Where to eat in Italy.

The pizza bianca is legendary. Flaky, salty, olive-oil soaked perfection. Fold and eat walking.

Grab one, head to Campo de' Fiori, consider yourself Roman for twenty minutes. The plain pizza bianca is the move. Don't overthink it.

A Roman classic that hits its stride around sunset. Tables, chess, wine, the street.

Relaxed, messy in the right way. The bar scene ramps up inside as the night goes on. An hour turns into three without you noticing.

Local favorite in Monteverde — far enough from the center to feel like a real discovery.

The fried gnocchi cacio e pepe is iconic, but the whole menu leans toward elevated comfort. Natural-leaning wine list, crowd is relaxed but smart. Take the tram — it's part of the charm.

Refined sit-down breakfast. Ricotta pancakes, shakshuka, beautiful ceramics.

Tucked on a quiet side street. A menu that makes you stay longer than planned. The kind of breakfast that actually earns the morning.

Fried baccalà in paper with lemon. That's it. Open evenings only.

The crispiness is next level, weirdly refreshing even on a hot day. A paper cone of fried fish in the Jewish Quarter at sundown. One of Rome's most specific pleasures.

Futuristic, neon-lit, cocktail obsessive. The drinks are as interesting as the room.

Refined takes on classics with house infusions and surprising pairings. Late-night energy, works for a first drink too. One of the few places in Rome where the cocktail menu is genuinely worth reading.

Two Michelin stars. Chef Domenico Stile, inside Villa Laetitia — Anna Fendi's early-20th-century Art Nouveau villa on the Tiber, built in 1911 by Armando Brasini. Open Wed–Sun. One of Rome's most beautiful dining rooms — and one of its best kitchens.

The villa is the first thing that registers — Belle Époque interiors, river views, the kind of room that makes you feel like you're inside a different century. Then the food arrives and earns the setting. Chef Domenico Stile's cooking is classically rooted and quietly modern, with a wine list deep enough to spend a serious evening in. Open Wednesday through Sunday only. Book ahead — this is not the place to show up on hope.

Rome's first specialty coffee bar. Single-origin, pour-over, weekly rotating menu. The real thing.

Via Piave, slightly off the tourist circuit, which is exactly why locals go. Coffee sourced from Aliena, their own roastery. Cardamom buns, kouign-amann, savory toasts. The menu changes every week — check Instagram before you go.

Creative, botanical flavors. Rose and black rice, basil and walnut, pear and gorgonzola.

Organic ingredients, no additives, plenty of vegan options. A must for the flavor curious. Multiple locations across the city.

Built into the side of Monte dei Cocci in Testaccio. Well-known, yes — for good reason.

The tonnarelli cacio e pepe is reliably excellent. Arched brick walls, naturally cool in summer. Order the carciofi alla giudia in season.

Contender for best pizza bianca in the city. Lighter than Roscioli's, slightly crispier.

Right on Campo de' Fiori. The market energy in the morning makes this feel exactly right. Also does square slices with toppings if you want something more filling.

Aperitivo in its purest form. Free snacks, crowded steps, locals in great sunglasses.

Less curated, more atmospheric. Go for the energy, not the quiet. The crowd spills onto the street in warm weather — exactly what you want from Trastevere on a Tuesday night.

The kind of gelato that ruins you for everywhere else. The city's pistacchio benchmark.

No rainbow gelato, no neon signs. Good technique, quality ingredients. Dark chocolate rotates seasonally. The Prati location is the original.

Bright, health-forward, not boring. Salads, crudo, pinsa, smoothies, wine.

Perfect for a lighter lunch after a long travel day. Both locations are central. Via Veneto is slightly more polished. Clean and international in a way that works.

Tiny natural wine bar. Devoted local following. No frills, no pretense.

Bottles line the walls, wine poured by people who know exactly what to recommend. The kind of bar that makes you want to stay until they close.

Savory by day, sweet by night. The maritozzo done with serious care.

Classic with whipped cream, or seasonal — hazelnut, citrus, pistachio. Decadent but balanced. This is the one you'll think about on the plane home.

Two Michelin stars, Chef Anthony Genovese, Italian-Japanese fusion. Twenty-year institution. In April 2025, Genovese launched a new tasting menu marking 40 years of cooking. The room is small. The cooking is exceptional.

Anthony Genovese has been cooking at this level for forty years, and the cuisine shows all of it — Italian technique, Japanese restraint, personal obsession with ingredients. The menu launched in April 2025 is the statement of a chef who knows exactly what he's doing and has stopped apologizing for it. Fourteen covers, two Michelin stars, no concessions. Book well ahead — weeks, not days — and come hungry for something that doesn't fit a category.

One Michelin star, sixth floor of Hotel Hassler, top of the Spanish Steps. The view of Rome at night is the thing. The food earns the view.

From the sixth floor, St. Peter's dome sits on the horizon, the city spreads in every direction, and the light does what Rome light does. Imàgo has the Michelin star and the kitchen to justify the room — not just a view restaurant with decent food, but a serious tasting menu experience that happens to also have one of the best panoramas in the city. You don't need to be staying at the Hassler. You do need to book ahead.

Hidden, reservation-only. Password required. High-concept cocktails. Worth the theatrics.

A little performative, but in the best way. Feels secretive and indulgent. Bartenders who genuinely care, drinks that justify the whole experience.

Rome's only three-Michelin-star restaurant. Heinz Beck. Panoramic views above the city.

The tasting menu is exacting and elegant. Service is formal but never cold. Jackets recommended, expectations met. Book months out. Not a casual decision.

Design-forward gelateria. Warm melted chocolate drizzled inside the cone on request.

Traditional flavors — crema, fior di latte, stracciatella — with silky texture and generous portions. The chocolate drizzle inside the cone is the move. Order it every time.

Modern kitchen in Testaccio. Tasting menu or à la carte, both worth your evening. One of the deeper wine lists in the city.

The kind of restaurant where the food is technically precise without announcing it, the room is warm without being self-congratulatory, and the wine list rewards actual engagement. Testaccio is the right neighborhood for a kitchen like this — real, working-class Roman history two minutes away, zero tourist foot traffic. Go for the tasting menu if the table's yours for the evening.

Gelato spelled backwards. Intentionally offbeat. Flavors are intense and often unexpected.

Gorgonzola-honey, ricotta-strega, plus classics done just as well. Creamy texture, seasonal focus. Where you go when you've had regular gelato and want to be surprised.

Gabriele Bonci's bakery near the Vatican. Pizza by the slice plus excellent morning pastries.

If you're near the Vatican, this is the call. Morning maritozzo and savory bakes are as good as the pizza. The standard-bearer for Roman pizza al taglio.

Family-run bakery since the '70s, still flying under the radar. Pure neighborhood energy.

Pizza rossa, pizzette, sweet buns in a retro space untouched by the last thirty years. Locals go here on autopilot. Tourists walk straight past it.

Historic pastry shop, same way for over a century. The maritozzo is the gold standard.

Cream-filled maritozzo every morning. Grab a box to go or eat it on the sidewalk. No frills, no theatrics — just the thing itself, done right.

Michelin selected in the 2026 Guide (Inspectors' Favourite, not starred). Chef-owners Giuseppe Lo Iudice and Alessandro Miocchi forage in Abruzzo every week. Communal tables, chef's counter, an itemized 20-bite tasting at the counter. The cool-creative option — and the most interesting room on this list.

The format is the point: communal tables, a chef's counter, a kitchen that forages and improvises and doesn't pretend otherwise. Open Monday through Sunday, which for this level in Rome is unusual enough to note. The cooking is ingredient-first, technique-second, plating-last — in that order, and right. Get the counter seats if you can; you want to see the kitchen work.

The morning version of the Roscioli empire. Cult-status cornetti, the best in the city.

Stand at the bar, order the cornetto alla crema or the maritozzo, drink the espresso in two sips. The pastries are better than most of what you'll find in Paris. This is not a debate.

Steps from the Pantheon, mood that feels more Milan than Rome.

Dimly lit, fashion-adjacent, full of people who know how to order a drink. Cocktails are sharp, crowd considered, energy builds slowly. Outdoor tables overlooking ancient ruins are the reason.

