The Best Places to Eat and Do in Italy

Climbing plants soften deliberately aged green walls, and a small terrace out front sets the tone before you've ordered a thing. This is a Nikkei restaurant and cocktail bar where the chef, a Peruvian native, works the Japanese-Peruvian crossover with a light hand and sharp contrasts. Tasting menus and à la carte both run alongside a sip pairing, small cocktail tastings built around Nikkei ingredients, which is a more considered idea than it sounds.

Red paper lanterns over the tables and lounge music set the mood at this contemporary Chinese restaurant near Piazza Wagner. The kitchen takes classic dim sum and familiar Chinese cooking and nudges them somewhere more interesting, folding in foie gras, XO sauce, cured ham, and other detours that feel considered rather than gimmicky. The room is sleek enough that you'd dress up, relaxed enough that you wouldn't stress about it.

A winding uphill road from the coast leads to this family-run trattoria, where the terrace looks back out over the sea. The menu is almost entirely meat, rooted in Abruzzo tradition: arrosticini, barbecued cuts, fragrant mushrooms, and one token salted cod for the outliers. Save room for the pizza dogge, a layered dessert of sponge, custard, and Alkermes liqueur that has absolutely nothing to do with pizza. The wine list stays local.

A preserved oak tree grows from the center of the dining room, lit up like it knows it's the main attraction. This creative restaurant in a stone building on the edge of Colle di Val d'Elsa serves modern tasting menus alongside an à la carte that moves between meat, seafood, and vegetables with the seasons. The kitchen leans into technique without losing the comfort of familiarity, and the front-of-house team keeps things warm and loose.

A bar and restaurant sitting in the small piazza at the top of Bergamo's funicular, with a terrace that looks out over the city below. The room has a retro, slightly Anglo-inflected feel, all rustic wood and unhurried service from staff who seem genuinely pleased you made the climb. Meat is the kitchen's main argument, backed by bread and desserts baked in-house. In summer the terrace is the obvious move; apparently a few regulars claim it in winter too, when the sun cooperates.

A small, candlelit dining room a short walk from the Politeama theatre, Bebop is a contemporary restaurant where the kitchen takes Sicilian ingredients seriously and then does unexpected things with them. The chef is young and the menu shows it, in a good way: local tradition gets rerouted through a modern sensibility without losing the thread back to the island. Dress like you mean it; the room has that kind of energy.

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 modern bistro tucked into a small garden in Forlì's historic centre, where the big windows and summer terrace do a lot of the heavy lifting. The kitchen runs contemporary Italian, with meat and fish dishes that lean personal rather than traditional. Lunch brings a lighter menu for anyone who has afternoon plans. Come evening, the cocktail list pulls real weight as an aperitif stop, and the digestif selection suggests nobody is in a hurry to leave.

Panoramic windows frame Lake Annone at this fine dining room inside the Bianca Relais, where sunsets over the surrounding hills tend to distract from the menu. The chef, who previously held a Michelin star at Vecchio Ristoro in Aosta, runs three blind tasting menus: one for the plant world, one built around freshwater fish, and one that follows the market. Dressing up is the right call; the room expects it.

The old Arnolfo space in Colle di Val d'Elsa's historic center has a new chapter: a relaxed Italian restaurant running a short, seasonal menu where the main courses are simply called "Italian specialities," which is either charmingly modest or very confident. Bread gets serious attention here, including a dipping option designed specifically for the Cinta Senese pork sauce. On warm days, the terrace is quiet enough to feel like a secret.

The large wooden bar anchors this all-day bistro inside the La Perla hotel, where the bartenders keep busy from aperitivo hour well into dinner. Mountain lodge décor leans cheerful rather than rustic-chic, and live music fills the room most evenings. The menu runs through the familiar notes of Italian tradition, and the wine list is serious enough to keep a sommelier quiet for a while.

A short walk from the waterfront in Siderno, this seafood and Calabrian trattoria keeps its menu tight and its cooking rooted in what the coast actually produces. The housemade fresh pasta is the thing to focus on, scialatielli with shrimp and stracciatella being a local favorite, and the bread arrives with an artisanal oil that tastes like the region in one dip. Warm, unhurried, and selected by the Michelin Guide.

