The Best Restaurants in Italy

A contemporary Sicilian restaurant tucked into a low-rise resort on a quiet country road outside Modica, where the chef runs the room alongside his wife and his sommelier sister-in-law, which is either a family business or a workplace sitcom depending on the evening. The menu leans into imaginative meat and fish combinations, with tasting menus alongside à la carte. The wine list ventures well beyond Sicily, with a particular pull toward French labels and champagne.

The ground floor of the old Banco di Napoli building, now home to the Gallerie d'Italia museum, makes for an unlikely but convincing lunch spot. This cafe-bistro and pasticceria runs from quick bar bites through to a full menu that spans international dishes and Campanian classics, the kind of place where you can eat as lightly or as seriously as the afternoon allows. The candele pasta with Neapolitan ragu and the babà tend to be the arguments for staying.

A restored Tuscan hamlet perched between Montepulciano and Montefollonico, where the chef decides the menu each morning based on whatever the estate has produced. Dinner is al fresco in warm weather, and a glass of the sunset comes free. In cooler months the dining room looks straight into an open kitchen. The road to get there is genuinely pastoral, which is the point. Book ahead if you're not sleeping here, and don't expect a printed menu to study on the way.

Tucked into the old town's narrow lanes, Machettö is a small contemporary restaurant where the chef, a Campanian transplant now firmly rooted in Liguria, folds the region's traditions into each dish with a light hand. The dining room runs warm and elegant without fuss. The brandacujun, that old Ligurian salt cod classic, gets finished tableside by the chef himself, which is either charming or theatrical depending on your mood.

Inside a converted multi-use building that also houses a museum and exhibition spaces, this roomy, post-industrial restaurant brings the flavors of Campania north to Turin. The chef's plin pasta, traditionally Piedmontese, gets reworked with cacio, black pepper, and raw prawns, which is either an act of diplomacy or a quiet provocation, depending on where you're from.

A cozy trattoria in the Nomentano quarter, a student neighborhood northeast of the center where no tour bus has ever made a wrong turn. The kitchen works its way through regional Italian traditions and then quietly does something odd and right: a classic Mantuan pumpkin tortello becomes roasted squash with curry and amaretti. The room is small, vintage in feel, and the cooking lands somewhere between a Sunday lunch and a genuinely curious mind.

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.

The bar up front mixes cocktails while the dining room, minimal and elegant, handles something more considered: a modern Italian kitchen that moves between tradition and invention without making a fuss about it. It sits in a quietly residential corner of the city that fills up at dinner, making the few pavement tables feel like a bonus. The tarte Tatin has its own following.

The focaccia di Recco on the menu here isn't a nod to local tradition; it's the reason there is a local tradition. This old-school Ligurian restaurant in Recco has been in the same family for generations, and part of the building still runs as a focacceria so nobody has to wait for the good part. The main dining room goes further, with fish-forward cooking that leans traditional but takes the occasional modern turn.

Tucked beside the Fratelli Massucco winery in the Piedmontese hills, this tasting-menu restaurant gives you vineyards on one side and a kitchen garden on the other. The chef and his partner run it together, leaning hard into local ingredients and regional recipes, with quiet flashes of creativity that keep things from feeling folkloric. Three menus, including a vegetarian one, plus à la carte if commitment feels like too much today.

A Roman chef running a Piedmontese kitchen is either a provocation or a proposition, and here it reads as the latter. This contemporary Italian restaurant near the city center offers a surprise tasting menu or a full à la carte, with dishes that move between local tradition and something more personal: vivid, colorful plates built around seasonal produce and whatever the market is doing with meat and fish that week.

A family-run trattoria in the Alpine gateway town of Crodo, where the chef works the kitchen and his wife runs the room with the easy attentiveness of people who genuinely like feeding guests. The cooking leans on mountain tradition, beef and game and root vegetables, then nudges each dish somewhere slightly unexpected. The Walser beef filet has become a house signature for a reason, and the venison ossobuco with blueberry compote makes a strong argument for ordering the second menu page first.