Roman food with a bit of edge. Chef Sarah Cicolini runs one of Rome's most interesting kitchens.

Unfussy interiors, mixed clientele, offal on the menu, perfectly made amatriciana. Loud, energetic, best with a bottle of house red. Roman food that actually takes risks.

A temple to the supplì, run by a former fine dining chef.

Crispy rice balls stuffed with ragù, carbonara, or amatriciana. Take it to go, eat on a sunny step. The street is where this belongs.

Triangular pizza pockets stuffed with Roman classics. Handheld, hot, always hits.

Chicken cacciatore, eggplant parm, oxtail — each in a pocket of dough. Order at the counter, stand outside, repeat. The Testaccio original is the one.

Bridges classic and contemporary. Sweetbreads with carrot cream alongside rigatoni alla gricia.

Between Testaccio and Ostiense. Warm lighting, polished but unfussy service, seasonal menu grounded in Roman tradition without getting stuck there.

Minimalist interiors, elevated Roman dishes, no show. Trastevere without the noise.

Handmade pasta, elegant plating, a mood that's quiet but warm. The call when you want something genuinely special but not formal.

The most famous panino in Florence. Schiacciata sandwiches stuffed at speed for an always-long, always-fast-moving line.

On Via dei Neri, a five-minute walk from the Uffizi. The schiacciata is the proper Tuscan flatbread, split open and filled with cured meats, pecorino, truffle cream, eggplant. La Favolosa — prosciutto, pecorino cream, artichoke, eggplant — is the famous one. €7. Take it to the river steps and eat it standing. Go off-peak (3 p.m. or after 8) for a five-minute wait instead of forty-five.

The gelateria that won the Buontalenti flavor competition — a richer, eggier, more custard-like vanilla — at the end of the 1960s (the Florence contest commemorating Renaissance architect Bernardo Buontalenti, the first to make ice cream in the city).

The Buontalenti is the order. Named after the 16th-century Florentine architect who supposedly invented frozen custard for the Medici, it's mascarpone-rich, vanilla-deep, and almost too dense — in the right way. The Campo di Marte original is the move, but the central location near the Duomo is fine if you're nearby.

One Michelin star, riverside, inside the Lungarno Hotel. A small terrace facing the Ponte Vecchio is the move.

Part of the Ferragamo family's Lungarno Collection. The kitchen does refined Tuscan with seafood accents — better seafood than most Florentine fine-dining rooms. Six tables on the terrace face the Ponte Vecchio directly; book one of those at sunset and the meal becomes a memory. In winter, the dining room is candle-lit and stone-walled.

Florence's oldest café — founded 1733 on Via dei Calzaiuoli, on the corner of Piazza della Repubblica since 1917.

The interior — Belle Époque chandeliers, mirrored walls, lacquered panels — is the reason. Stand at the bar and drink fast like everyone else. Sit at a table and you're paying for the postcard. The pastries are fine; the coffee is the point. At night it transforms into a serious Negroni room, jacketed bartenders included.

A counter inside the Mercato Centrale serving Florence's most specific street food since 1872.

Lampredotto — the fourth stomach of a cow, braised in vegetable broth — is the dish that tells you whether you're a tourist or someone who's been here a while. Da Nerbone makes the canonical version: served in a soft roll, dipped bagnato in the broth, topped with salsa verde and a little peperoncino. €6. Eat standing. Don't think about it.

Florence's standout third-wave coffee bar, with multiple locations and an actual flat white.

The closest thing Florence has to a London or Melbourne coffee bar — precision espresso, properly trained baristas, avocado toast that doesn't apologize for itself. Locals and expats fill it from 8 a.m. Sundays brunch out the door. The Oltrarno location (Via dello Sprone) is the best of the bunch.

Florence's three-Michelin-star institution (since 2004). A wine cellar of 60,000+ bottles across 3,000 labels — one of the most celebrated in the world. The fine-dining destination in the city.

Annie Féolde and Giorgio Pinchiorri have run this for half a century — they hold three stars and one of the most respected wine cellars in Europe. The dining room is formal in the old sense (jackets recommended), the service is precise, the tasting menus traverse Italian-French technique with seasonal Tuscan ingredients. Bucket-list for serious diners. Book a month ahead.

A small wine bar facing Palazzo Pitti — narrow, wood-paneled, with one of the most considered Tuscan lists in the city.

This is where you go when you want to understand why Tuscan wine is different. The list runs deep into Sangiovese — Brunello, Vino Nobile, Chianti Classico Gran Selezione — with owners who'll talk through them properly. Order by the glass while you're learning, by the bottle when you're not. Small plates pair with the wine.

A neighborhood gelateria near Santa Croce that doesn't need to try very hard because it's already very good.

Steel containers, lids on, prices honest. The pistachio uses actual Sicilian pistachios, not pistachio paste. The fig-and-ricotta in summer is a quiet stunner. Avoid the seasonal mounds-of-color places near the Duomo; come here instead.

The oldest gelateria in Florence, founded 1929. The rice gelato is the dish you've never had anywhere else.

No cone — Vivoli serves gelato in cups only. The rice gelato is a Florentine anomaly: creamy, slightly grainy, utterly specific to this place and this city. The chocolate is also exceptional. The line moves fast. The price is reasonable. This is not a place that needs reinvention.

Massimo Bottura's Florentine outpost in the Gucci Garden on Piazza della Signoria. One Michelin star, very small dining room.

The Modena three-star chef opened this in 2018 inside the Gucci museum/restaurant complex. The menu plays with Italian classics through a global lens — the tortellini-in-cream is Modenese, the emilia burger is famous, the rest shifts seasonally. The room is intimate (28 seats), the design is theatrical, the bill is serious. Reserve a month ahead.

An Oltrarno favorite on Via di Santo Spirito since 2002 — modern Tuscan, candlelit, reliably good.

Three friends — Marco, Martina, and Stefano — opened it twenty-three years ago and have kept it sharp without freezing it in time. The menu shifts seasonally and leans more contemporary than the old guard: braised octopus, beef cheek with porcini, a vegetable-forward antipasti selection. Their wine bar Il Santino, three doors down, is the move for an aperitivo before.

A romantic, fairy-lit dining room near the Duomo, run by the sons of the late Prince Dimitri d'Asburgo-Lorena.

The vaulted brick ceiling, the strings of lights, the walls of family photographs, the welcome glass of prosecco — this is the dinner where everything goes a little theatrical, and it works. The pear and pecorino ravioli is the signature; the Sachertorte at the end is made from a Habsburg family recipe. Touristy in the best way. Book ahead, dress up.

Half flower shop, half café, full restaurant after dark — a concept space that somehow gets all three right.

Inside a former 19th-century homewares store on Via de' Ginori. Botanical decor, vaulted ceilings, plants everywhere. Mornings are for the brunch crowd; nights bring live jazz, cocktails, and a louder room. Useful when you want something modern in a city that mostly doesn't do modern.

A rooftop terrace at the Lungarno Collection's Hotel Continentale with a direct view of the Ponte Vecchio from above.

The view is the headline — you're looking straight down at the Ponte Vecchio, with the Duomo behind you and the Arno on both sides. The cocktails are fine, the price is high, the seating is limited, and you should reserve before sunset in summer. One drink, the photograph, then move on for dinner.

An ambitious cocktail bar and restaurant inside a Renaissance palazzo near the Bargello — vaulted ceilings, glass atrium, theatrical drinks.

The bar program is one of the most ambitious in Italy — long-form drinks built around Italian botanicals, theatrical presentation, serious depth. The interior is the show: a 13th-century palazzo restored around a glass atrium, with candlelit corners, vaulted rooms, hidden tables. Dress up. Reserve.

A small rooftop bar above Palazzo Guadagni in Piazza Santo Spirito — the Oltrarno's most cinematic sunset.

Tucked above one of Florence's prettier piazzas, this roof terrace gives you the city across the river: the Duomo on the horizon, the Brunelleschi rooftops below, the cliffs of San Miniato in the distance. Limited tables. Book ahead in summer. The Negroni is the order; the panoramic chairs are the reason.

