The Best Seafood in Italy

The vegetable garden sits almost on the beach, close enough that the greens absorb salt air, which tells you something about how seriously this two-Michelin-star restaurant on the Adriatic takes its ingredients. Chef Moreno Cedroni runs tasting menus that swing between his own classic archive and a Marco Polo route through Asian and Middle Eastern flavors, with a food-tech lab next door feeding new ideas into the rotation. His wife runs the room, and runs it well.

Raw seafood and charcoal-grilled fish are the spine of the menu at this two-Michelin-star seafood restaurant tucked into a quiet Venetian village. The room is elegant and minimalist, the name "osteria" kept mostly for nostalgia's sake. The kitchen leans hard into lagoon identity, from raw cicchetti to seasonal fried green crabs, with a dedicated vegetarian section for anyone who wandered in from the wrong coastline.

A one-Michelin-star seafood restaurant on the Ionian coast where bergamot and chili turn up in the sauces and the fish arrives tasting like it never left the water. The chef keeps things clean and regional, from crudo to grilled catch, without a lot of ceremony around it. The wine list leans Calabrian, which feels right, and the local sparkling Gaglioppo is a genuine find alongside the raw preparations.

The glazed walls open straight onto Genoa's Old Port, which makes the deliberately spare dining room feel like a sensible choice rather than an oversight. Il Marin is a Michelin-starred contemporary seafood restaurant where the kitchen leans hard into Ligurian waters, then complicates things with modern technique. Chef Marco Visciola finishes a spaghetti dish tableside like a bartender. Tasting menus run the show, though à la carte exists for the commitment-averse.

Gianfranco Pascucci's Michelin-starred seafood restaurant sits near the marina at Fiumicino, the kind of address that sounds like an afterthought until the food arrives. The menu language is understated, but the kitchen's precision with local catch is anything but, evoking the sea with an intensity that fills the simply elegant, aquatic-toned room. Vanessa Melis runs the floor with real warmth, making the whole thing feel less like a performance and more like a very good invitation.

The restaurant's name means indigo, and at sunset the Tyrrhenian earns it, the water shifting through every shade as Procida and Vesuvius settle into the horizon. This is a Michelin-starred creative seafood restaurant inside Hotel Regina Isabella, where the chef channels his Ischian upbringing through tasting menus built around the catch, with an all-plant option that gets the same serious treatment. A wine list running past a thousand labels keeps the sommelier busy and the table happy.

A Michelin-starred seafood restaurant in Viareggio that has been around forever, Romano is the kind of place where the traditions feel load-bearing rather than decorative. The kitchen leans on pristine local fish, with the occasional nod to classic Versilian recipes, while the current chef quietly modernizes around the edges. Out front, the service reads like a proper act of hospitality, wine recommendations included.

A Michelin-starred seafood restaurant in Lombardy where the owner pulls up a chair at the start of the evening to talk you through what's in before you look at the menu. The cooking is contemporary, the crudo is the thing to order, and a raw crustacean plate lands with the kind of generous plating that makes Champagne feel like the obvious choice. The wine list leans that direction anyway, with plenty available by the glass.

Tiered terraces stack up above Ponza's semicircular port, each table with a view that stretches past Gavi and Zannone toward open sea. This is a classic seafood restaurant, and the cooking keeps its ego in check: fish and shellfish, unfussy preparations, the ingredient doing the talking. The raw seafood that opens the menu sets the tone for what follows. A Michelin star, and an impressive wine list to keep it company.

The two wood-fired ovens do more work than the name implies: this is a Michelin-starred seafood restaurant on the Versilian coast, not the casual bistro you might expect. Fish comes mostly from the Tyrrhenian Sea, and the kitchen leans into wood-fired cooking to pull out texture and aroma. The wine cellar runs to nearly 2,000 labels, with a strong showing in Champagne and Burgundy. Lunch is a little looser, but the attention holds.

A Michelin-starred dining room perched above Lake Garda, where the terrace alone is worth the drive out to Manerba. The chef keeps things rooted in seafood and classic technique rather than chasing trends, which the regulars in their good linen clearly appreciate. The wine list leans hard into Champagne and German Rieslings, a flex that feels exactly right here. Dress up a little; this is a proper grown-up dinner.

The sand on the floor is imported from Spain, and you'll receive sandals before you sit down. Davide Scabin's one-Michelin-star tasting menu restaurant inside the Grand Hotel Sitea is a full theatrical commitment: a single seafood tasting menu that deliberately runs heavy to light, opening with turbot and red wine fish glaze before easing toward vegetable-forward, acidic finishes. Completely straight-faced about the whole thing, which somehow makes it funnier.

A handful of glass-topped tables beneath a high ceiling in the Salerno hinterland, where the room feels more like a private home than a restaurant. This Michelin-starred spot runs on a tight partnership: one chef, one host, and a vegetable garden down the road. The cooking is contemporary Campanian, leaning heavily on seafood, and the wine storytelling from the floor is the kind that makes you order another glass before you meant to.

From the outside it reads as a chic beach club gazing out at the Adriatic; step inside and the elegance turns hushed and a little unexpected. Guido is a Michelin-starred seafood restaurant, now in its third generation, built around the flavors of the upper Adriatic coast. The cooking looks simple at first, then quietly reveals the kind of technique that doesn't announce itself. An old-school institution with nothing to prove and nowhere to rush.

Jasmine overhead when the weather turns, a palazzo address in the town center, and a kitchen with a Michelin star that still calls its own cooking good value. Il Papavero is a modern Campanian restaurant where the menu leans heavily on fish and seafood, with the surrounding countryside filling in the gaps. Dishes stay close to what the menu actually promises, a short list of ingredients allowed to be themselves.

Tucked above a working shipyard with marina views, Il Tino is a Michelin-starred seafood restaurant where aromatic herbs do quietly serious work. The chef has an almost botanical command of them, including varieties most cooks have never heard of, and they show up threading through creative Mediterranean plates. You can order à la carte or choose between two tasting menus, one charting signature dishes by vintage, the other running his newest ideas.

The terrace sits right over the canal, close enough that you could theoretically dip a hand in, which is either charming or alarming depending on your relationship with water. This Michelin-starred seafood restaurant in Cesenatico focuses almost entirely on fish, from unfussy raw starters to more composed plates where pickled fruit and citrus show up alongside the catch. The wine list leans heavily into Champagne, which nobody seems to mind.

You drive through a pine forest and land practically on the sand before you spot the low, unassuming building that holds one of Tuscany's most quietly serious seafood restaurants, a Michelin-starred one. The Zazzeri family has been running this room forever, and the interior feels pleasantly stuck in another era. Classic techniques, local catch, no trend-chasing. The beach view does the decorating.

The Santa Susanna canal runs right outside the door, and on good days you eat on a wooden bridge above it, which is only appropriate given that trout, tench, pike, and freshwater crayfish are the whole point here. This one-Michelin-star country restaurant in the Lazio hills has been around forever, treating freshwater fish with the seriousness usually reserved for the sea. They send you home with wild herbs to steep.

A Michelin-starred seafood restaurant on a tiny islet in the Po Delta, reached by a farmhouse that sits in near-total silence broken only by lagoon birds. The kitchen leans classic, which here means golden-fried seafood, steamed fish salad with house-made squid-ink mayonnaise, and eel cooked over embers the way it's been done in this corner of Emilia-Romagna forever. The caramelized beignets with mandarin sauce are a quiet nod to local pastry legend.

The sommelier still wheels out two leather-bound volumes for the wine list, which tells you most of what you need to know about Lorenzo. This is an old-school seafood institution in Forte dei Marmi, where the rooms are immaculate, the raw platter arrives with ceremony, and mayonnaise is made tableside as if it were a small performance. A Michelin star, a global crowd, and zero interest in chasing trends.

Olio sits inside The Box, a space that somehow combines vintage cars and contemporary art without feeling like a dare, surrounded by olive trees that make the setting look implausibly serene. The restaurant holds a Michelin star for seafood cooking that keeps its ambitions in check: traditional foundations, restrained creativity, and ingredients that do the heavy lifting. Lunch runs as a bistro; evenings shift into something more considered.

The olive oil on the table comes from their own grove in the Val Nervia, which tells you something about how seriously this Michelin-starred restaurant in central San Remo takes its Ligurian roots. Paolo cooks a seafood-forward menu that stays close to the coast and the countryside both, while Barbara steers the room and knows the regional wine list cold. Old-school in feel, quietly meticulous in practice.

A Michelin-starred seafood restaurant tucked into a narrow lane just off Via Giulia, where the chef has spent years refining a style that trusts the fish rather than the flourish. The room is intimate and the cooking is classic, with a quiet confidence that doesn't need to announce itself. Two counter seats face the open kitchen if you want the chef's more improvisational menu and a front-row view of how it all comes together.

The cheese trolley arrives like a minor ceremony, and the seafood plateau before it is the kind of thing that makes the table go quiet. San Martino is a grand, old-school fine dining restaurant holding a Michelin star, where the front of house knows every guest's name before they've sat down and the chef moves between classic house dishes and newer plates without breaking a sweat. The wine list leans heavily French, with serious bottles available by the glass.

A Michelin-starred restaurant inside a 15th-century bishop's palace, with a terrace that looks out over a small Ligurian bay. The chef builds an elegant, minimalist menu around local catch, listing the fish in dialect so the menu doubles as a vocabulary lesson. The family runs every corner of the room, including a cheese trolley stocked with nothing but regional producers and a wine list that treats Liguria as its own continent before acknowledging the rest of the world.

A fish counter greets you at the door, which sets the tone for everything that follows at this polished seafood restaurant a short walk from Campo de' Fiori. The room is elegant, the service is quietly professional, and the wine list is enormous in a way that rewards browsing. The crowd trends toward Rome's discreet moneyed set, and the staff seems constitutionally allergic to fuss. Ranked fifth among Italy's fish restaurants by 50 Top Italy.

A seafood osteria just outside Rome where the kitchen leans hard on tradition but plates it with an elegance that would embarrass most trattorias. The cooking is rooted in classic coastal flavors, no reinvention for its own sake, just sharper execution year after year. The wine list skews generous on price, and the spirits selection runs to around eighty bottles if the night calls for it.

The tables are close enough to smell the Adriatic, which turns out to be the point. Vecchia Marina is a no-frills seafood trattoria on the Roseto waterfront where the kitchen stays focused on whatever came off the boats that morning, served in straightforward traditional preparations. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the kind of place that books up fast precisely because it hasn't decided to be anything other than what it is.

The fish parmigiana alone explains why this seafood restaurant on Corso Garibaldi draws a crowd. The kitchen works strictly with non-farmed catch from the Cilento coast, moving between raw preparations dressed with oils and aromatic salts and long-loved pasta dishes done with quiet confidence. The room is bright and unfussy, the service informal without being careless, and the wine list knows when to stop.

Soft lighting, a soundtrack turned up just enough, and a crowd that dressed for it: Langosteria is a sleek seafood restaurant on via Savona that Milan has made very much its own. The menu leans classic without being predictable, and the raw fish selection shifts daily with the market. The wine list runs deep into serious labels, which fits the room. Bring someone you're trying to impress, or at least someone who won't flinch at the bill.

The squid soup with nduja and potato mousse is the dish the kitchen wants you to order, and it's a reasonable suggestion. This casual seafood bistro is the more affordable sibling of a smarter restaurant on Salerno's waterfront, same team and same obsession with freshness, just oily fish and local white prawns instead of oysters. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks: it's the kind of place that punches past its price point without making a fuss about it.

A road separates Burro & Alici from the beach, and in summer the windows fold open so the dining room becomes the seafront. It looks like every other casual fish restaurant along the Marotta waterfront, which is the sort of camouflage that earns a Michelin Bib Gourmand. Classic Adriatic cooking carries the menu, with the occasional personal twist, and the gourmet pizzas topped with seafood are the kind of thing you didn't expect to order and then do.

Brandacujun, the old Ligurian salt-cod-and-potato mash, is as good a reason as any to find your way to this family-run seafood trattoria on the coast road near Chiavari's waterfront. The kitchen leans into the region without apology, and in summer the tables move outside so you can eat calamari grilled on a stone slab with a sea breeze doing its thing. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks.

The restaurant sits beside a cinema-theatre on a quiet stretch of Mirano, and the fish on your plate came off the boat that morning. It's a casual, neighborhood seafood trattoria rooted in the Venetian lagoon tradition, the kind of place where the recipes haven't changed because there's no reason they should. The pannacotta with fresh strawberry sauce is a regular on the menu. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand, and the wine-by-the-glass list is chosen to keep pace with the food.

A seafront terrace with panoramic views of the Tyrrhenian has made this family-run seafood restaurant a seasonal booking scramble for years. The menu leans classic Mediterranean, fish-forward and unfussy, but the desserts take a detour: dark chocolate cannoli, served upright, filled with gianduja semifreddo and finished with a Moscato d'Asti zabaglione. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks with the crowd's general mood of pleased-with-themselves regulars.

The family has fished these waters for four generations, and the menu at this tiny Cetara seafood spot makes no secret of it. Bluefin tuna, anchovies, and squid anchor the list, with colatura, the local anchovy sauce, turning up where you'd least expect it. Seating spills onto stools at a counter facing the sea or out to a small terrace. One dessert, a spumone from a nearby gelateria. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the whole operation fits in a postage stamp.

A Norman castle looms over this small Campanian village, and a restaurant with a blink-and-miss-it sign sits below it turning out seafood at prices that don't match the setting. It's a casual trattoria: pasta with shellfish, fish stewed in tomato with greens, raw options when the catch warrants it. The babà at the end is the thing regulars plan around. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks.

Sandrigo is the town that gave the world the bacalà alla vicentina festival, so it makes sense that a restaurant here has built its entire identity around cod. Palmerino serves the fish plain, salted, and dried, with the house centerpiece being that same local classic, made with stoccafisso despite what the name implies. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, the menu adds other seafood and a few meat dishes for the unconvinced.

The name is the naval coordinates of the spot, which sits a few metres from the Tiber with moored boats in view and a shipyard for a neighbour. This is a casual, relaxed seafood trattoria where Lele Usai, the chef behind the Michelin-starred Il Tino upstairs, keeps things deliberately simple: spaghetti alle vongole lupini, grilled fish, whatever came off the best boats. The outdoor tables tip the whole thing into something close to a holiday.

A trattoria in a tight Ligurian seaside village that started life as a fishing-net warehouse, and hasn't tried very hard to forget it. The room is simple and old-school, with tables outside on a characteristically narrow street. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand for the kind of generous, unfussy seafood cooking that's been arriving from the kitchen for generations: fish soup a permanent fixture, fish tartare turning heads lately.

A seafood trattoria in the flatlands outside Ferrara that has been a local fixture long enough to count as furniture. The room has been freshened up without losing its unfussy bones, and the kitchen stays loyal to the classics, raw scampi lightly kissed with lemon zest, turbot under a potato crust. The Michelin Guide gives it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks: this is the kind of cooking where the fish does the talking.

A seafood restaurant on the waterfront at Villa San Giovanni, where the second-floor terrace looks straight across the Strait of Messina toward Sicily. The fish comes off the grill simply, or arrives raw in preparations that lean more creative, and the kitchen holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand. Most visitors here are catching a ferry; the ones who know are booking a table instead.

Fresh fish lands each evening, and the room around it in Monterusciello, just off the Naples ring road, is something: floor-to-ceiling wine racks, warm light, and the smell of the sea before you've ordered a thing. Punto Nave is a seafood restaurant that runs the full register, from raw crudi to the catch of the day, with oysters, lobster, and white caviar for those who want to push it. It holds the top spot on 50 Top Italy's best fish restaurants list.

Raw seafood and Champagne behind the port, in the courtyard of a sixteenth-century palace, is a combination that Trani somehow keeps to itself. This is a seafood restaurant with a nautical bistro feel, where the kitchen keeps its hands light and lets the fish do the talking. Locals fill the tables, always a useful sign. The raw plates are a reason to linger, and the southern-style pasta courses follow naturally.

Perched above the port of Anzio, this old-school seafood restaurant has been running on family tradition and whatever came off the boats that morning for longer than most regulars can remember. The raw platter arrives with just oil and salt, which is either confidence or a dare. A deep wine list leans toward natural producers. It ranks fourth on the 50 Top Italy fish restaurant list, which should tell you something about the queue for a table.

The oyster plateau arrives in three sizes and reads like a passport, with Italian, French, and Irish varieties arranged by origin. This is a seafood restaurant near San Siro, elegant enough to dress for, where the menu moves from raw shellfish to fire, the chef notably skilled on the grill. The tuna belly saltimbocca gives you a sense of how tradition gets handled here: with a light hand and a clear point of view.

A seafood restaurant in Porto Cesareo where the menu follows the catch rather than the calendar, and a raw platter arrives before you've quite settled in. The chef runs the room with her daughters and a staff that's polished without being stiff. Homemade bread and a quiet reverence for olive oil set the tone early. Ranked seventh on Italy's 50 Top Fish Restaurants list, if that helps you decide.

Meat hooks still hang from the ceiling of what used to be a butcher's shop in Catania's old fish market, which tells you everything about the spirit of this street food counter. Scirocco was among the first to build a menu entirely around fresh fish delivered daily from the docks, rice balls stuffed with cuttlefish or swordfish, fried fish in a takeaway carton, and sandwiches that lean hard into Sicilian tradition. Ranked fourth on 50 Top Italy's street food list.