The Adriatic appears and disappears through the trees as you wind along the coastal road into Pesaro, then settles into a full backdrop behind the outdoor terrace. This contemporary restaurant is the homecoming project of a chef who spent years in serious kitchens abroad and brought the fusion instincts back with him, folding fruit into pasta with shellfish in a way that reads less like a gimmick and more like a considered point of view.

A village bakery turned four-generation family trattoria, Marsupino sits in a tiny Piedmontese hamlet and cooks the kind of food that has no interest in impressing you, then impresses you anyway. The menu runs on regional tradition with a light contemporary touch, and the wine program is a genuine draw, guided by someone who talks about bottles the way other people talk about old friends.

A farmhouse restaurant set in the woods above Pedraces, Maso Runch-Hof serves Ladin home cooking in snug, wood-paneled Stube rooms on a single tasting menu. The kitchen leans into the local pantry with spinach-filled cajinci t'ega, pork ribs with polenta, and apple strudel, and the short wine list stays just as regional. A handful of chalets on the property means you can eat like this, then sleep here too.

The dining room at this rural Apulian masseria sits inside whitewashed stone walls thick enough to keep out the heat, and the menu leans hard into whatever the surrounding organic gardens are doing that week. Chef Giorgia Eugenia Goggi runs a set menu built mostly on vegetables, plated with enough color to look almost suspicious. A short list of natural Italian wines keeps things honest. Six rooms upstairs mean you don't have to leave, and people rarely want to.

Tucked into the forests of Casentino, this contemporary dining room opens onto the trees through floor-to-ceiling French doors, so lunch arrives with a side of absolute silence. The kitchen leans into its surroundings, building tasting menus from the kind of ingredients a city restaurant would call a sourcing story and a local one just calls Tuesday. The crowd runs to couples who drove a while to get here and don't mind at all.

The door looks like it belongs to someone's apartment, and inside, a wall stacked floor to ceiling with jars of seeds, lentils, and nuts makes the point before a dish arrives. This is a casual modern Sicilian restaurant where shared tables and a short menu rooted in land and sea keep things grounded. The kitchen leans on the grill and follows the seasons closely, with vegetables given the same attention as the fish.

The lift from Capo La Gala hotel drops you to the seafront, where this creative Mediterranean restaurant sits close enough to the water that the waves are an ambient soundtrack. Tasting menus lean on local recipes with a modern turn, the kind of place where a marinated amberjack arrives as the Amalfi Coast's take on ceviche. Sunset from the terrace is the sort of thing people move holidays around.

A family trattoria in Fagnano Olona where the fourth generation now runs the room, which means the cooking has been refined over a very long time without anyone forgetting what the food is supposed to taste like. The menu leans seasonal and local, with the daily specials worth a look. The wine list gets serious attention from the owner, and the service is informal enough that you won't feel watched.

The penthouse dining room of the Hotel Splendide Royal frames a panorama that takes in Villa Medici, Trinità dei Monti, and St. Peter's, which means the sunset does a lot of work before the food even arrives. This is a fine dining restaurant running on classical Italian technique with a modern sensibility, the menu moving between meat and seafood according to the season. Dress accordingly, and consider lingering.

The covered veranda sits at the exact tip of Bellagio's promontory, where the two arms of Lake Como split, so the views across to the far villages go in both directions at once. It's a modern cuisine restaurant with the feel of a grand hotel dining room, piano drifting in at dinner, guests from every corner of the world, and a menu that moves between Italian classics and quietly international territory.

A Japanese restaurant just outside San Pantaleo's village center, built on a premise that could easily go wrong: an Italian chef who learned his craft traveling the world, now pulling fresh Sardinian fish into sushi and gyoza in a quietly minimal room. The Italian-Japanese handshake extends to dessert, where mochi shares the table with Italian-inspired sweets. The Michelin Guide has it selected, and the logic tracks.

Five tables, soft light, and wood everywhere you look: Mogano is a small, intimate restaurant tucked beside the Ritual Lab brewery in Formello, built around the idea that craft beer belongs at a serious dinner table. The chef spent years cooking internationally before landing here, folding Italian instincts into something harder to pin down. Guests get an aperitif in the kitchen before they sit, which sets the tone nicely for an evening that never quite fits a category.

