The Top 53 Places to Eat in Rio de Janeiro

Ten seats arranged in an L-shaped counter, all of them facing the kitchen, is the whole room at this two-Michelin-star tasting menu restaurant in Humaitá. Chef Rafael Costa e Silva runs the counter himself, working through a 15-course menu built around produce from his own gardens, most of it vegetable-forward in a way that never feels like a compromise. It holds a spot on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list, and booking ahead is non-negotiable.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars
2. 50 Best #28 · The World’s 50 Best Restaurants
3. 50 Best #13 · Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants

A discreet gate on a Botafogo side street opens into a soaring, brick-walled dining room where the hush tells you immediately that this is a serious tasting-menu restaurant. Alberto Landgraf, who trained in Japan and in London with Gordon Ramsay, builds his seasonal menus around Brazilian seafood kept close to its natural state. A Michelin star and a spot on the World's 50 Best list followed. The bread alone, straight from the oven, sets the tone.

1. 50 Best #81 · The World’s 50 Best Restaurants
2. Michelin Guide 1 Star
3. 50 Best #38 · Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants

A 16-seat U-shaped counter wrapping a live kitchen in a minimalist wood-lined room in Ipanema, this is fine dining in the most focused sense. Thomas Troisgros, grandson of the Pierre Troisgros who invented salmon with sorrel, runs a seven-course tasting menu built on French technique and Brazilian ingredients. The name is a family in-joke that stretches back to 1963. It holds a Michelin star.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. 50 Best #65 · Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants

A wood-fired grill anchors everything at this two-Michelin-star creative restaurant a block from Leblon beach, where the counter seats just four people close enough to watch the kitchen move in near-choreographed sync. Chef Felipe Bronze builds tasting menus around Brazilian regional cooking pushed through serious technique, so something like oysters with guava granita lands as both familiar and strange. The wine pairing, handled with equal care, closes the loop.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars

You ring a doorbell to get in, which sets the tone perfectly for a Michelin-starred tasting menu restaurant that started life as an art gallery. The Rio-born chef trained across Europe and brings that back home, layering French technique over Brazilian ingredients in a menu that shifts with the seasons. A master sommelier handles the wine side, tastevin and all, and the whole thing unfolds in a room that still feels more like a private house than a restaurant.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Rice-paper lamps hang overhead like clouds in this fine-dining room inside the Leblon shopping complex, which is a more elegant situation than it sounds. Claude Troisgros, a French chef who has spent decades in Brazil, runs the kitchen with a collaborator, and the tasting menu moves through French technique, Brazilian ingredients, and quiet nods to Japan. The sauces, in particular, get people talking. One Michelin star.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Inside the Copacabana Palace, Mee is a pan-Asian restaurant that holds a Michelin star and takes its cues from Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, and points between. The chef's São Paulo roots and Japanese family heritage shape a menu that leans heavily toward raw preparations, with an omakase option at the sushi bar and two tasting menus, one of them vegan, for the dining room. The sake list is taken seriously.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Eight seats at a counter inside a Leblon shopping center sounds like a trap, but this Michelin-starred omakase counter runs on a different logic entirely. The chef spent decades in Japan and founded a sushi school there, and he arrives at your seat with fresh fish, a steady knife, and apparently a lot of good stories. Newcomers to omakase get a quiet explanation of what's coming; everyone gets a glass of sake at the door.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Long white tablecloths and deep burgundy chairs set the retro-formal tone at this Italian fine dining room inside the Belmond Copacabana Palace, right on the Atlantic. The chef, Campanian by origin and Brazilian by now, runs tasting menus that fold local ingredients into Italian tradition with real technical precision. 50 Top Italy named it the top Italian restaurant in the world in 2026, and the chef took their Chef of the Year honor too.

1. 50 Top Italy #1 · The Best Italian Restaurants In The World
2. 50 Top Italy 2026 · Chef of the Year · Nello Cassese

Everything here gets made from scratch daily, pastas and sauces and breads and desserts, in the spirit of Emilia-Romagna. This Italian trattoria on Avenida Epitácio Pessoa keeps its focus narrow and its kitchen busy, and the Michelin Bib Gourmand suggests the price-to-effort ratio has not gone unnoticed. Garganello with lamb ragù is the kind of dish that makes the region's case quietly but firmly.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A mansion in Botafogo with a garden out front and red mouldings framing the doors inside, Brota is a vegetarian and vegan restaurant where the food is built for sharing. The kitchen leans inventive, with rice balls and curries doing more interesting work than you might expect. The bar is impressive enough that you won't be nursing sparkling water all night. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which tracks.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A two-floor bistro in Ipanema where the chef's name is on the door and the cooking lands somewhere between a Paris brasserie and a Rio market, with duck magret alongside grilled octopus and the occasional weekend cassoulet. Natural light floods both levels, the menu covers classic French ground without being precious about it, and a Michelin Bib Gourmand keeps the room honest about what this place is: good food at a sensible price.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

An open kitchen anchors this modern Brazilian restaurant a short walk from Ipanema's Nossa Senhora da Paz park, where the chef built his chops in Lisbon and Copenhagen before turning his attention to live-fire cooking and smoking. Fish and seafood lead the menu, though housemade pasta shows up and earns its keep. The warm, flaky cheesecake with guava and cheese ice cream is the kind of dessert people mention unprompted. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A rustic corner spot in Ipanema, all warm wood and an outdoor terrace, where the cooking draws on ingredients from across Brazil to make a meat-forward menu feel like a geography lesson you'd actually enjoy. The chef earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand for generous, affordable plates that lean into bold cuts and regional combinations. The kind of place where you order too much and have no regrets.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Grandmother's old house in Botafogo, with the retro furniture and exposed brick still intact, is now a casual restaurant where the chef applies French training to Brazilian comfort food. The menu splits between longtime signatures and dishes that rotate with the seasons, all plated with more precision than the cozy, colorful room might lead you to expect. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The large windows facing Praça Nossa Senhora da Paz are plastered with the names of Italian restaurants this trattoria draws from, Osteria Francescana among them, which sets expectations fairly high for a neighborhood spot. The cooking is generous and old-school Italian, portions leaning abundant, jazz photos on the walls and soft music doing their quiet thing. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Wine bottles scrawled with guests' notes line the walls at this relaxed contemporary Italian spot near Morro de São João, where the open kitchen is part of the decor and the cooking quietly rewires Italian classics with Brazilian ingredients. The lasagne with Grana Padano fondue and breadcrumbs is the kind of dish people order twice, and the natural wine list gives you something to argue about while you wait. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A pizza spot in Botafogo with an internal garden that makes the whole evening feel like a better idea. The dough is what the kitchen obsesses over, and that foundation stays consistent in a way that's rarer than it should be. The drink list runs past the usual suspects, which helps. It landed on the 50 Top Pizza Latin America list, and also picked up the 2026 special award for best dessert list, which is a plot twist for a pizza place.

1. 50 Top Pizza #23 · 50 Top Pizza Latin America
2. 50 Top Pizza 2026 · Best Dessert List · 50 Top Pizza Latin America Special Awards

The dining room spills across terraced decks in Santa Teresa, with the kind of hillside canopy view that makes Rio look like it was designed specifically for this moment. It's a full-service Brazilian restaurant where the chef builds the menu around organic and biodynamic ingredients sourced from across the country. The natural wine list is long, the chicken dishes are the thing to order, and the tucupi ceviche with plantain chips does a lot of quiet persuading.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A quiet stretch of residential Ipanema is home to this Italian-carioca osteria, where the menu grows out of the chef's childhood and her father's table. Handmade pasta anchors the room, including a carbonara riff that swaps the usual formula for soft egg and crispy bacon over tagliolini. The space has the warm clutter of an old neighborhood trattoria, and the crowd treats it accordingly.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Neapolitan-style pizzeria in Tijuca, the kind of neighborhood where the owner knows your name before you've ordered twice. The mozzarella carries most of the weight here, and the dough is the quiet reason regulars make the subway trip north. Weekly specials keep things from going on autopilot. It landed at number eleven on 50 Top Pizza Latin America, which gives you a rough sense of the seriousness involved.