Tucked into the arcades of Sottoripa, a short walk from the Porto Antico bustle, this casual sandwich and fried-food counter also runs a fish-forward cocktail menu sized for aperitivo hour, with the raw and poke options changing on whatever came in that day. It landed at number ten on 50 Top Italy's best sandwiches list, which is a good reason to stand in line. The team is young and moves fast, so you won't be there long unless you want to be.

The garden terrace faces the beach close enough to hear the sea, and that alone explains why tables fill up in summer. This is a modern seafood restaurant inside Hotel Mare, where the kitchen leans heavily on whatever swam recently, prepared with enough contemporary technique to keep things interesting without losing the plot. The wine list runs deeper than you'd expect at a coastal spot. A Michelin Selected Restaurant.

A fishmonger that acquired a dining room and never quite lost the fishmonger's directness, Acqua & Sale serves unfussy fresh seafood in a relaxed, well-appointed space in Scafati. The menu leans Mediterranean with the occasional personal flourish, including raw options alongside dishes like porchetta-style tuna with green sauce and peppers. Good for anyone who wants their fish cooked without a lot of theater around it.

A family-run seafood restaurant in the shadow of the shipyards, in the old Panzano district that was purpose-built to house the workers who built the ships. The room is simple and the portions are generous, in the way that places run by families for a long time tend to be. The menu leans classic fish and seafood, and if you're feeling ambitious, there's a video on hand explaining how to make seafood risotto at home.

The dining room is a 17th-century olive oil press, stone mill and wooden press still in place under vaulted ceilings in a medieval village that looks like it was designed by a tourism board. The restaurant leans into its setting with Ligurian seafood given an imaginative push, the catch of the day landing in an Italian-style ceviche, local ingredients doing most of the talking. The simpler bistro around the corner, I Torchietti, is run by the same team if you want a lighter commitment.

A cycle path is all that stands between the terrace and Lake Garda, which means a warm evening here involves a quiet negotiation for the outdoor tables. This is a lakeside restaurant leaning heavily into fish, split between local catch from the water you're practically sitting in and seafood from the coast. The kitchen balances the classic and the contemporary without making a fuss about it. A handful of guestrooms upstairs, all with lake views, if you'd rather not leave.

Perched on the top floor of the historic Kursaal building on the seafront, this contemporary Italian restaurant makes a meal of the view before the food even arrives. The menu leans on Adriatic fish and seafood, with classic regional preparations alongside more restless cooking, a turbot dish that uses fillets, cheeks, and something approximating the crackling being a fair example of how the kitchen thinks. Tableside finishing keeps things theatrical.

Up a floor in a palazzo along a porticoed alley in the pedestrian center, Belle Parti is the kind of classic seafood restaurant that makes you feel you've wandered into someone's very tasteful dining room. Exposed beams, paintings, and mirrors compete handsomely for your attention, and the seasonal menu leans toward the Adriatic, with a few good meat options for the table's dissenter.

A fish display cabinet that changes with the catch each day sits at the center of this family-run seafood restaurant in Porto Cervo, where you pick what you want and the kitchen handles the rest. It's an informal room with a Mediterranean menu, run by two brothers whose easy professionalism keeps the place full. The new terrace lounge, with its view over the coastline, is where people linger long after the plates are cleared.

A casual fish spot right on the Soverato seafront promenade, where the menu is built around the idea that good fish needs very little help. Catch comes fried, raw, tucked into rolls, or piled onto friselle bread, with generous salads and house-made desserts filling out the gaps. Wine by the glass and cocktails, including creative originals in the evening, keep things lively. The Michelin Guide has it on their radar.

The veranda opens fully in good weather, roof and all, so the sea air genuinely runs the room. This is a classic seafood restaurant near Martina Franca's town square, built around raw preparations and high-quality fish handled with care. New management has freshened the direction without losing the old-school character. The front garden and private parking are small graces that add up, and the menu stays loyal to clean, fragrant, coastal cooking.

A seafood restaurant where the wine cellar runs to 25,000 bottles, heavy on Collio and Colli Orientali labels alongside the kind of large-format bottles that make serious collectors rearrange their plans. The kitchen leans classic, with the day's catch handled simply enough that the fish does the talking. San Giovanni al Natisone sits inland, but the menu reads like the Adriatic is just outside.