands. The team calls their pastas "soups," a nod to old Emilian convention, and the desserts follow the same unambiguous logic. The wine list leans hard into Emilia-Romagna but keeps a surprisingly serious champagne section for when the mood shifts. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the bill makes that feel reasonable.

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2. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Tucked down a side street under Bologna's porticoes, this trattoria treats Emilian cooking as a thing that doesn't need improving. Fresh pasta, cured meats, local wines, and a zuppa inglese with alchermes cake that closes the meal in the most unapologetic way. The room is small and warm, and it books out every day, so reserve before you assume good fortune is on your side.

1. 50 Top Italy #35 · The Best Italian Restaurants - Modern Trattorias And Bistros
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A medieval courtyard in central Bologna is a genuinely odd setting for a sushi restaurant, but the contrast works. The dining room runs modern bistro, and in summer the courtyard fills up nicely. The menu stays close to Japanese tradition with a few personal riffs, and the front-of-house team is unusually good at walking newcomers through both the food and the sake list without making anyone feel remedial.

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2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A trattoria that has been anchored to a Renaissance square since what feels like forever, its interiors a pleasing jumble of Art Nouveau curves and mid-century odds and ends. The kitchen works the Po Valley's greatest hits: stuffed marubini in broth, culatello, boiled meats with house-made mostarda. Earns a Michelin Bib Gourmand for exactly this kind of unfussy regional cooking done with care. A small shop sells provisions for the ride home.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A brick-vaulted ceiling gives this cozy Lombardian osteria its feel, somewhere between a farmhouse and a proper dining room. The menu runs on seasonal ingredients and deep regional habit, from marubini in broth to pumpkin tortelli, with the kitchen leaning generous rather than fussy. The wine list skews sparkling, which in this part of the Po Valley is a statement of local pride. The Michelin Guide has awarded it a Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

An 18th-century ceramic stove anchors the dining room at this family-run restaurant in Piacenza's countryside, where the colorful mix of period and vintage decor manages to feel lived-in rather than staged. The kitchen covers both meat and fish, though the fish dishes are what regulars drive out here for. Service is the relaxed, professional kind where staff seem to know everyone and the wine list runs deep enough to keep you at the table longer than planned.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Bolognina sits just past the point where most tourists turn back, which suits this no-fuss trattoria in Bologna's old working-class quarter just fine. The kitchen runs on fresh pasta and regional recipes done without flourish, the tortellini in broth being the kind of thing you think about on the train home. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand. Book ahead, including at lunch, or you'll be thinking about it even longer.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The sfogline roll fresh pasta right in front of you, and the extra lengths go straight to the adjoining shop. This Bologna trattoria keeps one foot planted in the old school, with Sunday lasagne alla bolognese made the way your nonna's nonna would recognize, and one foot pointed forward in lighter, more contemporary preparations. A heated winter terrace means there's always an excuse to linger longer than planned.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant