The Best Places in Italy

The carrello dei bolliti, a trolley of boiled meats wheeled to your table, sets the register immediately: this is old-school Piedmontese dining in a warren of small wood-ceilinged rooms hung with vintage photos. Handmade pasta and a rabbit stew piled with Carmagnola peppers anchor the menu. In summer the garden fills up, all green plants and good intentions. Somewhere your grandmother would nod approvingly, assuming she was from Cavour.

A 180-hectare biodynamic farm outside Gavi, producing much of what lands on the table, is a pretty good argument for eating where you sleep. This restaurant on the La Raia estate serves contemporary Piedmontese cooking rooted in local tradition, with tasting menus that follow the property's own wines from Gavi to Langhe. Organic, art-forward, and quietly serious, it's the kind of dinner that makes ordering off a regular menu feel lazy.

An old mill on the hills above Garda, its stone walls softened into a warm dining room, with a terrace that catches the southern stretch of the lake. This is a contemporary Mediterranean restaurant where the kitchen starts with local freshwater fish and then roams freely toward the sea and inland. The chef's mille-feuille has its own reputation, and the wasabi-dressed seafood salad is lighter than it has any right to be.

A beach club restaurant on the Sicilian coast where the loungers and umbrellas are part of the deal, and in summer the windows fold back so the whole room becomes a terrace. The kitchen follows the lead of multi-starred chef Perbellini, reworking Sicilian flavors, seafood and otherwise, with a modern hand. The vegetarian dishes get the same serious attention as everything else, which is not always a given at the seaside.

A country inn in the Alpago hills where the lamb on your plate was raised on the family's own farm nearby. The kitchen leans into the Venetian seasons, keeping things classic with just enough modern instinct to feel considered rather than dusty. When the weather cooperates, the terrace catches the sunset over the valley in a way that makes it hard to leave. An old-school family operation, the women of the house having kept it going for generations.

A country restaurant in the Piacenza hills where the grill does most of the talking, filling the outdoor dining terrace with smoke and the smell of something good. The menu moves between land, sea, and garden, with a tasting menu built around live fire or à la carte if you'd rather wander. A couple of suites and a wellness center mean you can stay, which, given the Zen garden and the view, seems like the obvious move.

The fish bao that opens the menu, a soft steamed bun served alongside empanadas filled with smoked cheese and shrimp, signals that this contemporary Italian restaurant in a small Bergamo-area town is doing something more roaming than the address suggests. Pastas and risottos anchor the middle, and Bergamo lamb brings it home before gelato closes things out. The handcrafted furniture is its own conversation starter, but the kitchen tends to win.

A contemporary dining room perched at the Sant'Erasmo belvedere, with the Adriatic and Monte Conero laid out below in summer. The chef leans into the sea for inspiration, building creative dishes around combinations that don't follow the obvious path. Two tasting menus, or à la carte if you'd rather call the shots yourself. Book ahead; the view is not a secret.

A contemporary Sicilian restaurant tucked into a low-rise resort on a quiet country road outside Modica, where the chef runs the room alongside his wife and his sommelier sister-in-law, which is either a family business or a workplace sitcom depending on the evening. The menu leans into imaginative meat and fish combinations, with tasting menus alongside à la carte. The wine list ventures well beyond Sicily, with a particular pull toward French labels and champagne.

A family trattoria in Cogne with a name that translates, in local dialect, as "the night snack," which tells you something about the spirit of the place. The cooking is rooted in Aosta Valley tradition: hearty soups, tripe with borlotti beans, polenta, the kind of food that makes sense after a day in the mountains. A historic taverna sits downstairs, a dining room above, and a handful of guestrooms for those who'd rather not leave.

Langoustines arrive at the table still in the pan they were cooked in, with oil, wine, garlic, and rosemary, which tells you most of what you need to know about this seafood restaurant on the Adriatic coast. The fish comes almost entirely from that same sea, the menu never strays onto land, and the wine list follows suit with mostly whites. An old-school institution in Giulianova Lido, and one locals have been counting on for a long time.

The ground floor of the old Banco di Napoli building, now home to the Gallerie d'Italia museum, makes for an unlikely but convincing lunch spot. This cafe-bistro and pasticceria runs from quick bar bites through to a full menu that spans international dishes and Campanian classics, the kind of place where you can eat as lightly or as seriously as the afternoon allows. The candele pasta with Neapolitan ragu and the babà tend to be the arguments for staying.

A restored Tuscan hamlet perched between Montepulciano and Montefollonico, where the chef decides the menu each morning based on whatever the estate has produced. Dinner is al fresco in warm weather, and a glass of the sunset comes free. In cooler months the dining room looks straight into an open kitchen. The road to get there is genuinely pastoral, which is the point. Book ahead if you're not sleeping here, and don't expect a printed menu to study on the way.

