The Best Places in Italy

A Japanese restaurant just outside San Pantaleo's village center, built on a premise that could easily go wrong: an Italian chef who learned his craft traveling the world, now pulling fresh Sardinian fish into sushi and gyoza in a quietly minimal room. The Italian-Japanese handshake extends to dessert, where mochi shares the table with Italian-inspired sweets. The Michelin Guide has it selected, and the logic tracks.

Five tables, soft light, and wood everywhere you look: Mogano is a small, intimate restaurant tucked beside the Ritual Lab brewery in Formello, built around the idea that craft beer belongs at a serious dinner table. The chef spent years cooking internationally before landing here, folding Italian instincts into something harder to pin down. Guests get an aperitif in the kitchen before they sit, which sets the tone nicely for an evening that never quite fits a category.

A family-run restaurant tucked into the Dolomite valley of Sappada, where the kitchen leans hard into the forest around it, wild game, mountain herbs, and whatever the season allows. The wine cellar, called KAVEAU, is the kind of room that turns a bottle of something regional into an event. The crowd tends toward people who planned the drive, not stumbled in. Michelin has it in the Guide.

The chef's table tucked into the kitchen is the detail that sets the tone here. This dinner-only fine dining room inside a design hotel serves a quietly confident Italian menu, with the kitchen leaning on the country's own pantry rather than reaching abroad. The room runs soft and elegant; guests who want to ease in gently tend to start with drinks downstairs at Bulk before heading up.

A father cooks while his son tends the room and the cellar, which gives Musciora the kind of focused intensity that usually takes a committee to ruin. This is a tasting-menu restaurant in Alghero built around Sardinian ingredients, offered across three menus: one from the sea, one from the hinterland, and one that folds both together. The wine list leans hard into small Sardinian producers and natural bottles from further afield.

Large windows frame the Tuscia Viterbese woodland at this modern Italian restaurant tucked inside a country resort outside Sutri. The kitchen takes traditional Lazio recipes as a starting point and works them forward with contemporary technique, leaning on local produce. Fresh pasta and dry-aged wild boar show up regularly, and the room's soft lighting does the kind of heavy lifting that a good candlelit table should.

The wine cellar sits in a vaulted space that's been around for centuries, which sets the tone for an otherwise modern Tuscan restaurant in a small Val di Pesa hill town. The kitchen riffs on regional cooking with technical confidence, and the pastry side, handled by the co-owner, has a playful streak, including a tiramisù finished with a whisper of tobacco. The wine list has grown into something serious over the years.

A small, polished dining room tucked between Vomero and the Chiaia waterfront, where the wine list leans hard on Campanian labels and the kitchen runs on Mediterranean instincts with a contemporary edge. Two tasting menus or à la carte, both structured around land and sea with the occasional exotic turn that keeps things interesting. The kind of place that seats few people quietly and means it.

A farmhouse restaurant outside Piacenza where an open hearth warms the dining room in winter and a shaded terrace takes over come summer. The feel is a well-loved private home, and the menu leans into that generosity: four tasting menus plus a long à la carte spanning meat, fish, and vegetarian. The wine cellar runs to over 700 labels, with a soft spot for cooler-climate bottles that most Italian lists ignore.

Charcoal-grilled lamb with rhubarb is the move to watch at this contemporary Italian restaurant inside a sleek new Rome hotel. The young chef spent serious time in France and Japan, and the cooking lands somewhere between classical precision and something fresher, with clean flavors that don't need much explaining. The room shares the hotel's polished lines, and the crowd skews international, which makes sense given the passport stamps behind the menu.

Duck shows up across the menu at this rustic Lombard trattoria in the Bassa Pavese flatlands, most memorably in the ragù that comes folded through fusilloni pasta. Lunch runs casual and honest, weekends lean more regional and considered, and the wine list stretches further than the setting might suggest. Easy to reach off the A21, which means the midday crowd knows exactly what it's doing when it pulls off the highway here.

The stone walls and vaulted ceilings have been around forever, first as a monastery, then an inn, and now a contemporary regional restaurant in the small town of Borgonovo Val Tidone. The kitchen leans into Emilia-Romagna's pantry but updates it with enough modern technique to keep things interesting. A handful of guestrooms next door means dinner doesn't have to end with a drive.

An open kitchen anchors this cheerful contemporary Italian restaurant near the Sant'Ambrogio market, where the menu shifts with the seasons and the cooking shows real precision without taking itself too seriously. The chef pairs duck breast with bao alongside the expected Tuscan touches, and the room's colourful furnishings match the energy of a front-of-house team that seems to be having as good a time as the guests.

A beach club that quietly grew up around its restaurant, Oasi sits on the Follonica waterfront where a husband and wife split duties between kitchen and floor. He's self-taught and lets it show in small, confident ways, the kind of seafood place where the classic preparations get a personal nudge rather than a makeover. The Ligurian coast crowd who wander in for lunch sometimes forget to leave before dinner.

An old South Tyrolean farmhouse that has been feeding people for longer than anyone currently alive can verify, Oberraindlhof is the kind of regional restaurant where five generations of the same family have decided that local recipes and nearby ingredients are the whole point. The ravioli stuffed with valley cheese are the kind of dish that quietly makes the case for staying put. The wine list is serious, the atmosphere is not.

A modern seafood bistro in central Saronno, connected to the Michelin-starred Olio in Origgio, which explains why the kitchen punches with more confidence than the postcode suggests. The menu leans heavily into raw preparations and clean, bright flavors, skipping pasta entirely in favor of fish-forward plates and a handful of meat options. The wine list is short and deliberate. Book ahead, even for lunch, the room fills.

The entrance, plastered floor to ceiling with stickers, looks more like a record shop than a restaurant, and the surfboard serving as a table near the door keeps that energy going. Inside, it's a casual contemporary spot in the Mercato delle Erbe, serving Emilian cooking that wanders confidently into other traditions, most famously a Bolognese ramen built around tagliolino in mushroom broth. Cocktails are available to open or close the meal. Book ahead.

Floor-to-ceiling windows on the fifth floor frame the Amalfi Coast in a way that makes whatever's on the plate work harder to compete. This is a creative contemporary restaurant with its roots deep in Campanian tradition, where the kitchen reworks local flavors rather than abandoning them. The cooking leans seasonal and ingredient-forward, the room has been recently redone, and the view does a lot of the heavy lifting for the mood.

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.