Borgo San Frediano's experimental cocktail bar — playful, underground, packed by 11 p.m.

More about play than reverence — outlandish glassware, smoked drinks, fat-washed spirits, garnishes that arrive on their own plates. The crowd is younger and more design-school than the Locale crowd. No reservations; get there before 10 if you want a seat.

A small, dimly lit cocktail bar near Santa Maria Novella with a strict-Italian-spirits-only policy.

Every spirit, vermouth, amaro, and bitter on the back bar is Italian. Drinks reference the Florentine and broader Italian cocktail tradition — Negronis, Americanos, less-famous local apéritifs. The room is moody, the seating is limited (about 20 inside), the bartenders take it seriously. Trust them.

The covered food hall on the top floor of San Lorenzo's market — fresh pasta to order, decent pizza, real wine.

The ground floor is the traditional produce market — go there for cheese, salumi, fruit. The top floor, redone in 2014, is a food hall with individual vendors: pasta made-to-order, Neapolitan pizza, panini, a fish counter. Open all day, no reservations, useful at 2 p.m. when you've lost the plot. Touristy, yes, but legitimately good across most stands.

Florence's locals' market — half the tourists of San Lorenzo, twice the produce, mornings only.

East of the center near Piazza Ghiberti, this is where Florentines actually shop. Inside: cheese, salumi, butchers, fresh pasta vendors. Outside: produce stalls, a small clothes market. Go early, get a porchetta sandwich from one of the counters, eat it on a bench in the piazza. The trattoria stalls inside (Da Rocco, Trattoria Cibreo around the corner) are the real reason locals come.

Marchesi Antinori's one-Michelin-star restaurant alongside the 11th-century Badia a Passignano abbey in the heart of Chianti Classico — about 40 minutes south of Florence.

Vaulted dining rooms next to the still-active Vallombrosan monastery whose 10th-century cellars age the Chianti Classico Gran Selezione; chef Matteo Lorenzini (ex-Ducasse) cooks technical Tuscan from the estate garden — pair his "L'Orto di Badia" tasting with the cellar tour.

A working Oltrarno bakery from the Il Santo Bevitore team — bread, pastries, communal tables, no fuss.

The Baldesi siblings opened this on Via Santa Monaca to do bread properly: long-ferment schiacciata, real croissants, sourdough loaves that locals queue for. Sit at the wooden communal table with an espresso and a slice of schiacciata with prosciutto. The almond croissants are gone by 10. Go before then.

One Michelin star. Lungarno Benvenuto Cellini 63r. Chef Ariel Hagen cooks the produce grown at Borgo Santo Pietro, the Thottrup family's 300-acre organic estate in the Tuscan hills.

The Florence sibling to Saporium Chiusdino (the 1 Michelin Star + 1 Green Star kitchen on the estate itself) — opened March 2022 as a rebrand of the previous La Bottega del Buon Caffè in the same Lungarno space. Hagen's signature "La Stagione Che Non C'è" tasting changes each season with the estate gardens. Book three weeks ahead in summer.

A farm-to-table gelato shop in Santo Spirito, sourcing milk, fruit, and nuts directly from Tuscan farmers.

Newer than Vivoli or Badiani, more agricultural than either — the milk comes from a specific Mugello dairy, the figs in summer come from a farm an hour outside the city. Inventive seasonal flavors (ricotta and pear, fig and almond) sit next to flawless classics. Real vegan options too.

Dario Cecchini's sit-down restaurant in Panzano — the greatest butcher-restaurant in Italy.

Cecchini is the most famous butcher in Italy, possibly in the world. He recites Dante while he works and has been cutting Chianina beef in his Panzano shop since 1976. Solociccia is the multi-course set-menu lunch — no bistecca, all the other cuts — with Chianti flowing and lardo di Colonnata melting on warm bread. Drive 40 minutes from Florence. Worth every minute.

An Oltrarno institution on Borgo San Jacopo, run by the same family since 1945.

