The Best Restaurants in Italy

A single communal table split between an interior dining room and a panoramic terrace facing the Palatine Hill is the whole concept here, and it commits to it completely. The contemporary Italian cooking leans Mediterranean, with handmade pasta as the clear through-line. The tortelli with pork ribs and cacao mass is the kind of dish people mention unprompted. Come at sunset and the terrace doubles as a cocktail bar with a view that makes the real estate feel almost embarrassing.

A cable car gets you here for lunch; a snowcat gets you home after dinner, which should tell you something about how seriously the Dolomites take atmosphere. Despite the name, this is a proper alpine restaurant, not a hiker's hut, and the menu knows it: hearty mountain staples share space with modern dishes and, somehow, oysters. Evening service slows down enough to match the scenery.

A mountain pasture for centuries before it became a dining room, Rifugio Fuciade sits in the Dolomites with the Costabella chain as a backdrop and Pale di San Martino dissolving into the distance. The menu reads like a regional field guide, canederli, veal stew with polenta, chanterelle mushrooms, the kind of Alpine cooking that makes sense when snow is involved. A wine cellar with over 600 labels, and rooms if you'd rather not drive back down.

Named for the classic postwar film whose director was born right here in Fondi, this contemporary Italian restaurant sets its creative cooking across elegant dining rooms and a courtyard that earns its keep on warm evenings. The kitchen leans modern without losing the thread, pairing southern Italian instincts with enough invention to keep things interesting. The wine list is short but clearly chosen by someone paying attention.

A terrace overlooking the Ligurian coast is the reason to navigate the narrow, winding road up to this rustic hotel restaurant in Finale Ligure. Call ahead to book a sea-view table, because the room itself is simple and unassuming. The kitchen leans into regional cooking, with seafood and classic meat dishes rooted in the local tradition. The kind of place that rewards the effort to find it.

Sardinia has a coastline that could make a postcard weep, but the island's cooking has always looked inland, toward slow-braised meat and hand-rolled pasta. This casual trattoria in Cagliari leans into that tradition hard, with simple dining rooms dressed in local touches and a menu of regional specialities that reads like a glossary of the dialect. Malloreddus, culurgiones, snails in tomato sauce, and the honey-fried sebadas dessert all make appearances.

The suckling pig goes on the spit before you sit down, which is your cue to arrive early and watch. This is a farm-restaurant on a working agriturismo outside Alghero, and the fixed menu builds toward that roast as its centerpiece, everything else on the table grown on the same land. The owners will walk you through every step if you ask, and most people ask. Rooms are available if you'd rather not drive back after.

A fine-dining restaurant set inside Monza's royal park, on grounds where the king once kept his pheasants, with the famous racetrack close enough that the quiet feels deliberate. The menu moves between Mediterranean fish, Milanese classics, and the occasional French flourish, a nod to the park's layered history. In summer, the terrace looking out over the greenery pulls the whole thing together.

Inside Palazzo Ripetta, a short walk from Piazza del Popolo, San Baylon is a contemporary Italian restaurant that manages to feel relaxed and polished at the same time. When the weather cooperates, the internal garden does most of the heavy lifting, a tucked-away green pocket in the middle of Rome. The kitchen works with obvious seasonal restraint, letting good produce carry the argument rather than technique, which is present but never announced.

On a clear day the terrace here looks out over the kind of Piedmontese panorama that makes you forget you ordered two hours ago. This is a traditional village trattoria with contemporary instincts, the kitchen leaning on regional classics while updating the plating and finding pairings that feel thought-through rather than dutiful. The wine list covers Piedmont thoroughly and then keeps going, which is fitting given that the sommelier runs the room.

The wine list at this modern Piedmontese restaurant is organized by color-coded mood, from "voluptuous" to "purpureal," which sounds like a game but is surprisingly useful. The space itself has history, once a grocer's shop where Lavazza first started blending coffee. The kitchen leans into regional tradition with a creative edge, and the carousel of starters makes a strong case for ordering everything on the table at once.

A seasonal tasting menu built around the Agro Pontino region, with a kitchen that treats the local terroir as the whole point rather than a selling line. The outdoor room doubles as a winter garden, all bamboo and soft lighting, and an actual Roman archaeological site sits a few metres away should dinner leave you feeling historically curious. Modern country cooking, and a long drive from anywhere, but that's rather the idea.

The name means "flavour" in Ligurian dialect, which sets expectations clearly enough. Savô is the gourmet restaurant inside the Hotel Windsor, where a contemporary dining room opens onto a terrace with direct views of the beach and sea. The kitchen leans on regional, seasonal ingredients and leans harder on fish, though a meat option runs through each course. The wine list is serious, and the Windsor Bar handles cocktails for those who want to linger.

