The Best Places to Eat and Do in Italy

The dining room seems to grow straight out of the beach, with big windows framing the Adriatic and a room that's noticeably more polished than the setting suggests. This is a proper seafood restaurant built around the day's catch, with classic dishes from the Adriatic coast and daily specials that follow the market wherever it goes. The wine list reaches well into France, which is a quiet flex for a place this close to the sand.

A farm estate east of Modena that also produces balsamic vinegar sets the scene for this countryside restaurant. The menu moves between Emilian tradition and the chef's own instincts, so tortelli in capon broth might sit alongside something more inventive, depending on the season. The room is quiet in the way that only fields can make a room quiet, which is either deeply restorative or deeply alarming, depending on your relationship with silence.

A contemporary restaurant in the Padova province that grew out of a gastro pub and kept growing, which explains the wine list's unusual passion for international sparkling wines. The menu runs meat and fish with a leaning toward luxury ingredients, Wagyu and foie gras doing most of the talking. Lunch skews lighter, but the à la carte is where the kitchen shows off. Cocktails are on at midday too, which is either civilized or a warning.

The name nods to the old Florentine prison next door, and the chef leans into that with a dining room frescoed in gold leaf and a kitchen so open it practically pulls you into conversation. A fine dining restaurant tucked behind the Uffizi, serving creative contemporary Italian that moves comfortably between meat and fish. The crowd tends toward people who've done the museum and want the meal to match.

The 4.5km of switchbacks to reach this farm-to-table restaurant on a Ligurian estate might make you question your choices, but the Tyrrhenian Sea view from the table has a way of settling that debate. The kitchen leans on its own garden, local fish, and carefully chosen meat, and the cooking is bright and seasonal, occasionally pulled off the barbecue in the way that makes simple things taste like a point being made.

Minimalist interiors and a full-on Japanese aesthetic mark this long-running Milan restaurant, where the menu runs deeper than most. It's a traditional Japanese dining room doing set lunch and à la carte at dinner, with the kind of range that rewards slow reading. The sukiyaki, a simmering tableside broth of meat and vegetables meant for sharing, is the sort of thing that turns a weeknight into an occasion.

A meat-focused osteria a short walk from the island of Ortigia, where the kitchen ages cuts on the premises and fires them in a Josper oven. The sourcing leans toward non-intensive farms, which the menu is happy to tell you about. Sicilian wines anchor a list that wanders usefully beyond the island. Soft lighting and genuinely warm service make the whole thing feel less like a steakhouse and more like someone's very well-stocked dining room.

Tucked into a narrow alley near the Duomo, this old-school trattoria has been feeding Bressanone locals for generations, its dining rooms dressed in historic dark wood with a terrace that fills up the moment summer arrives. The kitchen straddles South Tyrolean and Mediterranean traditions, turning out tasting menus alongside à la carte options, with Tirtl, a fried ricotta and spinach pastry, among the dishes regulars tend to order without consulting the menu.

The dark wood and low ceilings of the dining room put you somewhere between a mountain hut and a serious osteria, which is more or less what Le Due Spade is. It has been around forever, feeding Trento since the Council of Trent era, and the kitchen still leans into Alpine Italian cooking: char, strudel, risotto, local produce handled with enough imagination that it never feels like a museum of regional food.

Tiny is barely the word: a handful of tables in a tucked-away Castello calle, and reservations that disappear weeks out. This snug seafood-forward osteria runs a menu shaped entirely by the market, with vegetables grown on Sant'Erasmo island through a collective kitchen-garden shared among small Venice restaurants. The cooking is rooted in the Venetian tradition, without fuss or flourish, which is exactly why the room is always full.

Tucked into the Barolo vineyards outside La Morra, this fine dining restaurant inside the Arborina Relais runs on a no-waste philosophy that shapes the menu rather than decorating it. Two tasting menus, at five or eight courses, pull from Piedmontese tradition with enough modern technique to keep things interesting. The wine list reads like a love letter to the surrounding hills, which makes sense given what's growing just outside the window.

Frescoed ceilings from the last century look down on two small dining rooms tucked behind the porticoes of Mondovì's oldest square, and the room has the kind of unhurried warmth that makes you order one more glass. This is a traditional Piedmontese osteria with a kitchen that lightens the classics without flattening them. The dining room manager knows the menu cold, so if the choices blur together, just ask.

The veranda's retro curve stops park walkers mid-stride, which is a reasonable way to find a restaurant. Inside, the Billis twins run an osteria that calls its approach "new tradition," meaning Piedmontese cooking refracted through wider influences. Local ingredients stay, but the techniques roam. The room has the kind of unhurried atmosphere that makes an extra glass feel inevitable, which is probably the point.

A chalet fireplace that smells of woodsmoke in a village so small you'll question your GPS twice sets the scene for this traditional Italian osteria. The kitchen follows the mountain calendar closely, moving from wild herbs in spring to woodland fruits in autumn. One tasting menu, booked at least two days ahead, which is either charming or inconvenient depending on your travel style.

A table for two on a small terrace right at the canal is the opening argument here. This elegant trattoria in San Polo keeps its cooking rooted in Venice, which in season means fried moleche, the soft-shell crabs that appear briefly and disappear before you've planned a second trip. The wine cellar runs to around 800 labels, with a grappa and cognac selection that suggests nobody is in a hurry to leave.

Rothia, a white wine custard dusted with cinnamon and spiced bread, is as good a reason as any to end a meal here. This old-school osteria in the historic center has been turning out Valdostan classics forever: cured meats with fontina, polenta, fondue in its various forms. The wine list leans heavily local, with well over a hundred Aosta Valley labels, many poured by the glass.

The name comes from an old-school tradition of selling wine for 36 cents a litre, and the spirit of that transaction, good things at fair prices, still seems to be the point. This Parma osteria serves Emilian classics with the occasional contemporary detour, and the wine list is the kind that someone clearly thought hard about, built to move alongside the food rather than show off beside it.

A 16th-century dining room with a fireplace sets the tone at this Tuscan osteria in the hill town of Cortona, where the cooking stays close to local tradition and whatever the season is offering. Theatrical decor runs through every room, from the formal to the trattoria-style. A small terrace looks onto the pedestrian street, and the few tables out there go fast, so book ahead if eating outdoors matters to you.

Books and wine bottles share the walls with old photos at this intimate bistro tucked into a quiet corner of Ravenna's historic centre. Tables are small and close together, the lighting is low, and the whole thing has an almost Parisian feel that feels slightly unlikely this deep into Emilia-Romagna. The menu runs contemporary Italian, the wine list strays into the rest of Europe, and you should book ahead, because the room fills fast.

Vine-covered pergola in summer, warm low-lit room the rest of the year, this is an old-school osteria in the Langhe hills outside Barbaresco. The kitchen cooks Piedmontese home recipes to order, the kind passed down rather than invented, and the spinach frittata is the sort of dish that looks modest until you understand what modest can mean here. The wine list leans local and stays reasonable, which in this corner of Piedmont is its own small miracle.

The red house at Kaberlaba holds two restaurants, and this is the more relaxed one, where the kitchen turns toward Veneto classics like baccalà alla vicentina and tripe. It shares a roof with a Michelin-starred sibling, so the odd crossover dish appears on the menu. The carbonara, made with local ingredients, has developed its own following. An osteria in the old sense: proper food, full flavors, no need to dress up.

Tables overlooking Piazza Grande and the Loggia Vasariana set the scene at this contemporary Italian restaurant, where the kitchen leans into seasonal cooking with real technique. Pigeon appears in multiple cuts, each handled differently, paired with sweet onion and cocoa nibs. The front-of-house team knows the wine list deeply and will talk you through it at length, which, in Arezzo, is exactly the kind of evening you came for.

A stone passageway in a mountain village is an unlikely place to find a kitchen working this carefully, yet here it is. Osteria Il Bagatto is a small, intimate gourmet restaurant where the menu shifts with the seasons and leans into the Alps without becoming a greatest-hits of local clichés. The wine list is short but pulls real bottles, and the chef clearly knows what to do with sweetbreads.