The large fridge near the entrance does the menu explaining before you've sat down, stacked with dry-aged cuts and house-cured salumi. This is a Lombard butcher-restaurant where Piedmontese beef is the point, grilled over coals or served boiled in the old style. In summer the courtyard fills up and the place feels like the kind of lunch that quietly takes the whole afternoon.

Tucked into the old town's narrow lanes, Machettö is a small contemporary restaurant where the chef, a Campanian transplant now firmly rooted in Liguria, folds the region's traditions into each dish with a light hand. The dining room runs warm and elegant without fuss. The brandacujun, that old Ligurian salt cod classic, gets finished tableside by the chef himself, which is either charming or theatrical depending on your mood.

The kitchen has a window onto the pass, so you can watch the brigade work while the sommelier talks you through the pairings. This is a contemporary seafood restaurant grown out of a partnership with the fishmonger next door, and the menu stays loyal to that origin: fish, shellfish, and vegetables, with quiet nods toward Japan in the marinades and fresh pasta. The room is elegant without being stiff.

Inside a converted multi-use building that also houses a museum and exhibition spaces, this roomy, post-industrial restaurant brings the flavors of Campania north to Turin. The chef's plin pasta, traditionally Piedmontese, gets reworked with cacio, black pepper, and raw prawns, which is either an act of diplomacy or a quiet provocation, depending on where you're from.

A cozy trattoria in the Nomentano quarter, a student neighborhood northeast of the center where no tour bus has ever made a wrong turn. The kitchen works its way through regional Italian traditions and then quietly does something odd and right: a classic Mantuan pumpkin tortello becomes roasted squash with curry and amaretti. The room is small, vintage in feel, and the cooking lands somewhere between a Sunday lunch and a genuinely curious mind.

A Hong Kong-born chef and her Suzzara-raised partner run this quietly personal restaurant where the menu splits between regional Italian, fish-forward traditional plates, and openly Asian cooking, sometimes on the same table. The room reflects their shared eye for applied arts, and the wine list travels as freely as the food. Seasonal, local sourcing underpins both sides of the menu, which keeps the whole thing from feeling like a gimmick.

The bar up front mixes cocktails while the dining room, minimal and elegant, handles something more considered: a modern Italian kitchen that moves between tradition and invention without making a fuss about it. It sits in a quietly residential corner of the city that fills up at dinner, making the few pavement tables feel like a bonus. The tarte Tatin has its own following.

The focaccia di Recco on the menu here isn't a nod to local tradition; it's the reason there is a local tradition. This old-school Ligurian restaurant in Recco has been in the same family for generations, and part of the building still runs as a focacceria so nobody has to wait for the good part. The main dining room goes further, with fish-forward cooking that leans traditional but takes the occasional modern turn.

Tucked beside the Fratelli Massucco winery in the Piedmontese hills, this tasting-menu restaurant gives you vineyards on one side and a kitchen garden on the other. The chef and his partner run it together, leaning hard into local ingredients and regional recipes, with quiet flashes of creativity that keep things from feeling folkloric. Three menus, including a vegetarian one, plus à la carte if commitment feels like too much today.

A Roman chef running a Piedmontese kitchen is either a provocation or a proposition, and here it reads as the latter. This contemporary Italian restaurant near the city center offers a surprise tasting menu or a full à la carte, with dishes that move between local tradition and something more personal: vivid, colorful plates built around seasonal produce and whatever the market is doing with meat and fish that week.

A family-run trattoria in the Alpine gateway town of Crodo, where the chef works the kitchen and his wife runs the room with the easy attentiveness of people who genuinely like feeding guests. The cooking leans on mountain tradition, beef and game and root vegetables, then nudges each dish somewhere slightly unexpected. The Walser beef filet has become a house signature for a reason, and the venison ossobuco with blueberry compote makes a strong argument for ordering the second menu page first.

A seafood restaurant tucked inside a private beach club on the Adriatic, where the dining room opens straight onto the sand and the umbrella rows stretch to the horizon. The cooking is careful and occasionally inventive, leaning into the catch with fresh egg pasta that mimics a risotto in the best way. The wine list leans heavily into Champagne, which, given the setting, feels like exactly the right call.

A seafood restaurant in landlocked Bolzano run by two brothers from Naples, which explains both the Campanian lilt to the menu and the wood-fired pizza available come evening. The room goes candlelit and romantic after dark, but the daily spread of raw fish is the main event regardless of hour. Classic Italian maritime cooking, Mediterranean sourced, clean flavors, no fussiness about it.

The Adriatic appears and disappears through the trees as you wind along the coastal road into Pesaro, then settles into a full backdrop behind the outdoor terrace. This contemporary restaurant is the homecoming project of a chef who spent years in serious kitchens abroad and brought the fusion instincts back with him, folding fruit into pasta with shellfish in a way that reads less like a gimmick and more like a considered point of view.