1. 50 Top Pizza #11 · 50 Top Pizza Latin America

The Italian flag flies over this Jardim Botânico pizzeria, and the kitchen takes that seriously. Capricciosa is a big, bustling room with a famous buffet, proper pasta, a dessert menu worth staying for, and pizza that holds its own through all of it. Tables fill fast and the service keeps pace without breaking a sweat. It landed at number 20 on 50 Top Pizza Latin America, which gives you a sense of the stakes.

1. 50 Top Pizza #20 · 50 Top Pizza Latin America

The open kitchen sits dead center in the room, so you can watch Claude Troisgros's team compose Modern French dishes from arm's length. This is a sit-down restaurant where the classic menu arrives in sharing bowls, giving the whole thing a relaxed, family-table feel, while the seasonal à la carte leans French with Brazilian ingredients folded in. The kind of place where the cooking is the show, and the room is arranged to prove it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A neon sign reading "Don't put out my fire" glows above the door of this Leblon barbecue spot, where raw concrete walls and a full-grown tree anchoring the dining room set the tone before any food arrives. The menu leans hard into smoked and grilled meats, though fish, vegetables, and burgers fill it out. Sit at the counter by the grill if you want to watch the cocktails come together alongside the smoke.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

An Argentine steakhouse with a terrace that looks straight out over Marina da Glória, where the view alone could sell you a second glass of Malbec. The name nods to a classic tango, and the mood follows suit: expansive dining rooms, a glass-fronted wine cellar, and a menu built around serious cuts off the grill. Finish with the dulce de leche pancake and you'll understand why Argentina takes dessert personally.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A seafood restaurant near the botanical garden where the fish arrives straight from local fishermen and you choose how you want it cooked: grilled, baked, or poached. The sea bass with champagne sauce is a regular on the menu, and on Fridays the kitchen turns out a seafood feijoada worth planning around. Two floors, muted colors, the kind of relaxed room that doesn't feel the need to announce itself.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Everything on the menu, fish and meat alike, goes over charcoal, which keeps the focus admirably narrow for a steakhouse with this much real estate. The dry-aged cuts and the house rump cap are the main event, though a slow-cooked Uruguayan lamb shoulder with its own jus makes a reasonable argument for itself. Exposed stone, leather sofas, and a basement wine cellar holding over 400 labels round out the rustic-elegant affect.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Japanese-philosophy-meets-Copacabana sushi bar where the chef sources fish directly from local fishermen rather than from anyone in a suit. The ground floor spills onto the pavement; upstairs, a counter faces an open kitchen and the mood shifts. You can order sushi and temaki à la carte or surrender to the omakase, with sake available by the glass throughout.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A glass-fronted tasca in Rio's south zone, Henriqueta serves the kind of Portuguese food that skips the flourishes and leans on good ingredients instead. The ceramic-tiled walls and open kitchen set the tone: unfussy, warm, built for sharing. Pork sandwiches marinated in wine and garlic, octopus roasted in oil with onion confit, egg yolk and almond sweets for dessert. Lisbon by way of Leblon, and it works.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The pâté de campagne arrives with house-baked bread before you've even decided what to order, which sets the tone pretty quickly. La Villa is a French bistro in Botafogo with high ceilings, outdoor tables, and a menu built around the classics: onion soup, duck cassoulet, and a Sunday barbecue that leans into Brazilian seafood. The kind of room where nobody's performing.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A narrow staircase off a quiet stretch of Lapa leads up to two floors of bare brick and open space, the kind of room that makes you feel like you found something before the crowd did. This creative restaurant runs a shorter fixed lunch and a long tasting menu at dinner, the whole thing shifting daily around whatever the kitchen finds worth cooking. The Michelin Guide has its eye on it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Brazilian grill restaurant on the sixth floor of the Fairmont Copacabana, where the terrace opens onto a panoramic sweep of the beach that makes it hard to focus on the menu. The open kitchen runs a Josper grill, and the cooking pulls ingredients and spices from across Brazil, with vegetarian plates alongside the expected cuts. Sunset tables are not a secret, so plan ahead if you want the view without the wait.