The Best Sushi in Italy

Floor-to-ceiling windows flood a spare, minimal dining room at the base of a Porta Nuova tower, where a Michelin-starred kaiseki restaurant works through the full arc of Japanese cuisine, raw to cooked. The chef's menu moves from sashimi and nigiri into traditional preparations, including Iberian pork with negimiso sauce served on a magnolia leaf. A separate omakase counter runs its own show by reservation, worth booking before you arrive.

A sushi restaurant in Porta Romana where the case for Japanese traditionalism is made quietly, through precise knife work and clean preparations that don't need architectural plating to make their point. An omakase counter lets you watch the chef work up close. The sake selection is taken seriously alongside the wine list, and tempura with wasabi salt has a way of settling any doubts about the kitchen's priorities.

Twelve seats at the counter, no menu, and the chef decides everything, which is the whole point of omakase. This is an intimate sushi counter in central Prato run by an Italian chef whose years of travel through Japan show up in the fish he selects each morning at market. The course changes daily, the wine list is solid, and the room fills fast enough that booking borders on mandatory.

A medieval courtyard in central Bologna is a genuinely odd setting for a sushi restaurant, but the contrast works. The dining room runs modern bistro, and in summer the courtyard fills up nicely. The menu stays close to Japanese tradition with a few personal riffs, and the front-of-house team is unusually good at walking newcomers through both the food and the sake list without making anyone feel remedial.

The sushi counter runs omakase only, eight to eleven courses, no à la carte wandering allowed. This is a contemporary Japanese restaurant where the chef moves between raw fish and Angus beef with equal confidence, folding miso, truffle, and yuzu into the through-line. The room reads like a serious night out in Milan, dressed up but not stiff. A Michelin Guide selection, and ranked among Italy's top sushi spots by 50 Top Italy.

A sushi restaurant in Perugia that also runs a traditional Japanese menu, and does both with the kind of unhurried seriousness you don't expect this far from the coast. The room is relaxed and welcoming, and the presentation is careful without being fussy. Prices sit above what the region usually asks, but the sourcing explains most of it. It landed at number eight on 50 Top Italy's sushi list, which for Umbria is a fairly extraordinary thing to be able to say.

A sushi and fusion restaurant in the old heart of Turin where the menu runs on the motto "Taste different," which it seems to mean. The kitchen bends Japanese technique toward Sicilian instincts and the occasional French flourish, cold green-tea noodles sharing the menu with wagyu ham and butter-seared scallop. It ranked sixth on 50 Top Italy's sushi list, for whatever direction you need pointing.

A proper sushi bar counter greets you at the door in the San Lorenzo neighborhood, the kind where the staff will walk you through the menu without making you feel like a tourist in your own dinner. The room keeps things spare, a nod to Japanese minimalism without the full performance of it. Fresh fish, simply handled, drives everything here, with salmon worth noting in particular. A small, considered wine list rounds things out.

The name means "journey," and the kitchen leans into that, blending sushi with pan-Asian touches and cooked Japanese dishes in a restaurant that's been a Naples reference point since its earlier days on Cappella Vecchia. The menu is ambitious enough to reward the curious, though the crowd's pull toward familiar sushi selections is real. Let the team guide you through the tasting progression instead, and the place becomes something else entirely. Ranked third on 50 Top Italy's sushi list.

A small sushi spot a short walk from Benevento's center that has quietly become a reference point for sushi lovers across Campania. Seating is tight, the menu is long, and the chef has the kind of personality that fills both gaps. He'll steer you through a tasting sequence with evident enthusiasm. The wine list throws in some champagne and natural bottles alongside Japanese beer and sake, which is not what you expect in this corner of southern Italy.

Fourteen seats arranged in a horseshoe around two chefs is the whole architecture of this intimate omakase counter, where every piece of fish is shaped in front of you and the conversation with the chefs is considered part of the meal. Eating with your hands is encouraged, sake by the glass pairs naturally with the progression, and the lunch menu runs shorter if the full ritual feels like a commitment.