The Best Places to Eat in Italy

A trattoria wedged into a medieval tower on Tiber Island, which is already a strong opening move. Sora Lella has been turning out cucina romana since forever, and the third generation has quietly sharpened things back up after a long, comfortable coasting phase. The wine list skips the obvious and leans into Lazio's overlooked labels. Wood-paneled rooms, cacio e pepe somewhere on the menu, and the kind of crowd that didn't need a reservation app to find this place.

The naturally leavened bread arrives before you've decided anything, which tells you something about how this restaurant thinks. In a low-lit Garbatella room with Nordic bones and Roman soul, the kitchen brings Abruzzo's mountain larder into conversation with the capital, via a menu that shifts constantly but keeps landing somewhere comforting. Chickpea soup with chestnuts and dried figs, lamb with puntarelle, the kind of wine list that stays stubbornly central Italian.

An elegant seafood restaurant a short walk from the Colosseum, Tempio di Iside leans hard into crudi: fish carpaccio, sea urchin roe, langoustines, oysters. Pasta with sweet red shrimp and fresh pecorino quietly dismantles the no-cheese-with-seafood rule, and the spaghetti with clams holds its own. Book ahead if you want one of the outdoor tables in summer, and come prepared: the fish is fresh and the bill reflects that.

Sit on the sixth floor of Fondazione Prada's tower building and you have Lucio Fontana on the walls, a triangular terrace for sunset drinks, and bread arriving from the storied Marchesi pasticceria. This is an upscale restaurant serving modern Milanese food and seafood with a Tuscan coastal lean. The crowd dresses accordingly, and the art-world adjacency keeps things from feeling stuffy, which is its own small miracle for a place this polished.

Inside the Sant'Ambrogio market, this old-school family trattoria runs on seasonal plates, dirt-cheap prices, and staff who holler across the room like nobody's watching. Florence is busy reinventing itself as a serious dining destination, but Trattoria da Rocco has not gotten the memo, and that is entirely the point. Go before one o'clock or squeeze into a small booth with the crowd and order whatever is on that day.

Communal tables, no reservations, and a menu that shrinks as the morning goes on: Trattoria Mario is an old-school Florentine lunch spot near Mercato Centrale that fills fast with locals and tourists making peace with each other over Tuscan bean soup and bistecca alla fiorentina. The vegetables are, by tradition, cooked into submission, but nobody comes here for that. Come early, order the pasta with ragu, and accept that the best things will be gone by noon.

The décor stopped updating sometime in the 1970s and has sensibly stayed put ever since. This is an old-school neighborhood trattoria in the Oltrarno, the kind locals call a blast from the past without meaning it as a criticism. The kitchen turns out honest Tuscan fare: pici, roast pork, and a spaghetti alla carrettiera built on a dense, chile-spiked red sauce with anchovies and breadcrumbs. It sits just past Porta Romana, which is a short walk from the chaos you probably want a break from anyway.

An old-school Florentine trattoria tucked beside San Lorenzo market, Sergio Gozzi has been feeding the neighborhood forever with the kind of menu that shifts by season rather than trend. The fried zucchini flowers give way to artichokes come winter, and the peposo, beef slow-cooked in wine and whole peppercorns, is the sort of thing you order without looking up. More breathing room than the usual San Lorenzo scramble.

A lampredotto stand across from the Sant'Ambrogio church, where the proprietor hollers orders into the street while you stand on the corner with a goblet of wine. The specialty is cow stomach slow-cooked in broth, chopped, and stuffed into bread with green herb and chile sauce, and Pollini's range of variations, from tomato with artichoke to porcini in season, gives regulars a reason to keep coming back.

Half wine bar, half vinyl record shop, Vineria Sonora is the kind of place that makes a lot of sense at the second glass. The natural wine list leans deep into minimal-intervention Italian producers, with obscure garage makers sitting alongside cult names. Small plates run from 'nduja crostini to wild boar lasagna, with a Calabrian thread running through the menu. The owners also run a spillover bar across the street, which tells you everything about the crowd this place attracts.

A few blocks from the Duomo, this casual counter stop does one thing: pizza fritta, the Neapolitan fried-pizza tradition that never made it onto most Milan menus. The dough is long-fermented and cooked to order, arriving as a puffy, glossy pocket stuffed with salami, cicoli, or ricotta and provola di bufala. Grab extra napkins before you find a ledge to stand at, because the instruction to rip off the top and squeeze out the center is not a metaphor.

The dining room is a former anatomical theatre steps from the Duomo, and the vaulted ceilings and antique bookshelves make the setting feel theatrical without trying. Regina Bistecca is a wood-fired steak restaurant built around Tuscan beef, dry-aged and cooked over flame with the kind of restraint that lets the meat do the arguing. Chianti Classico and Brunello anchor the wine list. It landed on the World's Best Steak Restaurants ranking.