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A contemporary bistro in Ipanema where the open kitchen makes the cooking feel like part of the room rather than a secret kept behind a door. Chef Danilo Parah works a Mediterranean-leaning menu with a strong pull toward the sea, very fresh seafood folded into dishes that have some technical ambition without announcing it. The cocktail list gets equal billing, which tells you something about the mood.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The glass roof and lagoon views at this polished modern Chinese restaurant are reason enough to book a table upstairs, but the menu has been holding its own for close to two decades without needing the scenery as backup. The chef made his name in New York and London before settling on the edge of Rodrigo de Freitas, and the kitchen still runs the same core dishes it opened with, treating consistency as a philosophy rather than an oversight.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A 1930s house on one of Ipanema's most watched streets, its veranda spilling out toward the neighborhood buzz. Inside, Hebrew-inspired paintings hang against spare, minimalist walls, which is a combination you don't see often. The kitchen runs French-inflected Brazilian, moving through fresh pasta, fish, and seafood with the easy confidence of a place that has figured out what it wants to be.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Three floors do three different things here: a bar on the ground level, a snug dining room in the middle, and an open terrace on top for when the Rio night cooperates. The contemporary menu pulls from food cultures across the globe without announcing itself about it. The cocktail program is the real conversation starter, though, folding Amazonian ingredients like jambu and tucupi into drinks that have no right being as coherent as they are.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Getting here requires a boat, which is either a selling point or a dealbreaker, and the outdoor wooden deck on Ilha Primeira makes a strong case for the former. This is a seafood restaurant where the chef ages some of the catch in a dedicated chamber on-site before it hits the open grill. Sunsets arrive whether you ordered them or not, and the whole unhurried setup makes the city feel considerably farther away than it is.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A glass aging chamber greets you at the entrance, which tells you everything about what kind of seafood restaurant this is. The chef is a fisherman and diver who champions whole-fish cooking and artisanal sourcing, which means the menu runs to ocean charcuterie and aged fish alongside grilled and raw preparations. The Leblon space is airy and modern, a step up in polish from the original island location.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A glass-enclosed wine cellar anchors the dining room at this polished Portuguese restaurant near Jardim Botânico, where Azorean cooking sets the tone. Salt cod appears in several forms, and the Alcatra, beef slow-cooked for hours in a clay pot, represents the archipelago's heartier side. Tables spill into an outdoor area when the weather cooperates, which in Rio is most of the time.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A glass window cut into the dining room wall puts the churrasco grill on full display, which tells you everything about the priorities here. This is a serious Brazilian steakhouse inside the Jockey Club Brasileiro, and the terrace frames the racetrack with Christ the Redeemer hovering in the distance, a view that makes it almost impossible to focus on the menu. More than ten cuts of beef, with the kitchen managing its own production from the source.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A contemporary bistro in Ipanema where the chef describes his cooking as "emotional and creative," which could sound like marketing speak until the food arrives piled with color, texture, and a genuine generosity of spirit. The à la carte leans hard into local ingredients, the hospitality keeps pace with the kitchen, and the room splits into different moods across two floors, private room included.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

An Argentinian parrilla that crossed the Rio Plata and kept going until it hit Leblon. The open grill is the centerpiece, turning out cuts like Tomahawk and Angus skirt steak while the room channels the unhurried elegance of a Buenos Aires steakhouse. An extensive list of Argentinian wines arrives to help slow things down further. Dulce de leche pancakes close the meal, because of course they do.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Four storeys of neutral tones, soft lighting, and enough plants to make you feel vaguely virtuous about dinner. This contemporary Asian restaurant in Ipanema blends Japanese and Korean cooking, and the chef's selection takes the guesswork out of a menu long enough to cause genuine indecision. The Kagoshima wagyu finished tableside on a hot stone tends to be the move everyone around you is also making.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