A family-run restaurant tucked into the Dolomite valley of Sappada, where the kitchen leans hard into the forest around it, wild game, mountain herbs, and whatever the season allows. The wine cellar, called KAVEAU, is the kind of room that turns a bottle of something regional into an event. The crowd tends toward people who planned the drive, not stumbled in. Michelin has it in the Guide.

The chef's table tucked into the kitchen is the detail that sets the tone here. This dinner-only fine dining room inside a design hotel serves a quietly confident Italian menu, with the kitchen leaning on the country's own pantry rather than reaching abroad. The room runs soft and elegant; guests who want to ease in gently tend to start with drinks downstairs at Bulk before heading up.

A father cooks while his son tends the room and the cellar, which gives Musciora the kind of focused intensity that usually takes a committee to ruin. This is a tasting-menu restaurant in Alghero built around Sardinian ingredients, offered across three menus: one from the sea, one from the hinterland, and one that folds both together. The wine list leans hard into small Sardinian producers and natural bottles from further afield.

Large windows frame the Tuscia Viterbese woodland at this modern Italian restaurant tucked inside a country resort outside Sutri. The kitchen takes traditional Lazio recipes as a starting point and works them forward with contemporary technique, leaning on local produce. Fresh pasta and dry-aged wild boar show up regularly, and the room's soft lighting does the kind of heavy lifting that a good candlelit table should.

The wine cellar sits in a vaulted space that's been around for centuries, which sets the tone for an otherwise modern Tuscan restaurant in a small Val di Pesa hill town. The kitchen riffs on regional cooking with technical confidence, and the pastry side, handled by the co-owner, has a playful streak, including a tiramisù finished with a whisper of tobacco. The wine list has grown into something serious over the years.

A small, polished dining room tucked between Vomero and the Chiaia waterfront, where the wine list leans hard on Campanian labels and the kitchen runs on Mediterranean instincts with a contemporary edge. Two tasting menus or à la carte, both structured around land and sea with the occasional exotic turn that keeps things interesting. The kind of place that seats few people quietly and means it.

A farmhouse restaurant outside Piacenza where an open hearth warms the dining room in winter and a shaded terrace takes over come summer. The feel is a well-loved private home, and the menu leans into that generosity: four tasting menus plus a long à la carte spanning meat, fish, and vegetarian. The wine cellar runs to over 700 labels, with a soft spot for cooler-climate bottles that most Italian lists ignore.

Charcoal-grilled lamb with rhubarb is the move to watch at this contemporary Italian restaurant inside a sleek new Rome hotel. The young chef spent serious time in France and Japan, and the cooking lands somewhere between classical precision and something fresher, with clean flavors that don't need much explaining. The room shares the hotel's polished lines, and the crowd skews international, which makes sense given the passport stamps behind the menu.

Duck shows up across the menu at this rustic Lombard trattoria in the Bassa Pavese flatlands, most memorably in the ragù that comes folded through fusilloni pasta. Lunch runs casual and honest, weekends lean more regional and considered, and the wine list stretches further than the setting might suggest. Easy to reach off the A21, which means the midday crowd knows exactly what it's doing when it pulls off the highway here.

The stone walls and vaulted ceilings have been around forever, first as a monastery, then an inn, and now a contemporary regional restaurant in the small town of Borgonovo Val Tidone. The kitchen leans into Emilia-Romagna's pantry but updates it with enough modern technique to keep things interesting. A handful of guestrooms next door means dinner doesn't have to end with a drive.

An open kitchen anchors this cheerful contemporary Italian restaurant near the Sant'Ambrogio market, where the menu shifts with the seasons and the cooking shows real precision without taking itself too seriously. The chef pairs duck breast with bao alongside the expected Tuscan touches, and the room's colourful furnishings match the energy of a front-of-house team that seems to be having as good a time as the guests.

An old South Tyrolean farmhouse that has been feeding people for longer than anyone currently alive can verify, Oberraindlhof is the kind of regional restaurant where five generations of the same family have decided that local recipes and nearby ingredients are the whole point. The ravioli stuffed with valley cheese are the kind of dish that quietly makes the case for staying put. The wine list is serious, the atmosphere is not.

