The Best Places in Italy

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.

A young chef shaped by home cooking and a stretch in French kitchens runs this intimate contemporary restaurant in the middle of town. Lunch keeps things relaxed and affordable; evenings open into a more personal à la carte where land and sea dishes show off what the training was actually for. A carefully chosen natural wine list runs alongside, coherent rather than showy.

Named after the chef's mother, this tasting-menu restaurant in central Modena shifts its lighting, music, and room details in step with the menu as the seasons turn, which is either charming or a lot, depending on your tolerance for concept dining. The kitchen draws on a wide spread of references and cultures without any apparent anxiety about what goes with what. Counter seating puts the young team's storytelling right in front of you.

You can walk in straight from the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, which sets the tone immediately. This is the Park Hyatt's intimate fine dining restaurant, with contemporary art on the walls and service that knows exactly what it's doing. The kitchen runs two tasting menus, one a quiet love letter to Milan, the other following the season wherever it leads. The sommelier commands around 700 labels and seems genuinely happy to talk you through them.

Three separate tasting menus, one each for meat, fish, and vegetables, give away what kind of dinner this is: a modern restaurant where the kitchen is the whole point. The room in Fasano is warm and convivial, the cooking precise and sensory-minded, and the story behind it, started by the chef and his partner after years in Australia, gives the place an unusually wide-angle outlook for a small Apulian town.

A small, modern seafood restaurant on the western shore of Lake Bolsena, where the terrace puts you close enough to the water to feel the logic of eating fish here. The menu leans almost entirely toward the sea, which takes a little faith this far inland, but the kitchen commits to it. You can follow a themed tasting menu or pick your way through the carte, choosing at least two dishes and letting the quiet, unhurried service do the rest.

A fishmonger that gradually started feeding people, Pesceria San Martino is a small, unpretentious seafood restaurant in Ciriè where the front room is intimate and a glass conservatory opens to the garden in summer. The kitchen leans into what you'd expect from its origins: very fresh fish, fried squid available to take away, and a "seafood charcuterie" that earns its quotation marks. Weekends fill fast, so book ahead.

Maccheroni alla bobbiese, the pasta shape that put this small Emilian hill town on the culinary map, is what the kitchen here has built its reputation on. It's a traditional trattoria-style restaurant near Bobbio's historic centre, cooking squarely from the local pantry and the season, not the trend. The room feels like a place where the menu changes when the produce does, not when the PR department does.

A handful of tables in a spare modern room with a nod to 1920s detailing, near the edge of Treviso's old center. The name is a riff on tailoring, and the kitchen takes the metaphor seriously, building the menu around whatever the market offers and shaping it into three tasting menus that prioritize flavor over flourish. A business lunch lands at midday for those who prefer not to commit to the full fitting.

A family-run Piedmontese restaurant in Borgomanero where the dining room has quietly ignored every décor trend of the last several decades and is better for it. The cooking is classic, with the occasional modern adjustment, like their paniscia, the local bean-and-salami risotto, finished with a swoosh of vegetable cream on top. A few fish dishes round out a menu that otherwise stays firmly in the region.

A short walk from Piazza Navona in a city where proximity to a landmark usually means a tourist tax, this seafood restaurant holds its own with a menu built around crudo and whatever the day's catch makes possible. The room is modern and intimate, service reads your mood without hovering, and the team brings real experience to Rome's notoriously competitive dining scene. Go when the evening quiets the neighborhood down.

Just past Porta Romana, this small contemporary dining room keeps so few covers that booking ahead isn't optional. Rustic details share the room with generous floral arrangements, which gives the place more personality than its size suggests. A portion of the produce comes from the team's own farm of the same name, and the menu moves between meat and fish in a way that feels considered rather than arbitrary.

Terracotta floors, exposed brick, and shelves of bottles stacked floor to ceiling set the scene at this farmhouse restaurant outside Pontassieve. The menu moves between charcuterie, classic Tuscan meat dishes, and a few seafood options that keep things from feeling predictable. The wine list leans toward bottles that are considered rather than expensive, which is its own kind of statement in a region where the opposite is easy.

A nineteenth-century farmhouse on the quiet edge of Empoli, restored just enough to keep the rural bones showing. This is a contemporary Tuscan restaurant where the kitchen takes local, seasonal ingredients seriously without turning dinner into a lecture. The chef's pigeon dish, exploring the bird across five preparations, is the kind of thing that makes you glad you asked for recommendations. The estate produces its own wine and olive oil, which is a very Tuscan thing to do.

A contemporary osteria a short walk from Parliament, named for the owners' grandparents, who were in the trade long before it was fashionable. The menu stays close to Roman tradition but makes room for a Marsala Florio pairing that runs alongside each course, which is a more interesting idea than it sounds. Book ahead if you want a seat on the terrace, and book ahead anyway.

Contemporary art lines the walls of this intimate creative restaurant in central Seregno, the result of a longstanding tie-up with a local gallery. The cooking is modern but relaxed, moving easily between meat, fish, and vegetables without the kind of anxiety that usually comes with "creative cuisine." And in a corner of Lombardy where cheese courses have quietly vanished, this one still rolls the trolley.

The restaurant sits inside a Medici villa, which sets a certain tone before you've even ordered. PS Ristorante runs two tasting menus, one of them vegetarian, drawing almost entirely from the estate's own olive oil, heritage grains, Cinta Senese pigs, and kitchen garden. The Tuscan countryside arrives on the plate in a quietly contemporary form, and the outdoor terrace looks straight onto the gardens if you need reminding where you are.

A small bistro on a quiet side street in Cuneo's old center, where the kitchen keeps things clean and seasonal without making a fuss about it. The menu leans contemporary, the wine list tilts toward natural and organic producers, and the room is the kind of low-key that takes a little effort to pull off. Good place to eat simply and drink interestingly without the evening turning into a whole thing.

A seafood-forward restaurant that has been around forever and still books out well ahead, which tells you most of what you need to know. The intimate dining rooms feel genuinely warm rather than fussy, and the service matches. Fish comes prepared with a classic sensibility and lighter modern instincts, while a few Ferrarese meat dishes, salama da sugo among them, hold their own on a menu that is otherwise happily pointed at the sea.

The menu changes daily at this family-run trattoria in Altare, where the kitchen sits at the border of Liguria and Piedmont and takes that geography seriously. Both regions show up on the plate, from plin and rabbit tortelli to vitello tonnato, all given a modern reinterpretation without losing their footing. The wine list leans the same direction. An old-school institution that has quietly kept up with the times.

Warm lighting and large windows onto a Gallarate pedestrian street set the mood at this contemporary osteria, where the kitchen leans meat-forward but keeps fish and vegetarian options in honest rotation. The cooking has a personal stamp without losing track of how flavors are supposed to balance. Lunch runs lighter and easier on the wallet, which is when the regulars tend to fill the room before the evening crowd arrives.

A vaulted brick cellar from the late 1800s beneath the estate's own vineyards sets the scene for this Piedmontese restaurant in Costigliole d'Asti. The cooking stays rooted in local flavors with a careful modern hand, and there's a vegetarian tasting menu alongside the main card. Wines lean on the house Mura Mura labels, which is either convenient or a flex, depending on your mood. A bistrot format runs Mondays and Tuesdays.

The dining room sits inside a former 16th-century church merged with an ancient wine press, and the stone bones of both are still very much present. Radino Wine Bistrot is a casual Italian wine bistro in Matera serving the kind of straightforward southern cooking that doesn't need explaining, cavatelli with Lucanian sausage being the anchor. There's also a snug room downstairs set aside for cigar smokers, which tells you something about the crowd's intentions.

A soft-lit bistro on Via Andrea Doria where the menu swings between meat and fish without committing to either, which turns out to be more interesting than it sounds. The kitchen leans Mediterranean but keeps things unpredictable, portions are generous, and the covered terrace is the kind of dimly lit spot that makes every dinner feel like it was someone's idea to be romantic. A good-value neighborhood bistro that doesn't quite act like one.

One entire wall opens onto the kitchen, so you can watch the team work while you decide whether you want a taco, a bowl of raw seafood, or something just pulled off the grill. This contemporary Italian restaurant near Nola keeps an unusually wide menu, swinging from street food and Spanish ham to creative meat and fish dishes, with a Champagne list that takes the subject seriously. Come summer, the whole thing moves outside for a looser, more informal format.

A small, packed seasonal restaurant in Milan where the menu leans heavily vegetarian and changes with what the land is actually doing. The kitchen calls its philosophy "cuisine with roots," and the short menu earns the phrase: a handful of dishes built around freshness and the kind of layered flavors that take real thought. Book ahead for the evening, or you will be eating elsewhere.

Foraged Mugo pine shoots and lichen on the menu signals immediately that this is not a hotel dining room trying to please everyone. Set inside the Lory hotel in Pinzolo, Rendenèr is a casual contemporary restaurant where the kitchen follows the Alpine seasons hard, pulling sow-thistle in spring and herbs from its own organic garden in summer. The wine list leans regional, which, given the surroundings, is exactly the right call.

Five tables on the upper floor, a daily menu that changes with the season, and a couple running everything, her in the dining room and him at the stove visible from the moment you walk in. This tiny Langhe trattoria in Monforte d'Alba is rooted so firmly in Piedmont that "regional" feels like an understatement. Book well ahead, arrive hungry, and consider one of the three rooms upstairs if you'd rather not drive the hills after dinner.