You knock on the door to get in, which sets the tone immediately. This is chef Roberta Sudbrack's home-style Brazilian restaurant in a Jardim Botânico house, built around a wood-fired oven and an open kitchen that turns out comforting, market-driven food from small local producers. The menu shifts daily with whatever's fresh, though the chocolate cake has apparently never left, and regulars seem fine with that arrangement.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The bar counter running along the open kitchen is the seat everyone wants at this long-running Japanese restaurant in Leblon, one of Rio's most well-heeled neighborhoods. Dark wood sets the mood, the menu spans sushi and sashimi through to more inventive preparations, and the kitchen tracks new ideas without ditching the classics. Book ahead for dinner; lunch is a little more forgiving if you're the spontaneous type.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A twelve-seat counter in Leblon where the day's fish, displayed behind the chef, decides the menu. This omakase spot skips salmon entirely in favor of locally caught fish and shellfish alongside imported tuna from multiple origins, which is the chef's calling card. The São Paulo locations came first, but the Leblon outpost fits the neighborhood. Book early; the room fills fast and there is no winging it on walk-ins.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The dining room of the Santa Teresa MGallery hotel, perched in one of Rio's hillside neighborhoods with views that make it hard to keep the conversation going. The contemporary Brazilian menu leans on seasonal ingredients and pairings that don't announce themselves before they surprise you. The room is quiet, candlelit in spirit even at lunch, and draws the kind of couples who book ahead and dress for it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Pumpkin-shaped light fixtures hang overhead at this casual Brazilian spot a short walk from Leme beach, the quieter stretch just north of Copacabana. Chef Andressa Cabral, familiar to Brazilian TV audiences from Iron Chef Brasil, runs a kitchen rooted in tradition with strong African influences woven through. Prices are low, the atmosphere is loose, and the fried banana and salt cod cakes are the kind of thing you order again before finishing the first one.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A pizzeria tucked into the noble quadrilateral of Ipanema, a short walk from Nossa Senhora da Paz square, where nearly everything on the menu, including the appetizers and desserts, orbits the wood-fired oven. The dough follows an orthodox path, but the toppings tend toward the provocative. Ranked 31st on the 50 Top Pizza World list, which gives you a sense of the company it keeps.

1. 50 Top Pizza #31 · 50 Top Pizza World

A wood-fired pizzeria tucked next to the botanical garden in Jardim Botânico, Ella is small and a little intimate, with a glowing bar at the entrance and an open kitchen where the oven does most of the talking. The tomato is the thing here, turning up on pizzas and in baked first courses served in aluminum pans that feel genuinely homey. Cocktails get the same careful attention. One useful fact: Ella is open for lunch, which the neighborhood's imperial palms make a convincing argument for.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Latin America Excellent Pizzerias

A Neapolitan pizza spot on Avenida Atlântica that somehow resists the Copacabana circus around it. The dough follows the real elastic, blistered tradition of the school, and the seafood pasta and tiramisu suggest the kitchen has other things on its mind besides ticking boxes. In the evening, foliage and warm lighting frame a sea view that would feel theatrical if the food weren't keeping everyone's attention. Named among the 50 Top Pizza Latin America Excellent Pizzerias.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Latin America Excellent Pizzerias

A Neapolitan pizza spot tucked inside a shopping center in Recreio dos Bandeirantes, close enough to Grumari that you could come sandy and no one would mind. The dough goes through a long fermentation and comes out light and blistered, carrying toppings that slide between Campania tradition and Brazilian combinations without making a fuss about either. The Neapolitan panini at the start are hard to pass up.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Latin America Excellent Pizzerias

The dough at this Leblon pizzeria is the argument: long-fermented, fragrant, crispy at the edge and soft at the center in the way that takes patience to pull off. Sìsì runs Italian-serious on one of Rio's most restaurant-dense streets, with a menu that goes beyond pizza into agnolotti del plin, a pasta you rarely find anywhere near this latitude. The room draws a Zona Sul crowd that dresses for dinner without trying too hard.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Latin America Excellent Pizzerias