The name translates to Blue Grape, and the old stone dining room in Algund earns it. This is a modern South Tyrolean restaurant where the chef leans on fermentation and local sourcing to push regional cooking somewhere new, without the folk-costume nostalgia that can weigh it down. Evenings run as a tasting menu; lunch is looser and more affordable. The hospitality matches the room, warm but never fussy.

The shaded terrace faces Lake Maggiore and the Rocca d'Angera, which is either a medieval fortress or proof that Arona has always known its angles. This is a lakeside Italian restaurant where the chef calls herself a home-style cook, and the menu backs her up with unfussy, flavour-forward dishes built around local freshwater fish. Carlo runs the front of house and takes the wine pairings seriously, so let him.

A gazebo dining room where the waves breaking on the beach are close enough to count, with a sheltered indoor room waiting if the weather turns. This is a modern Sicilian restaurant where the chef runs tasting menus, vegetarian options included, alongside an à la carte list that pulls from both land and sea. The cooking leans local and contemporary, plated with the kind of color and care that makes you slow down.

A restored farmhouse on the edge of Montalcino, with a glazed terrace that earns its keep even in winter. This is a Tuscan restaurant where the kitchen leans into the territory, peposo and onion soup alongside more contemporary plates, and the wine list tilts heavily toward local reds, Brunello especially, with older vintages getting their due. The service knows its bottles cold, which matters when the list runs that deep.

A flower-scented courtyard in Albaro's quiet residential streets sets the tone before you've even sat down. Inside, this contemporary Ligurian restaurant trades on the pleasures of careful sourcing, steering between the coast and the hills as the season dictates. The room is warm and unhurried, the kind of place where dessert is not an afterthought but a small event in itself, which the menu will remind you of more than once.

A bistro in the Ravizza neighborhood where the gyoza comes filled with ossobuco and finished with saffron cream, which tells you most of what you need to know about the kitchen's sense of humor. It's the kind of warm, brick-and-wood room that Italy does better than anywhere, serving contemporary Italian cooking that takes occasional detours through Spain and East Asia without losing the thread. A sister spot, Casa Lucia, handles pizza around the corner.

Named for a rare butterfly found only in the Vulture hills, this creative restaurant occupies a carefully restored ruin in a corner of Basilicata most people couldn't point to on a map. The dining room reads modern inside ancient walls, and the kitchen leans into tasting menus built around hyper-local Lucanian ingredients. The kind of place where the amuse-bouches alone make a case for the whole region.

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 historic villa in the Monte Grappa foothills, with kitchen gardens that actually feed the tasting menus, is a good argument for creative modern cuisine. The chef builds seasonal menus around short-supply-chain and organic ingredients, following the territory's rhythm rather than fighting it. The cellar leans into PIWI grape varieties alongside the classics, and the front-of-house runs things with the kind of quiet attention that makes a long tasting dinner feel easy rather than exhausting.

A creative restaurant perched above the Asti hills, with the estate's own vineyards rolling out beneath the terrace and nobody pretending that isn't the point. Inside, the dining room is modern and unfussy, letting the chef do the talking with Piedmontese cooking that respects the old recipes just enough before quietly ignoring them. A handful of guestrooms mean you can stay, which is convenient given the wine list is right there.

The panoramic terrace looking out over the Castelli Romani hills tells you immediately what kind of restaurant this is: old-school, comfortable in its own skin, with no interest in reinventing itself. Classic Lazio cooking fills the menu, the focaccia that comes with the bread basket has its own quiet reputation, and the dining room has the settled feel of a family place that has been feeding the same hills for generations.

A dining room lined with books, paintings, and wine bottles so dense it reads more like a private library than a restaurant. This old-school Veronese spot has been in the same family forever, and it shows: you pass through the bar first, then settle in for a menu of charcuterie, strong French cheese, and serious meat and fish dishes, backed by a cellar running to around two thousand labels.

