The 30 Best Osterias in Italy

Cherasco is famously snail country, and this welcoming osteria in the town's quiet historic centre leans into that without apology. It's a traditional Piedmontese dining room where the kitchen updates regional classics rather than dismantling them, and the friendly staff will walk you through the menu without making you feel like a tourist. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand. The wine list runs deep, as you'd expect this close to Barolo.

An osteria tucked into a medieval hamlet off the Via Francigena, inside what were once a monastery's wine cellars. The format leans into fixed tasting menus built around whatever the kitchen garden is producing, with portions that suggest the monks ate well. The Florentine steak over embers is always on, and the cured meats and cheeses are made and aged in-house. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, with a terrace that earns the word atmospheric.

Checked cotton tablecloths and bottles lined up on the shelves set the tone at this old-school osteria in Borgo San Giuliano, the painted fishermen's quarter that Fellini grew up loving. The kitchen stays deep in Romagna tradition: house-cured meats, fresh pasta, and Mora Romagnola pork cooked several ways. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which tracks with the crowd of locals who seem entirely unsurprised to be eating this well.

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.

A Roman osteria a block from the Parliament building that somehow never became a tourist trap, even though it could have. The carbonara is famous enough to rank among Italy's top five, loaded with crispy guanciale, silky egg cream, and enough black pepper to mean business. Roman classics like saltimbocca and abbacchio fill out a menu that regulars navigate without looking. Eat outside in the little alley when the weather plays along.

Photographs of old locomotives and rows of copper pots line the walls of this long-running osteria in Pordenone's historic center. The kitchen leans hard into Friulian tradition, turning out cured meats, local cheeses, and braised beef cheek with polenta, the kind of food that arrives in portions sized for people who actually work. The room runs warm and convivial, the way an old neighborhood place does when it has nothing to prove.

The dark wood and low ceilings of the dining room put you somewhere between a mountain hut and a serious osteria, which is more or less what Le Due Spade is. It has been around forever, feeding Trento since the Council of Trent era, and the kitchen still leans into Alpine Italian cooking: char, strudel, risotto, local produce handled with enough imagination that it never feels like a museum of regional food.

Vine-covered pergola in summer, warm low-lit room the rest of the year, this is an old-school osteria in the Langhe hills outside Barbaresco. The kitchen cooks Piedmontese home recipes to order, the kind passed down rather than invented, and the spinach frittata is the sort of dish that looks modest until you understand what modest can mean here. The wine list leans local and stays reasonable, which in this corner of Piedmont is its own small miracle.

The red house at Kaberlaba holds two restaurants, and this is the more relaxed one, where the kitchen turns toward Veneto classics like baccalà alla vicentina and tripe. It shares a roof with a Michelin-starred sibling, so the odd crossover dish appears on the menu. The carbonara, made with local ingredients, has developed its own following. An osteria in the old sense: proper food, full flavors, no need to dress up.

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.

A contemporary osteria a short walk from Parliament, named for the owners' grandparents, who were in the trade long before it was fashionable. The menu stays close to Roman tradition but makes room for a Marsala Florio pairing that runs alongside each course, which is a more interesting idea than it sounds. Book ahead if you want a seat on the terrace, and book ahead anyway.

A terrace over a pedestrian street in Oneglia, where the seats go fast enough that booking ahead is non-negotiable. This is a polished, contemporary Ligurian restaurant with an à la carte menu of fish and meat alongside tasting menus for anyone happy to let the kitchen decide. The wine list ranges beyond the region, though the local labels are well represented. The room is dressed to match the ambition, and the crowd tends to dress accordingly.

Paper plates arrive loaded with beef cartilage and horse meat stew at this Porta Venezia osteria, where cucina povera is the whole point. Diego Rossi, the chef behind Trippa, runs a room built around offal, crostini, and natural wine, served from aperitivo hour until midnight. On weekends, the crowd from Via Melzo spills onto the pavement, which tells you something about how the neighborhood feels about the place.

A handwritten menu posted outside lists what they don't serve: no pizza, no ice, no cappuccino, no spritz. Inside this tiny osteria a short walk from the Uffizi, the kitchen cooks old Tuscan with no detours, from pappardelle in duck ragu to peposo, a peppery beef stew that dates back to the Renaissance. The room fits a handful of tables, and the regulars treat it like a canteen they'd rather you didn't know about.