The Best Italian Food in Ireland

A wood-fired tasting menu restaurant tucked into a modern barn conversion in rural Galway, the kind of place where someone has thought to put throws on the chairs and the fire is actually doing the cooking. The menu is a surprise, shaped by the chef's Irish and Italian roots, so Amalfi lemon might show up alongside Galway lobster. It holds a Michelin star, which makes the Scandinavian-barn-in-Connacht setting feel even more pleasantly unlikely.

Homemade pasta is the whole point at this small Italian restaurant tucked into Stoneybatter, northwest of the city center. The chef and owner are from Calabria and import produce from home, so the cooking has a genuine regional pull rather than the generic red-sauce repertoire. The all-Italian wine list leans into organic and biodynamic bottles. Locals fill the room quickly on weekends, so book ahead.

A canalside table at this Portobello neighbourhood Italian is a hard thing to give up, which explains why the room stays loud and full most nights. The menu reads like a tour of Italian classics, the wine list leans entirely Italian, and the team keeps the whole busy operation moving without seeming like they're trying. A comfort-food Italian in the best, most unfussy sense.

A former bank in Phibsborough that now moves money in pasta and wood-fired fish instead, Borgo is a lively Italian osteria with a Michelin Bib Gourmand and a room that earns its noise. The menu runs from sourdough pizzette through homemade pastas to a wood-fired section for meat and fish, all of it straightforward and carefully cooked. Portions are generous, prices are honest, and the polenta cake with seasonal fruit is worth leaving room for.

A Neapolitan pizza shop on one of Dublin's more laid-back residential strips, where the dough gets the kind of patient, unhurried treatment that most places just describe on a chalkboard. The menu runs wider than you'd expect, and the sweet-savory combinations sit alongside proper Italian desserts that don't feel like an afterthought. It landed at number 49 on 50 Top Pizza Europe, which the regulars in Rathmines probably already knew.

Foliage and soft lighting give this wood-fired Neapolitan pizza spot the feel of a neighborhood pizzeria that also happens to look good. The team trained under Enzo Coccia, and the modern Neapolitan style shows: classics executed cleanly, toppings shifting with the season. It ranks on the 50 Top Pizza World list, which is about as serious as pizza credentials get. The drink list holds its own, and the staff, many of whom started as servers, treat the room accordingly.

A Galway pizza spot that splits the difference between Neapolitan tradition and something a bit more its own, The Dough Bros sits in Cathedral Buildings and draws a lively, informal crowd that clearly has opinions about dough. The crust is long-fermented, lighter than it looks, and sturdy enough to carry toppings that veer well beyond the classics. Local ingredients and global instincts share the menu without much apology. Listed among 50 Top Pizza Europe's Excellent Pizzerias.