Wooden floors, exposed beams, and a garden so carefully kept it looks staged: Scola is a country house restaurant tucked into the Ligurian hills, run by the same family for four generations. The chef takes traditional local cooking and nudges it somewhere more unexpected, think coastal flavors refracted through a creative lens. The room is warm and unhurried, the kind of lunch that quietly swallows an afternoon.

A small Japanese restaurant on a narrow street in the historic centre, with just enough covers inside and on the terrace to make a reservation feel less optional than the menu suggests. The kitchen runs a classical lineup, hand-rolled gyoza, tempura, raw fish, ramen, and rice dishes executed without fanfare. The Japanese clientele filling most of the seats is its own quiet argument. Sake, shochu, and craft beer, plus wine for the unconvinced.

Lunch only, shared tables, one menu, all meat. The chef behind Solociccia is among Italy's most celebrated butchers, and this is where that obsession becomes a sit-down occasion: a convivial tasting format served at fixed midday sittings across a warren of intimate rooms strung with straw-covered Chianti bottles. A vegetarian alternative exists, though ordering it here has a certain audacity. Book ahead, show up at noon, and make friends with your neighbors.

A contemporary Italian restaurant just outside Pordenone's traffic-restricted center, where the kitchen leans into bold, market-driven cooking that moves between land and sea with some confidence. Dishes lean seasonal and generous, the kind of place where the menu shifts with what's good rather than what's safe. The room reads like a proper dinner out, not a quick bite, and the cooking has enough edge to keep things interesting.

A couple who logged serious time cooking abroad before coming home to Legnano runs this intimate contemporary Italian restaurant, where the menu arrives as one of three tasting options or à la carte if you'd rather steer yourself. The cooking is imaginative without showing off about it, and the wine list has clearly been curated by someone who paid attention. The welcome is the kind that makes you feel the room was expecting you.

A small grotto cut into tufa rock anchors the courtyard, with a handful of tables tucked inside, which tells you immediately that this isn't a place for a quick lunch. The young couple running it, Flavia and Alessio, have shaped a regional Italian restaurant around dishes with names like "The Journey I'll Never Forget," poetic in a way that somehow doesn't embarrass itself. The cooking follows suit, rooted in the landscape but with enough imagination to keep it interesting.

A small, unfussy restaurant in Teramo's historic centre, close enough to the medieval cathedral that you can hear the bells. The chef trained under Niko Romito and channels that rigour into contemporary Abruzzese cooking, coaxing something refined out of peasant staples without making them feel ashamed of their origins. Two tasting menus lean heavily on meat, though the vegetable work quietly steals the show.

A chef who spent time in Milan and Venice before bringing the distilled results back to Padua's historic center. This is a creative Italian restaurant where the barbecue grill quietly anchors nearly everything on the menu, lending a smoky throughline to dishes that pull from different corners of the north. The cooking reads as personal rather than fashionable, and the room feels like a place where someone is actually trying to say something.

A frescoed castle hall with ceilings high enough to humble anyone sits as the backdrop for this Piedmontese restaurant in Magliano Alfieri. The chef runs two menus, one a tour through regional tradition, the other a more personal affair where guests choose the number of courses and the kitchen decides the rest. The hills of Langhe and Roero are visible from the windows, which helps set the pace.

Snails get their own section of the menu here, which tells you most of what you need to know about this family-run trattoria on Piazza Carlo Alberto. The kitchen works squarely within Venetian tradition, pulling in Lake Garda touches along the way, and the bigoli with guinea fowl and the calf's liver with onions are exactly as old-school as they sound. In summer, tables spill into a garden with lake glimpses.

Vineyards press right up to the terrace at this contemporary restaurant in the Veneto hills, where a young couple left city life to restore the family home and cook out of it. The menu is short and rotates often, built around bold, playful combinations you won't easily forget. Five guestrooms sit upstairs for anyone who finds the drive home a less appealing prospect than another glass of local wine.

A bonet that arrives as a dark chocolate-draped traditional cake base with a crispy sphere of custard cream on top tells you something about the chef here: Piedmont is the foundation, but the plating has ideas. This contemporary Italian restaurant sits in the foothills near Lake Maggiore with a relaxed, come-as-you-are feel. The menu moves easily between meat and fish, and lunch runs a little lighter for those who have an afternoon to protect.

The name means the scent of aged Vernaccia, and the setting matches the poetry: a converted old mill in a small Sardinian village above the Sinis Peninsula. The young chef pulls from the Gulf of Oristano for ingredients, but his Campanian roots sneak in at dessert, where a reimagined pastiera or babà tends to close things out. A contemporary Mediterranean dinner with a quietly personal backstory.

