The Best Seafood Near Benso, by the Record

The terrace sits right over the canal, close enough that you could theoretically dip a hand in, which is either charming or alarming depending on your relationship with water. This Michelin-starred seafood restaurant in Cesenatico focuses almost entirely on fish, from unfussy raw starters to more composed plates where pickled fruit and citrus show up alongside the catch. The wine list leans heavily into Champagne, which nobody seems to mind.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A seafood restaurant tucked inside a private beach club on the Adriatic, where the dining room opens straight onto the sand and the umbrella rows stretch to the horizon. The cooking is careful and occasionally inventive, leaning into the catch with fresh egg pasta that mimics a risotto in the best way. The wine list leans heavily into Champagne, which, given the setting, feels like exactly the right call.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A glass-enclosed veranda on Cesenatico's main avenue, busy with summer promenaders just outside the windows, while inside the focus stays firmly on the Adriatic. This is a seafood restaurant in the straightforward sense: raw catches, gratins, pasta, risotto, grilled and baked fish, the daily specials announced aloud at the table. Alberto Faccani, the name behind Magnolia, oversees the kitchen, keeping things rooted in local maritime tradition rather than reaching for the clever.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The dining room seems to grow straight out of the beach, with big windows framing the Adriatic and a room that's noticeably more polished than the setting suggests. This is a proper seafood restaurant built around the day's catch, with classic dishes from the Adriatic coast and daily specials that follow the market wherever it goes. The wine list reaches well into France, which is a quiet flex for a place this close to the sand.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

From the outside it reads as a chic beach club gazing out at the Adriatic; step inside and the elegance turns hushed and a little unexpected. Guido is a Michelin-starred seafood restaurant, now in its third generation, built around the flavors of the upper Adriatic coast. The cooking looks simple at first, then quietly reveals the kind of technique that doesn't announce itself. An old-school institution with nothing to prove and nowhere to rush.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A Michelin-starred seafood restaurant on a tiny islet in the Po Delta, reached by a farmhouse that sits in near-total silence broken only by lagoon birds. The kitchen leans classic, which here means golden-fried seafood, steamed fish salad with house-made squid-ink mayonnaise, and eel cooked over embers the way it's been done in this corner of Emilia-Romagna forever. The caramelized beignets with mandarin sauce are a quiet nod to local pastry legend.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A seafood trattoria in the flatlands outside Ferrara that has been a local fixture long enough to count as furniture. The room has been freshened up without losing its unfussy bones, and the kitchen stays loyal to the classics, raw scampi lightly kissed with lemon zest, turbot under a potato crust. The Michelin Guide gives it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks: this is the kind of cooking where the fish does the talking.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant