The Best Italian Food in Portugal

A wood-fired oven tiled in gold mosaic anchors the open kitchen at this Neapolitan pizza restaurant near central Lisbon. The room is small and warm, with hand-painted Sicilian ceramics on the walls and a note on the table gently asking you to keep your voice down, which tells you everything. The dough ferments for around 36 hours before hitting high heat, producing a light, airy crust. It ranks ninth in Europe on 50 Top Pizza.

A no-reservations pizzeria in Cais do Sodré where the dough ferments for two days and the crust arrives at the table properly airy and charred. The room is small with vintage stucco ceilings and a few tables outside, and a queue out front is the normal state of affairs. The combinations lean creative, the natural wines are short-listed but sensible, and the only dessert is a salted caramel cheesecake. Come prepared to wait.

Fresh pasta made by a chef who runs a sister restaurant in Rio de Janeiro gives this small Italian trattoria near the Cascais beaches its particular personality, with Brazilian and Portuguese touches folded into the menu. The room is simple and pleasant, with a terrace out front and a finishing table where dishes are completed in front of you, which is either theater or just good pasta technique, depending on your mood.

Dark wooden beams, communal tables, and hand-painted whales on the wall set the tone at this Italian pizza restaurant at the edge of the Algarve. The naturally fermented dough bakes up light with a good crust, and the toppings split loyalties between Italian staples and local Algarve produce. It ranked 32nd on 50 Top Pizza Europe, which is a long way to travel for a slice, though Sagres already has a reputation for pulling people to the end of the world.

The open kitchen is the first thing you clock: dough being worked in full view, the way it should be in a Neapolitan pizza restaurant that takes its crust seriously. This is Porto's new address for Antonio Mezzero, long the name for proper Neapolitan pizza in Portugal, now in a more polished space on Rua de Vila Nova. Soft dough, a proper pronounced cornicione, Italian ingredients. The room feels more like a full Italian restaurant than a slice stop.

A Neapolitan pizzeria that moved into a 1955 bakery in Saldanha and kept the tall chimney and wood-fired oven, which now does exactly what you'd hope. The room is clean and unfussy, white walls and dark wood, with stacked firewood doing double duty as decor. The house signature is the Parziale, half pizza and half calzone, and the dough is the light, blistered Neapolitan style. Italian and Portuguese wines, and a chocolate panna cotta to close.

Two wood-fired ovens anchor Mano a Mano, one for Roman-style, one for Neapolitan, and the kitchen treats the difference as a friendly argument worth having nightly. Herringbone floors, round marble tables, and Italian cinema posters give the room an easy elegance. The Neapolitan dough gets a long, slow rise before it meets the fire; the Roman side keeps things crispier and flatter. A solid Italian-Portuguese wine list and tiramisu round things out.

The terrace looks straight out over the Tagus, which is a fine place to eat a wood-fired Neapolitan pizza. Vela Latina sits in the small riverside village of Sarilhos Pequenos, next to the local sailing club, and leans into the nautical theme with white-and-blue walls and vintage yacht photographs. The dough gets a long ferment and a hot oven, and the crust comes out airy with those charred leopard spots. Named among 50 Top Pizza Europe's Excellent Pizzerias.

A gastrobar where the cocktail list gets the same attention as the food, which is already saying something. The team behind Bar Imprensa brings Italian instincts to a Lisbon after-work room: small plates built around vegetables and seafood, natural wines, and pasta that earns its place rather than filling it. The vibe is deliberately unhurried, the kind of place where ordering another round feels like the obvious move.