Osteria il Moro sits along Trapani's main thoroughfare with a terrace for watching the town go by. It's a contemporary Sicilian restaurant where the kitchen leans hard on the sea but makes room for a braised cheek dish finished with a centuries-old chocolate sauce that sounds wrong and tastes like the point of the whole trip. The wine list keeps things regional without feeling provincial. Dressier than a trattoria, less formal than you'd expect for cooking this considered.

Tasting menus named after places, built around ingredients that change with the season, served at just a handful of tables in a warmly lit room in Tolentino. The chef came from Albania and spent years absorbing Italian culinary tradition, and the cooking sits at that interesting crossroads, contemporary but grounded. Book ahead, because the room fills fast and walking in is optimistic thinking.

A bright, spacious dining room in the center of Seregno, where the mood manages to feel both convivial and discreet, which is harder to pull off than it sounds. This is a contemporary Italian osteria with a serious approach to ingredients and a wine list that earns its own conversation. The chef trained under a noted Lombardian hand, and the tasting menu reflects that pedigree without making you feel like you're sitting an exam.

A terrace just off the tourist drag in Stresa's historic center sets the tone for this contemporary Italian restaurant: relaxed but considered, and clearly not here to sell you a postcard. The kitchen moves between land and sea with some ease, pulling from local producers and letting the ingredients do the talking. Ravioli stuffed with farmyard meats sits comfortably beside octopus in saffron broth, and neither dish feels out of place.

The blackboard changes daily, which is the point. This welcoming Palermo trattoria runs on Sicilian seafood, the kind that reads the morning's catch and builds around it. Local tradition anchors the menu, but the kitchen stays light on its feet, and the house caciucco, a fragrant broth packed with John Dory, scorpionfish, sea bass, prawns, and squid, makes a case for both at once. Leave room for the deconstructed cannolo.

Vegetables grown a few kilometers away in the family's garden end up on your plate the same day, which sets the tone for everything at this cozy Apulian restaurant on Corso Cavour. The kitchen works through tasting menus and à la carte, reinterpreting regional traditions without losing sight of where it is. Service runs warm and precise, the kind that anticipates without hovering. A good spot for a long, unhurried lunch in Ostuni.

A small, intimate osteria tucked into the historic center of Zagarolo, where the cooking starts with Lazio pantry staples and then quietly wanders elsewhere, pulling in ingredients that have no obvious business being this close to Rome. The menu reads local until it doesn't. The terrace is worth requesting in good weather, and the room is small enough that booking ahead is less a suggestion than a fact of life.

An old-school osteria just outside Masone that sat dark for years before two young chefs decided to bring it back, cooking the border country where Liguria tips into Piedmont. The room feels pleasantly contemporary without forgetting what the building is, and the kitchen does the same, taking regional recipes and pressing them forward with technique that earns its keep. A Michelin Selected Restaurant.

A small Art Nouveau villa in the Tuscan countryside sets an unexpectedly polished stage for a modern osteria with old roots. The menu leans heavily on meat, with Tuscan tradition doing most of the heavy lifting, and when hunting season rolls around, the game dishes shift things into a more contemporary register. A courtyard garden out back handles the warm-weather overflow. The wine list sneaks in a few French bottles, which feels almost rebellious given the address.

Salt cod gets its own tasting menu here, which tells you something about how seriously the Murani brothers take Apulian tradition. This is a warm, unfussy osteria east of Foggia's centre, where the kitchen runs on seasonal produce, some of it from their own garden, and on family recipes that feel like they were cooked for you specifically. The wine list is all regional, and the room is bright enough to make the food look good before you've even tasted it.

A handsome old palazzo in Noceto's center, right at the edge of Emilia-Romagna's legendary food belt, now runs as a multi-floor dining destination with a bar and bistro on the ground level and a more formal gourmet room upstairs. The tasting menus lean creative and contemporary, with à la carte available alongside a serious wine list. The kind of place where the building does half the work, and the kitchen seems to know it.

Parma is prosciutto country, so a restaurant that splits its attention evenly between land and sea is a quiet act of defiance. Parizzi is a comfortable, colourful dining room on a central street, serving contemporary takes on the local canon alongside a proper seafood side of the menu. The kitchen leans on good sourcing and clean technique over flourish, which in this part of Italy is basically a philosophical statement.