The Best Restaurants in Italy

Three chefs share the kitchen at this contemporary tasting-menu restaurant in Rome, running two parallel menus, one plant-based, one not, built around a single ingredient explored front to back through changing techniques. Most tables face the open kitchen, so you watch the work as it happens. The room is calm and pared back, which lets the cooking do the talking. For a tasting menu in Rome, the pricing won't keep you up at night.

The dining room is a converted village nursery school, which tells you something about both the setting and the chef's ambition. This tasting-menu restaurant in a small Ligurian hill town does contemporary cooking with one foot firmly in the local landscape, meats and seafood leaning on whatever the valley offers. In summer, the terrace nearly touches the Argentina river. Dishes can also be ordered à la carte if committing to a full menu feels like a lot for a Tuesday.

A farm-to-table trattoria tucked inside Cascina Cuccagna, a working urban farm where the farmers' market smell drifts in from next door and a carpentry workshop hums nearby. The kitchen leans on seasonal and organic ingredients, cooking Italian classics on a charcoal grill, the kind of place where lunch outdoors feels genuinely removed from the city even though Milan's buildings frame every view.

Nikkei cuisine, the Peruvian-Japanese fusion that became a whole culinary movement, is the organizing idea at this intimate restaurant tucked above street level in one of Naples's most expensive shopping corridors. The dining room runs soft and romantic, and there's a private terrace for warmer nights. It's a dressy dinner-out kind of place, the sort where the neighborhood does most of the talking before you've even ordered.

A former barrel warehouse tucked into the narrow alleys of Riposto's centre, this contemporary Sicilian restaurant is run by a self-taught chef whose menu splits evenly between meat and fish, which is a quiet statement given the port is practically next door. Two tasting menus and a full à la carte, house olive oil from the family farm, and a dish named for the chef's father's favourite recipe round out a room that takes its food seriously without making you feel it.

The estate outside Volterra raises its own pigs, presses its own olives, and keeps its own bees, so dinner at Villa Pignano's restaurant is essentially a tour of the surrounding 300 hectares plated up as contemporary Tuscan cooking. Lunch runs simpler; evenings get more elaborate. The wine list leans into organic Tuscany, with a fair share of bottles from the property's own vines. A long way from the nearest delivery truck.

Frescoed ceilings from an old Piedmontese villa make a quietly theatrical backdrop for a restaurant that covers a lot of ground: regional à la carte at lunch, quality pizzas in the evening, and a garden that, charmingly, now belongs to the local municipality rather than the house. The chef came up through the family pastry shop, and the cooking still has that range-of-motion quality. Seasonal and locally rooted, with enough flexibility that most tables find something to argue over.

A wine-bar tucked inside a hotel on the main square in Neumarkt, where the list leans hard into Italian producers and most things worth trying are available by the glass. The chef runs the room with the kind of unhurried attention that makes you feel like the only table, and the kitchen keeps it Mediterranean and seasonal without making a fuss about it. Good stop if you want serious wine with food that keeps pace.

A wine bar tucked into a 17th-century barn beside the cathedral bell tower, where the host doubles as cellarman and seems personally acquainted with every producer on the list. The food is deliberately simple, Lombardian home cooking with the occasional seafood detour, and the cured meats and pasta dishes do the heavy lifting. It's the kind of place where you came for one glass and left having learned something.

Broad picture windows frame the Langhe hills from every table, which at least gives you something to look at while you decide between the traditional Piedmontese menu and the freestyle one where the kitchen improvises entirely. It's a contemporary tasting-menu restaurant inside a small hotel near Barbaresco, with à la carte available for the commitment-averse. Come summer, the terrace opens as a bistrot for something lighter and less structured.

Raw tuna noodles in dashi broth with a splash of yuzu and sake-marinated salmon roe give you the measure of this contemporary Japanese restaurant tucked behind Corso Como. The counter with stools along the back wall sets the tone: precise, slightly minimal, quietly international. Sushi, sashimi, uramaki, robata, and gyoza share the menu, and the wine list covers both Italian labels and champagne alongside sake by the glass.

Carriages once rolled through the courtyard that now encloses this glass-roofed dining room inside the St. Regis, Murano chandeliers overhead and a pianist at the center of it all. The restaurant leans Mediterranean, with a kitchen that keeps things seasonal and unfussy, precise technique doing the heavy lifting. The aperitivo hour at the cocktail bar, ringed by sofas and armchairs, feels less optional than the menu makes it look.

A canal-side restaurant that looks every bit like a neighborhood bacaro, right down to the convivial hum, then serves something else entirely. The kitchen pulls from local markets and lagoon producers to put creative, modern plates on the table, not cicchetti. A few outdoor tables face a quiet canal if you time it right. The mood is relaxed and the service actually reads it, which in Venice, with tourists everywhere, is its own kind of achievement.

A 15th-century inner courtyard, a summer terrace, and a menu that manages to feature both vitello tonnato and raw seafood without an identity crisis. ZELO is a modern Italian restaurant on one of Milan's quieter luxury streets, where the kitchen leans creative but keeps a few classics around for the table that just wants braised veal. Lunch skews lighter; dinner is when the raw fish comes out. The setting does a lot of the work, and the setting is very good.

White onyx panels and soft lighting set a mood of deliberate calm at this Japanese fine dining restaurant on Corso Magenta. The kitchen runs on rigorous technique and high-grade ingredients, with an omakase menu that hands control entirely to the chefs. Sitting at the counter while they work is its own argument for the format. The crowd tends toward people who booked weeks ago and mean it.

The terrace at this hotel restaurant in central Sorrento has the kind of lemon-scented, candlelit romanticism that makes Campania feel like it was designed as a film set. Inside, the dining room goes full grand hotel, all opulence and pressed linens. The kitchen leans into regional flavors from Campania, then nudges them somewhere unexpected, and a vegetarian tasting menu means the table doesn't have to negotiate.

The Zivieri family raises animals and grows produce in the Apennines, then drives it all down to Bologna and cooks it for you inside a medieval tower off Piazza della Mercanzia. It's a regional trattoria where the charcuterie and grilled meats are essentially the point, made from animals the same family farms. A butcher's counter next door sells the same stuff to take home, which feels either convenient or dangerous depending on your willpower.

An old farmhouse in Tisens, barn and stables folded into the dining room so the stone walls and timber feel less like decor than something that was always there. The kitchen runs a "Wine & Dine" concept, pairing South Tyrolean flavors with dishes that are clean rather than fussy. The wine cellar has been quietly accumulated over years and it shows. Service is the kind that doesn't need to announce itself.

Vaulted ceilings inside a grand old palazzo on Bolzano's main piazza set the stage for a restaurant that runs two distinct modes under one roof. Lunch leans casual and regional, riffing on South Tyrolean flavors with a lighter touch, while the gilded back dining room is where the chef gets serious, offering a full gastronomic tasting experience. Dressing up is not required, but the gilded room will make you wish you had.

Capo Boi is an upscale Sardinian-leaning seafood restaurant in Parioli, one of Rome's more polished neighborhoods, though the mood runs closer to a dinner party than a tasting menu. Crackly pane carasau arrives under shaved bottarga, raw platters crowd the tables, and salt-baked fish gets lit on fire at the table by a waiter who takes the job seriously. Bring a big group and some appetite. It's on The Infatuation's list of Rome's best restaurants.

Da Dante is a Roman trattoria that dresses like a fancy one, with white tablecloths and waiters in starched button-downs, then loses the act the moment a soccer match starts. The staff react to every play with full-throated commentary, which is a good sign about the kitchen's mood. Seafood is the strong suit, especially the clam spaghetti, and you'll want bread on hand to finish the oil. The Infatuation lists it among Rome's best.

You'll spot the fridge of enormous Florentine steaks before you spot your table, which is Dal Toscano's way of setting expectations. It's a Tuscan trattoria near the Vatican, and the pasta turns out to be a serious sideline: silky fettuccine in a pale ragù, chewy pici with garlic the size of a fist. A kilo of bistecca and a carafe of Chianti are what the room is clearly built around.

Dar Filettaro is a tiny, no-frills spot just off Campo de' Fiori that fries salted cod and not much else worth mentioning. Order the baccalà and a plate of puntarelle, the anchovy-dressed chicory that keeps the fish from feeling like a dare. The tables outside face a slightly leaning church, which is more than most of the neighborhood's aperitivo hawkers can offer in the way of scenery. It made The Infatuation's list of Rome's best.

This is a white-tablecloth Roman trattoria where the waiters are dressed better than most of the diners, a tradition that appears to be non-negotiable. The ham gets sliced off the bone to order and the mozzarella arrives daily from Campania. Order the gricia, or tortellini in brodo once it turns cold. It sits across from the Opera House, so locals fill it with business dinners, date nights, and family tables the size of a small orchestra.

Pecorino is a white-tablecloth Italian restaurant that feels like Sunday lunch at a cousin's house, complete with framed photos of relatives nobody can identify. The waiters wear crisp white shirts and have clearly been on the floor since adolescence, which explains the sarcasm and the firm opinions about what you're ordering. Portions are generous and nobody rushes you through the carbonara, so plan on staying a while.

This Sicilian trattoria in Prati dresses its dining room like a Palermo market, with painted ceramic heads on the walls and the day's catch laid out on display. You get the produce, the fried things, and the smoky ricotta, minus someone shouting prices at you in dialect. Dinner ends with granita and a warm brioche, the kind of dessert you swear you have no room for and then finish before anyone else.

This is a white-tablecloth trattoria out on Via Flaminia, where the meal opens with a wooden tray of salami roughly the size of a toddler, delivered with a knife and a glove so you can carve your own. The pastas include a gricia with asparagus and a deconstructed amatriciana, and the suckling pig comes in crackling skin. Antique art on the walls, no tour groups with flags in sight, and nobody will rush you off the premises.

Checkered tablecloths, a chalkboard of specials, and a line out the door that behaves like a second dining room, at a Roman trattoria on the quieter side of Trastevere. People wait with spritzes and swap theories on whether gelato counts as breakfast, which sounds like a tourist trap and somehow isn't. Expect carbonara, tiramisu with a Nutella cameo, and prices that won't ask for a jacket. It's on The Infatuation's list of Rome's best.

The sandwiches here are named for members of the family, and the bread comes from Roscioli, which tells you almost everything about how seriously this small Yemeni-Ethiopian street food spot takes the details. A mother and her daughters run it out of a quiet Monteverde side street, and the cooking goes exactly as it would at home: sambusas, spiced rice with beef stew, and savory mutabbaq pastry folded with egg and coriander.

Ragu-stuffed arancini the size of a small fist are the opening argument at this Sicilian street food spot in the heart of Florence. The menu runs through slabs of Sicilian pizza, granita, cannoli, and a Bronte pistachio gelato that Florentines quietly argue about. The chef behind it has since built out a small empire along the river and beyond, but this is where the obsession is most concentrated.

The name translates to "there's pasta, and pasta," which tells you exactly where the menu's priorities lie. This kosher counter spot near Stazione Trastevere does Roman Jewish cooking: fried artichokes, battered cod, that quietly brilliant anchovy and frisée casserole. You order at the counter, eat in or take away, and can pick up fresh pasta to finish at home. It's a neighborhood joint that happens to hold a whole culinary tradition.

A Florentine trattoria that styles itself a "culinary club," with Tuscan cooking as the anchor and regional specialties from across Italy filling out the menu. The chef chases obscure ingredients and small producers, including one aging cheese in Etruscan-era caves, which is exactly the kind of detail that makes nonna's kitchen feel like an adventure. The beef croquettes and the potato-filled tortelli are the things people come back for.

A working vegetable garden fills the back of this canal-side restaurant on the quieter southern stretch of the Naviglio Pavese, where Milan loses its edge. The weekly tasting menu follows whatever the garden and season allow, shaped by a chef who grew up moving between France, the U.K., and the U.S. The crowd leans linen-and-natural-wine, which fits the radical-chic mood perfectly and without apparent irony.

A bakery that Florentines will cite with a little nostalgic pride, Becagli turns out schiacciata the old-school way, hand-kneaded so the olive oil pools in every dimple. The flatbread becomes the base for panini stuffed with stracchino, fennel salami, or mortadella, and the pastry case holds ancient-grain crostatas and torta della nonna. Stop in for breakfast and the chocolate-stuffed brioche will rearrange your morning plans.

The name on the awning is Japanese, but the spirit is closer to a grandmother's kitchen than a sushi counter. This cozy restaurant near the Duomo was opened to serve the vegetables, curries, and donburi that Milan's many Japanese spots tend to skip entirely. The ka-ree and the potato salad with Japanese mayonnaise are the kind of things you don't realize you've been missing until they're in front of you.

Bookshelves, rotating art on the walls, and a vegetarian menu shaped by the chef's well-traveled palate make this Santa Croce cafe-restaurant a little harder to categorize than most. That's the point. Locals fill the place at lunch for mixed platters and tuck into weekend brunches of pancakes and scrambles. The food leans global, the room feels like someone's very curated living room, and the music is always good.

A porthole-sized window into the kitchen is your first clue that Mazzo takes cooking seriously while keeping things loose. This San Lorenzo trattoria-leaning restaurant built its reputation on Roman nostalgia done with a sharp eye, leaning into offal and old-school pasta forms without winking too hard. The fried tripe with pecorino and tomato is the kind of dish that makes you wonder why anyone ever tried to modernize Roman food in the first place.

A two-story food hall tucked inside Milan's main train station, with over 30 vendors covering everything from pizza al taglio to Chinese dumplings to Genovese farinata. Davide Longoni's bakery counter is worth seeking out, and Mag, the bar upstairs, is a sibling of Milan's celebrated speakeasy 1930. The kind of place where you can grab a cocktail and a slice of focaccia di Recco and call it a perfectly respectable lunch.

A family-run osteria near Centrale station where the cassoeula, that old Lombard pork-and-cabbage stew, arrives the same way it did for whoever ran this place before them. Workers fill the tables midweek; families crowd in on weekends for risotto Milanese and anchovies in salsa verde. Save room for the pistachio and hot pepper gelato, which sounds like a dare and isn't. On the way out, peer into the Liberty-style hall next door.

A gelateria in Monteverde Vecchio where the flavors lean restrained rather than sugar-forward, which is either a revelation or a disappointment depending on what you came for. Marco Radicioni trained under one of Rome's gelato legends and the house sensibility shows in the sourcing. Specialty coffee and pastries have since turned it into a full third-wave stop, so you can reasonably linger without just holding a cone.

A tiny panino stall on the curb outside the Sant'Ambrogio market, run by a man who will tell you, without hesitation, that he makes the best sandwich in the world. The chalkboard menu skips the usual cold cuts in favor of things like stewed donkey with pear and truffle, or wild boar sausage with broccoli rabe. Order, watch it get assembled fast, and expect a small glass of wine to be pressed on you before you leave.

The wine list at this old-school Florentine trattoria skews heavily Tuscan, with enough bottles from the rest of Italy and beyond to keep things interesting. The kitchen takes homestyle Tuscan classics and nudges them toward something a little more considered, portions run generous, and the desserts are not an afterthought. Tucked into the Oltrarno neighborhood, it draws the kind of locals who treat a long Tuesday dinner as a reasonable life choice.

Saffron and rose ice cream in the shadow of the Palazzo Vecchio is a combination Florence doesn't offer often. This Iranian restaurant in Dante's old neighborhood fills a real gap in a city where the dining scene still tilts heavily Renaissance. The room leans into it, with decor that feels like a genuine gesture toward home rather than a theme. Koobideh, joojeh kebabs, and ghormeh sabzi make up the core of it.

The Beijing-born chef behind Sinosteria spent decades running Rome's first Thai restaurant before opening this place to cook the Chinese food she wanted to cook. A casual neighborhood restaurant, it moves between regional Chinese traditions without apology, and the sommelier son running the front of house keeps a natural wine list that has no business being this interesting. The room draws locals from the surrounding residential stretch of Marconi who seem blissfully unbothered by the category confusion.

The naturally leavened bread arrives before you've decided anything, which tells you something about how this restaurant thinks. In a low-lit Garbatella room with Nordic bones and Roman soul, the kitchen brings Abruzzo's mountain larder into conversation with the capital, via a menu that shifts constantly but keeps landing somewhere comforting. Chickpea soup with chestnuts and dried figs, lamb with puntarelle, the kind of wine list that stays stubbornly central Italian.

Sit on the sixth floor of Fondazione Prada's tower building and you have Lucio Fontana on the walls, a triangular terrace for sunset drinks, and bread arriving from the storied Marchesi pasticceria. This is an upscale restaurant serving modern Milanese food and seafood with a Tuscan coastal lean. The crowd dresses accordingly, and the art-world adjacency keeps things from feeling stuffy, which is its own small miracle for a place this polished.

A lampredotto stand across from the Sant'Ambrogio church, where the proprietor hollers orders into the street while you stand on the corner with a goblet of wine. The specialty is cow stomach slow-cooked in broth, chopped, and stuffed into bread with green herb and chile sauce, and Pollini's range of variations, from tomato with artichoke to porcini in season, gives regulars a reason to keep coming back.

Half wine bar, half vinyl record shop, Vineria Sonora is the kind of place that makes a lot of sense at the second glass. The natural wine list leans deep into minimal-intervention Italian producers, with obscure garage makers sitting alongside cult names. Small plates run from 'nduja crostini to wild boar lasagna, with a Calabrian thread running through the menu. The owners also run a spillover bar across the street, which tells you everything about the crowd this place attracts.