Sitting inside the Cala del Forte marina with the ruins of the Forte dell'Annunziata visible from the sea-facing tables, this is a seafood restaurant where raw fish gets top billing and an oyster bar handles the side business. The glass-fronted veranda overlooking the promenade is where you want to be, though the contemporary dining room inside is no hardship. The chef knows Ligurian waters well, and the menu follows the season wherever it leads.

A village bakery turned four-generation family trattoria, Marsupino sits in a tiny Piedmontese hamlet and cooks the kind of food that has no interest in impressing you, then impresses you anyway. The menu runs on regional tradition with a light contemporary touch, and the wine program is a genuine draw, guided by someone who talks about bottles the way other people talk about old friends.

A farmhouse restaurant set in the woods above Pedraces, Maso Runch-Hof serves Ladin home cooking in snug, wood-paneled Stube rooms on a single tasting menu. The kitchen leans into the local pantry with spinach-filled cajinci t'ega, pork ribs with polenta, and apple strudel, and the short wine list stays just as regional. A handful of chalets on the property means you can eat like this, then sleep here too.

The dining room at this rural Apulian masseria sits inside whitewashed stone walls thick enough to keep out the heat, and the menu leans hard into whatever the surrounding organic gardens are doing that week. Chef Giorgia Eugenia Goggi runs a set menu built mostly on vegetables, plated with enough color to look almost suspicious. A short list of natural Italian wines keeps things honest. Six rooms upstairs mean you don't have to leave, and people rarely want to.

Tucked into the forests of Casentino, this contemporary dining room opens onto the trees through floor-to-ceiling French doors, so lunch arrives with a side of absolute silence. The kitchen leans into its surroundings, building tasting menus from the kind of ingredients a city restaurant would call a sourcing story and a local one just calls Tuesday. The crowd runs to couples who drove a while to get here and don't mind at all.

The door looks like it belongs to someone's apartment, and inside, a wall stacked floor to ceiling with jars of seeds, lentils, and nuts makes the point before a dish arrives. This is a casual modern Sicilian restaurant where shared tables and a short menu rooted in land and sea keep things grounded. The kitchen leans on the grill and follows the seasons closely, with vegetables given the same attention as the fish.

The lift from Capo La Gala hotel drops you to the seafront, where this creative Mediterranean restaurant sits close enough to the water that the waves are an ambient soundtrack. Tasting menus lean on local recipes with a modern turn, the kind of place where a marinated amberjack arrives as the Amalfi Coast's take on ceviche. Sunset from the terrace is the sort of thing people move holidays around.

A small seafood trattoria on a quiet piazzale, with a terrace that earns its keep on warm evenings. The kitchen leans hard into fish in every form, raw and cooked, with homemade pasta pulling its weight alongside the main plates. The sparkling wine list, mostly Italian with some Champagne threaded in, is available by the glass, which in Parma, a city that lives for its cured meats, feels like a quiet act of rebellion.

Two 1930 frescoes by Giuseppe Barone hang in the dining room of this intimate restaurant near the Teatro Bellini, where a trio of young Catanian chefs have taken over a space that used to be a haunt of the city's high society. The focus is contemporary Sicilian cooking, but meat, especially off the grill, is the real reason to sit downstairs. A cocktail bar run by one of the partners occupies the floor above.

A family trattoria in Fagnano Olona where the fourth generation now runs the room, which means the cooking has been refined over a very long time without anyone forgetting what the food is supposed to taste like. The menu leans seasonal and local, with the daily specials worth a look. The wine list gets serious attention from the owner, and the service is informal enough that you won't feel watched.

Portholes punctuate the walls of this sleek seafood restaurant in Ferrari country, which is either a bold design statement or a gentle reminder that you're nowhere near the coast. The kitchen leans modern but stays honest, letting the catch carry the meal. A daily selection of raw and simply prepared fish anchors the menu, and the tagliolini with langoustine, caviar, and a Martini-spiked cabbage purée shows where the chef's ambitions surface.

The penthouse dining room of the Hotel Splendide Royal frames a panorama that takes in Villa Medici, Trinità dei Monti, and St. Peter's, which means the sunset does a lot of work before the food even arrives. This is a fine dining restaurant running on classical Italian technique with a modern sensibility, the menu moving between meat and seafood according to the season. Dress accordingly, and consider lingering.

The covered veranda sits at the exact tip of Bellagio's promontory, where the two arms of Lake Como split, so the views across to the far villages go in both directions at once. It's a modern cuisine restaurant with the feel of a grand hotel dining room, piano drifting in at dinner, guests from every corner of the world, and a menu that moves between Italian classics and quietly international territory.