The Best Italian Food in the United States

A New York style slice shop that somehow landed in Mt. Lebanon and decided to stay, F&F sells by the slice or the whole pie, with options running from a straight pepperoni to cacio e pepe or a clam pie if you're feeling confident. The open dining room spills onto a patio when the weather cooperates. Vodka rigatoni is on the menu too, for anyone who came for pizza and stayed for pasta.

Sicilian-style square slices, thick and airy, come out on paper plates at this cash-only North End slice shop that's been an institution forever. The compact menu runs to arancini, calzones, and potato croquettes, all at prices that feel like a clerical error in 2024. Arrive early on weekdays; on weekends they only open for dinner, and popular items have a habit of disappearing before the line does.

Seats at the pasta bar put you close enough to watch the handmade work up close, which is either charming or pressure-inducing depending on your relationship with eye contact. This rustic Italian spot on Bull Street runs wood-fired Neapolitan pizzas alongside handmade pastas, and the squid ink bucatini tends to be the one people mention afterward. Italian wines and cocktails round it out, and the patio is a nice option when Savannah cooperates.

Servers in ties and vests refill your water after every sip, and warm focaccia arrives before you've fully settled in. Mucca Osteria is a downtown Italian restaurant operating on the old assumption that hospitality is the whole point, and the kitchen keeps pace: handmade pastas with a silky bite, burrata draped in long-aged prosciutto, scallops over Parmesan fonduta. A room that makes you slow down without making a fuss about it.

A Cal-Italian restaurant on Nob Hill where all the pasta is made in-house and the Bolognese simmers for half a day before it touches a plate. The kitchen leans on the rich, meaty flavors of central Italy, which means comfort is the whole project, not an afterthought. The room is cozy enough that the cooking and the atmosphere feel like they had a meeting. The San Francisco Chronicle has named it among the best Italian in the Bay Area.

Handmade pasta and seasonal Italian cooking from the team behind AltoVino, landing on Valencia Street with enough confidence to unsettle places that have been doing this for decades. The bagna cauda arrives warm over a votive candle, an anchovy-laced olive oil dip that earns the table's full attention before the rest of the menu even starts. Produce gets treated with the same seriousness as the proteins, which is the quiet tell of a kitchen that knows what it's doing.

Copper pans hang near the open kitchen at this warm Italian bistro that's been woven into the fabric of Napa Valley long enough to count as an institution. The pasta is made in-house with the kind of al dente chew that takes practice, and the fritto misto is crackly and uncluttered. Tourists and wine-country regulars share the room with equal comfort, which is a harder trick than it sounds.

The lasagnette arrives sliced, crisped, and floated over a pool of green fondue, which tells you most of what you need to know about this Italian restaurant on Hyde. The team behind Seven Hills took over their original space and pivoted toward something warmer and a little more relaxed, all monochromatic blue walls and wines by the glass. Snacks, pasta, and surprisingly compelling sides fill out a menu that keeps the room full on a weeknight.

Corsa is the upscale Italian restaurant inside the Caldera House hotel in Teton Village, steps from the ski slopes. The dining room is a modern take on a ski chalet, with a fireplace, delicate glassware, and booths along the back wall. Margherita pizzas get passed around as appetizers before the entrees arrive, which is a good way to keep a table of visiting relatives quiet. The Infatuation put it on its list of Jackson Hole's best restaurants.

The menu at this SoBo District Italian trattoria has barely changed since Sonny Dalesandro inherited it from his dad, which is either the point or the proof. Family recipes anchor the kitchen, and regulars who've been ordering the same thing for years show no signs of reconsidering. Comfort is the operating philosophy here, stated plainly and delivered without ceremony.

An old-school Italian cafe in a building that's been around forever, DePalma's runs a long menu of pasta, pizza, calzones, and antipasti in a downtown room that stays reliably hectic on game weekends and most other nights. The hand-tossed New York-style pies move fast, and the shell pasta stuffed with ricotta and spinach has its own loyal following. Save room: the tiramisu and white chocolate bread pudding are not decorative.

Red mahogany tables, candlelight, and a Sicilian wine list that takes its job seriously set the tone at this South Side osteria and bar. The cooking leans into southern Italy, with Calabrian heat showing up in the shrimp and duck ragu turning up in the gnocchi. It fills up fast, and the room rewards a reservation. Bring someone you want to impress, or at least someone who won't rush you through a lambrusco spritz.

The red-drenched dining room and prix fixe menu of "Asian Italian" dishes at this East Nashville spot signal that something genuinely odd is happening here, in the best way. A trio of industry vets serves garlic noodles from a vintage lunchbox and caviar over French onion dip, then hands out red-checked bibs when the gochujang short ribs arrive. The bit never quite tips into exhausting, and the New York Times named it among Nashville's top restaurants.

Fleurette is a dressy French-Italian dinner spot where the portions run large and the bone marrow turns up in more dishes than you'd expect. The room feels like an art museum, with floor-to-ceiling windows and sculptures hanging overhead. Getting there means driving to the far end of a business park, where the valet may be the only living person in sight, which somehow adds to the atmosphere.

The garlic bread is the open secret here: brioche baked pretzel-brown with molten creamy cheese at the center, and somehow that's what you'll talk about after leaving a pasta-centric Italian spot. The menu is fusilli alla vodka, rigatoni Bolognese, cacio e pepe, nothing you haven't seen before. One co-owner came up at Catbird Seat, which may explain why the familiar tastes like it means it.

This is a La Jolla coffee shop that has dressed itself as an Italian villa, complete with trellised vines over a little alley and a table carved from a four-inch-thick door. The lattes arrive topped with a real flower bud, and prices run a few dollars above the usual, which is the cost of the scenery. Dog-walkers gossip outside while readers from the nearby bookstore claim the quieter nooks.

Medusa is a sit-down Italian restaurant that skips the red-sauce script and cooks Sicilian instead, so the baked ziti and the yelling about gabagool stay home. Expect chickpea fritters, a sardine pasta that stands its ground, and a dessert cart that gets wheeled to your table like a small, painted parade float. When the weather cooperates, the patio does a respectable impression of a Mediterranean vacation. It's a place for a proper night out.

Gravel crunches under your tires before you've even opened the car door, which sets the tone for this family-run Creole-Italian roadhouse across the river from New Orleans. The menu is short but the portions are not, and the table fills fast with baked oysters, housemade sausage, and crab salad. The house rule, learned the hard way by everyone, is to order more than you think you need and split everything.

Spella is a tiny downtown espresso bar built the Italian way: a marble counter, a narrow ledge to lean on, and no chairs, so nobody is writing a novel here. The menu sticks to the classics, macchiatos and lattes and espresso with a pleasant bitter edge, all of it ordered, drunk, and finished in about the time it takes to check your phone. It's a coffee break in the original sense, minus the laptop. The Infatuation put it on its list of Portland's coffee shops.

A converted warehouse downtown that's been standing since before anyone alive can remember, Acqua di Dea is an elegant Italian seafood restaurant that leans hard into occasion-dining energy, all high ceilings and happy noise. The menu runs from whole grilled branzino to ossobuco for the table that always orders steak at a fish restaurant. Dress up a little; this is the kind of place where no one is underdressed and everyone knows it.

Anna's Vesuviano is a small, casual Neapolitan pizza joint on Doyle Ave where the crusts come out light and airy with leopard-spotted undersides. The mosaic tables are too small for the number of pies you'll inevitably order, which everyone treats as charm. Punk plays over the wine, and the wood-fired oven doesn't fully beat the chill, so bring a sweater in winter. Takeout is popular, but the bar seats fill up fast.

The tangerine walls and shelves stocked with tinned fish, art mags, and turntables tell you this isn't your average pizza shop before you've even ordered. The owner came up through visual merchandising and a stint at Roberta's, and it shows. Wood-fired Neapolitan-ish pies come with combinations that take a beat to process, in a good way. Ohio City's more design-conscious crowd has figured this out, naturally.

The Kill-Bill Pork Tenderloin, a sandwich stacked with crispy tenderloin, ham, bacon, cheese, and a fried egg, tells you everything about the ambition level here. Centro is a lively Italian restaurant that's been around forever in downtown Des Moines, serving lunch and dinner to a neighborhood it arguably helped create. Pizzas, pastas, and a grilled pork chop with Chianti demi-glace round out a menu that doesn't take itself too seriously but knows what it's doing.

Chickens turning on a spit behind glass, focaccia stacked high, and a counter so narrow that most people take their order to the curb: this is a counter service porchetta shop with Italian instincts and Charleston pork. Everything lands on housemade focaccia, from spiced salmon with whipped ricotta at breakfast to the classic porchetta with crackling, salsa verde, and provolone. A standing bar exists, technically, but the line moves and so do you.

Porchetta ribs and bucatini all'Amatriciana anchor the menu at this Italian restaurant on Frankford Avenue, where Greg Vernick stepped outside his usual lane to cook regional Italian for the first time. The room runs buzzy and packed, the service is tight, and the wine list leans Italian by the glass. It's a genuinely sexy room to land in Kensington, and the seasonal menu follows Italian tradition closely enough to feel considered without feeling like a museum piece.

The wood-burning oven was built in Naples by Stefano Ferrara and runs close to 1,000 degrees, which explains the blistered, char-edged crusts that come out of this Neapolitan pizzeria in downtown Fullerton. The mozzarella bar stocks cheese imported weekly from Caserta, so the margherita is taken rather seriously here. The dining room fills fast with locals who have clearly done this before, so plan accordingly.

Brady Street's old-school Italian grocery moved across the street a few years back into a space bright enough to make you squint, but the pantry staples, the olives, and the deli counter came along for the ride. Stock up on guanciale and giardiniera, or skip straight to the sandwiches. The Human Torch, loaded with calabrese salami, capocollo, and hot pepper spread, takes its name seriously.

The wooden door on King Street opens into a narrow, warm room that's been packed most nights for as long as anyone can remember. Indaco is a wood-fired pizza and pasta spot where the wine list leans affordable Italian and people tend to order a second bottle before they've finished the first. The leopard-spotted crust on the nduja pizza is the obvious draw, but the seasonal pasta earns its place on the table too.

The pastry chef doubles as a chocolatier, which is either a warning to pace yourself or a reason to skip straight to dessert. This East Cesar Chavez neighborhood Italian spot runs on local farms and whole-animal cooking, so the menu shifts with the season. Pastas and anything with duck tend to anchor whatever's on offer. Before you leave, at least pick up some of the handmade chocolates at the counter.

Skate-punk graphics on the walls, pinball and Skee-Ball in the back, and a Neapolitan pizza menu with a rotating cast of weekly specials: this is the kind of pizza pub that spawned a small neighborhood empire and still feels like the original reason the other places exist. Vegan options run deep, the drink list stays local, and the room lands somewhere between dive bar and pizza parlor, which is exactly what Upper Fells Point asked for.

The garlic sauce at this South San Francisco sandwich shop has its own cult following, which tells you something about the commitment level here. The sandwiches are legendarily large, large enough that ordering two for yourself draws concerned looks from strangers. Bread holds everything together with more authority than the deli meats deserve. A San Francisco Chronicle pick for the Bay Area's best sandwich spots, and a genuine test of anyone nearby.

The Iowa State Capitol dome glows through the windows of this airy, upscale Italian dining room in Des Moines's East Village, which lends the place an accidental grandeur nobody planned. Lunch runs to pasta, sandwiches, and salads. Dinner is a four-course prix fixe that reads far more serious than the tab suggests. The gnocchi are the kind that make you briefly resent every other gnocchi you've eaten.