The grill does most of the talking here, turning out meat-forward plates with fish options alongside, and appetisers that don't shy away from tripe and sweetbreads. It's a relaxed osteria occupying an old café that's been around forever, reopened by three partners who kept the classics and the quality ingredients but skipped the dusty atmosphere. A la carte runs generous and straightforward, the kind of menu where you don't need to overthink it.

Fine dining in a garden overlooking the bay, the Caldura sea stacks, and the Rocca above Cefalù, with the kind of view that makes you forget you ordered three courses. The kitchen works Sicilian ingredients through a genuinely creative lens, running a vegetable-focused menu that moves through local herbs and flowers without ever tasting virtuous about it. The sustainable approach extends to using every scrap of each ingredient, which sounds like homework but shows up as flavor.

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.

A Japanese chef with two decades of cooking in Italy runs this contemporary Italian restaurant tucked just far enough from Siena's centro storico to thin the tourist crowds. The approach is modern and precise, Italian meat and fish dishes shaped by a quietly different sensibility. Seafood risotto is a near-constant on the menu, and the room feels like a find rather than a destination, which is half the appeal.

A 16th-century farmhouse amid open countryside, with a kitchen garden out back supplying the dining room within. This is a contemporary Piedmontese restaurant where the chef keeps the ingredient list short and the flavors recognizably old-school, pulling modern technique into the background rather than the foreground. The wine list leans deep into the lesser-known appellations of Upper Piedmont, Ghemme, Gattinara, Boca, and Sizzano, plus bottles from the estate itself.

The view from this rooftop restaurant takes in Castel dell'Ovo, Capri, the Sorrento Coast, and Vesuvius all at once, which makes it difficult to focus on your food, though the food would like your attention. Tasting menus built on Campanian seafood and vegetables are the kitchen's preferred language, with à la carte available for the commitment-averse. The clientele tends toward the kind of people who dress for a backdrop like this.

Tucked along the road through Agrigento's archaeological park, this intimate family-run restaurant spreads across two small rooms on different floors. The kitchen leans hard into vegetables, many grown on the family's own farm, folded into a personal take on Sicilian cooking. One brother cooks, another talks wine with real enthusiasm, and their father holds the door. It reads like a passion project, which the family name, loosely meaning "beloved," quietly confirms.

Tucked into the basement of what is otherwise an office building in central Milan, this intimate restaurant and cocktail bar reinterprets Lombard cooking through a Japanese lens. Sharing snacks, raw dishes, and sushi rolls carry the cross-cultural idea most clearly, while a tight list of twelve house cocktails keeps the same thread going. The room is quiet enough that the food gets to do the talking.

Tucked under the portico on Oleggio's main piazza, this contemporary Italian restaurant feels like a well-kept local secret that locals keep poorly. The room is warm and quietly elegant, with intimate tables and service that's polished without being stiff. The kitchen leans into Piedmontese seasons, letting produce lead while the chef's seasoning does the quiet, convincing work in the background.

A series of intimate dining rooms near the Pantheon, each decorated differently, from a gallery of painted portraits to a library corner that feels lifted from a London club. Casa Coppelle is a sit-down restaurant where the kitchen fuses Italian and French cooking into something that reads as neither and both. The wine list is serious, the service is the kind that notices things without being asked.

The old family home in Fara Filiorum Petri still feels like one, all warmth and worn-in elegance, now given over to serious Abruzzese cooking. The menu runs from cured ham and charcoal-grilled local lamb to pheasant terrine lifted with apple, and the kitchen's own olive oil turns up in dishes the way a good host slips something extra onto your plate. A four-course tasting menu keeps the whole thing remarkably grounded on the bill.

A restaurant that earns its name by literally leading you through a palazzo room by room until you land in the old cellars below, which is where dinner really starts to make sense. The cooking is rooted in Campanian tradition, the kind that leans on San Marzano tomatoes, house salumi, and handmade pasta rather than any urge to reinvent them. A serious regional table in a setting that feels like someone's well-appointed family home.

The restaurant grows its own vegetables, runs entirely on renewable energy, and sources its winter beef from a butcher who selects specific animals for the kitchen. That's a lot of conviction for one building. It's a modern country restaurant outside Turin, where the dining room fills with natural light through oversized windows and the cooking leans into Piedmontese tradition without being precious about it.