The entrance, plastered floor to ceiling with stickers, looks more like a record shop than a restaurant, and the surfboard serving as a table near the door keeps that energy going. Inside, it's a casual contemporary spot in the Mercato delle Erbe, serving Emilian cooking that wanders confidently into other traditions, most famously a Bolognese ramen built around tagliolino in mushroom broth. Cocktails are available to open or close the meal. Book ahead.

Floor-to-ceiling windows on the fifth floor frame the Amalfi Coast in a way that makes whatever's on the plate work harder to compete. This is a creative contemporary restaurant with its roots deep in Campanian tradition, where the kitchen reworks local flavors rather than abandoning them. The cooking leans seasonal and ingredient-forward, the room has been recently redone, and the view does a lot of the heavy lifting for the mood.

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.

The name nods to the old Florentine prison next door, and the chef leans into that with a dining room frescoed in gold leaf and a kitchen so open it practically pulls you into conversation. A fine dining restaurant tucked behind the Uffizi, serving creative contemporary Italian that moves comfortably between meat and fish. The crowd tends toward people who've done the museum and want the meal to match.

The 4.5km of switchbacks to reach this farm-to-table restaurant on a Ligurian estate might make you question your choices, but the Tyrrhenian Sea view from the table has a way of settling that debate. The kitchen leans on its own garden, local fish, and carefully chosen meat, and the cooking is bright and seasonal, occasionally pulled off the barbecue in the way that makes simple things taste like a point being made.

Minimalist interiors and a full-on Japanese aesthetic mark this long-running Milan restaurant, where the menu runs deeper than most. It's a traditional Japanese dining room doing set lunch and à la carte at dinner, with the kind of range that rewards slow reading. The sukiyaki, a simmering tableside broth of meat and vegetables meant for sharing, is the sort of thing that turns a weeknight into an occasion.

Tucked into a narrow alley near the Duomo, this old-school trattoria has been feeding Bressanone locals for generations, its dining rooms dressed in historic dark wood with a terrace that fills up the moment summer arrives. The kitchen straddles South Tyrolean and Mediterranean traditions, turning out tasting menus alongside à la carte options, with Tirtl, a fried ricotta and spinach pastry, among the dishes regulars tend to order without consulting the menu.

Tiny is barely the word: a handful of tables in a tucked-away Castello calle, and reservations that disappear weeks out. This snug seafood-forward osteria runs a menu shaped entirely by the market, with vegetables grown on Sant'Erasmo island through a collective kitchen-garden shared among small Venice restaurants. The cooking is rooted in the Venetian tradition, without fuss or flourish, which is exactly why the room is always full.

Tucked into the Barolo vineyards outside La Morra, this fine dining restaurant inside the Arborina Relais runs on a no-waste philosophy that shapes the menu rather than decorating it. Two tasting menus, at five or eight courses, pull from Piedmontese tradition with enough modern technique to keep things interesting. The wine list reads like a love letter to the surrounding hills, which makes sense given what's growing just outside the window.

Frescoed ceilings from the last century look down on two small dining rooms tucked behind the porticoes of Mondovì's oldest square, and the room has the kind of unhurried warmth that makes you order one more glass. This is a traditional Piedmontese osteria with a kitchen that lightens the classics without flattening them. The dining room manager knows the menu cold, so if the choices blur together, just ask.

The veranda's retro curve stops park walkers mid-stride, which is a reasonable way to find a restaurant. Inside, the Billis twins run an osteria that calls its approach "new tradition," meaning Piedmontese cooking refracted through wider influences. Local ingredients stay, but the techniques roam. The room has the kind of unhurried atmosphere that makes an extra glass feel inevitable, which is probably the point.

A chalet fireplace that smells of woodsmoke in a village so small you'll question your GPS twice sets the scene for this traditional Italian osteria. The kitchen follows the mountain calendar closely, moving from wild herbs in spring to woodland fruits in autumn. One tasting menu, booked at least two days ahead, which is either charming or inconvenient depending on your travel style.

Rothia, a white wine custard dusted with cinnamon and spiced bread, is as good a reason as any to end a meal here. This old-school osteria in the historic center has been turning out Valdostan classics forever: cured meats with fontina, polenta, fondue in its various forms. The wine list leans heavily local, with well over a hundred Aosta Valley labels, many poured by the glass.