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.

The conveyor belt runs on one side; a hushed omakase room sits on the other. This Japanese restaurant in Rome splits its personality cleanly between Sushisen Kaitenzushi's counter energy and the more formal Experience side, where the chef's tasting sequence takes its time. Both menus share a kitchen, and the all-female service team holds everything together with quiet precision. Sake and wine pour by the glass throughout.

Tano Simonato's creative Italian restaurant sits in a quiet residential neighborhood, which is somewhat at odds with what arrives on the plate: a "tiramisù" built from cuttlefish and potatoes, pigeon glazed in honey and baked in salt. The chef moves between tables, narrating the food and suggesting wine pairings in person. It's a theatrical room that commits fully to the bit, and the bit involves seducing every last sense you walked in with.

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.

A farmhouse restaurant on the western slopes of Monte Baldo, where the terrace looks straight down to Lake Garda and the menu follows whatever the season is willing to hand over. The kitchen works through meat, fish, and vegetable dishes with local ingredients doing most of the talking. The wine list runs to over a thousand bottles kept in an old underground cellar, which is a serious number for a hillside dining room this quiet.

A kitchen dating back centuries anchors this old-school tavern a short walk from Maratea's main square, its walls dressed in Vietri ceramics and its shelves stacked with around 400 wine labels, many from small Italian producers and France. The chef leans into local cooking, including a stewed octopus that regulars know by name. Small parties of six can eat in the wine cellar among bottles that collectors would eye with envy.

The Ravioli Mimosa, made from a recipe so closely guarded that not even the menu will tell you what's inside, has been on the list since anyone can remember. This is a proper Roman trattoria in Trastevere, the kind that still leads with cacio e pepe, carbonara, and tripe without a hint of apology. The room is rustic but pulled together, the service knows what it's doing, and the beef fillet finished over charcoal closes things out the way Rome intends.

The dining room here used to be the apartment of a senator's librarian, which explains why it feels more like eating inside a very handsome thought than inside a restaurant. Perched above the gardens of the Rocca di Lonato, it's a creative Italian spot where the kitchen works with a light, precise touch. Sea bass and pigeon are the dishes regulars argue over. Come for lunch if you want the room without the full commitment.

Four tables around a central fireplace, walls clad in reclaimed timber: this intimate gourmet tasting-menu room is tucked behind the livelier Kosmo Taste the Mountain, reachable by lift from the car park below. The chef, Apulian by birth but clearly seduced by the Alps, builds creative menus around mountain ingredients and a kitchen garden, and his vegetable dishes, a celeriac study or a plate called "100% carrot," have a way of outlasting everything else in memory.

A converted joinery on a sprawling Tuscan estate, Terraforte is a country-house restaurant where the menu is essentially a tour of the land around it: farm-reared meats, game, poultry, vegetables, herbs, and honey, almost all from the estate itself. You choose how many courses you want and the kitchen composes from there. In warmer months, the terrace earns its reputation without trying. The estate's own wines, including the celebrated Lupicaia, pour by the glass.

Four tables, candlelight, gilded walls inside a Merano villa: this is a tasting-menu restaurant built to feel like a private dinner hosted by someone with strong opinions about biodiversity. Chef Marcello Corrado runs an eight-course menu rooted in the South Tyrol landscape, and a shorter format is available for those who want the same ideas with an earlier bedtime. Service is the kind that notices everything without being noticed.

The first-floor dining room looks straight out at the Duomo and the Galleria, which does make it harder to concentrate on the menu. Chef Valerio Braschi runs a contemporary Italian restaurant where the kitchen moves between Milanese classics and South American and Asian detours, reinterpreting a costoletta alla milanese alongside chimichurri-lifted calamari. The terrace upstairs is where most people end up at some point, aperitivo in hand, staring at the cathedral like it's their first time.

A luminous dining room of warm wood and wide windows onto a manicured garden sets the mood at this contemporary restaurant in San Vito, where a young chef channels years in Italian and French kitchens into something quietly personal. The menu reads as a love letter to Italian identity filtered through serious technique, and the front-of-house paces the tasting menu with the calm confidence of someone who has done this before.

Inside the medieval Castello di Casole, Tosca is a tasting-menu restaurant where the stone walls and candlelit fabrics make it feel like the estate has been expecting you. The kitchen leans into the surrounding 1,300-hectare organic property, pulling herbs and produce from the castle's own gardens. In summer, dinner moves to the open courtyard, with Tuscan hills doing the decorating. Dressy but not stiff, and priced to match the setting.