White tablecloths, low lighting, three rooms full of regulars who've been coming for forty years. Chiara Masiero runs the kitchen now — her grandfather opened it — and the menu mixes Tuscan classics (bistecca, fried zucchini flowers) with a few inherited oddities like a Bolognese-style tortellini and a properly made curry from the 1950s. Closed Tuesday and Wednesday, and Thursday lunch. Books out two weeks ahead.

Florence's oldest trattoria. Same room, same menu, same butter chicken since 1869.

A white-tiled, ten-table room near Santa Maria Novella with handwritten menus and communal tables. The butter chicken (petti di pollo al burro) — chicken breasts fried in genuinely excessive butter — is the dish. The artichoke tart is the other. Cash only. Closed Saturdays and Sundays. The locals call it Il Troia, "the trough," because of the way people line up for it.

The dough geek's pizzeria. Long-ferment, lighter crust, modern crowd.

Ciro Salvo trained for two decades before opening 50 Kalò; the name is dialect for "good dough." His version uses a 24-hour cold ferment which makes the crust noticeably lighter and more digestible than older-school Naples pizzerias. Closer to the waterfront than the historic center, with seating that's actually comfortable.

A Piazzetta institution since the mid-20th century — a Caprese café where you can order a slice of torta caprese (the flourless almond-and-chocolate cake reportedly invented by Carmine Di Fiore on the island in 1920, when he forgot the flour) with an espresso.

One of four bars on the Piazzetta, but the only one with the actual provenance. Stand at the counter, order torta caprese and espresso, watch the island wake up before the day-trippers arrive on the 9:30 ferry. By 11 it's a different place.

An infinity pool that ends at a thousand-foot drop. Dinner on the terrace next to it.

Caruso is a Belmond hotel inside an 11th-century palace at the highest point in Ravello. The restaurant sits on the same terrace as the most photographed pool in Italy. Cooler in summer than anywhere on the coast below, and the view at sunset is unbeatable.

Capri's historic gelateria. The waffle cones are made on the spot — you smell them from the Piazzetta.

Open since 1971, two minutes from the Piazzetta. The waffle iron at the door is the giveaway — they make every cone fresh, which is why the line moves slowly and why nobody minds. Almond and pistachio are the calls. Skip the seasonal flavors.

Half design store, half breakfast room. The only place in Positano that makes sense before 10 a.m. without a cornetto involved.

Cold-pressed juices, eggs done properly, fresh fruit, decent coffee, white-on-white interiors that photograph well. The food doesn't pretend to be Italian — it pretends to be useful. After three days of cornetti, it's the meal you actually want.

Small bakery on the beach end of Positano with a granita stand outside. €3, paper cup, no ceremony.

Sfusato amalfitano lemons, ice, sugar — that's it. Eaten standing on the beach with a wooden spoon. The kind of thing that makes you understand why the Romans were obsessed with this coast.

Pizza-as-restaurant. The pizzaiolo grandson took it Michelin-direction.

Ciro Oliva's grandmother opened it in 1951; he turned it into a destination. Wood-fired tasting menus that walk through Naples pizza's history — fritta, classic margherita, contemporary versions topped with smoked provola, anchovies from Cetara, garden tomatoes. The Sanità neighborhood is Naples' most interesting walk.

Look for the boat with the red fish on the mast. It leaves Positano's main pier hourly between 10 and 1.

Inaccessible by road — you arrive on the family's free shuttle boat from the Spiaggia Grande, eat under a wooden roof on the rocks, swim, eat more, let the afternoon unspool. Mozzarella grilled in lemon leaves is the dish. Beach beds for rent after lunch.

The grandfather of Campanian fine dining. One Michelin star (the original Sant'Agata location, in the 2026 Guide), the Iaccarino family across multiple generations, and a working organic farm at Punta Campanella that supplies the kitchen.

Halfway between Sorrento and Positano sits one of the most decorated restaurants in southern Italy. One Michelin star (2026 Guide; held two stars from 1990 until 2025), three generations of the Iaccarino family, vegetables grown on their own farm fifteen minutes away (visit it; they'll arrange a tour). Pair the tasting with the wine flight.

A family-run honeymoon hot spot in the hills above Positano. Jamie Oliver's favorite restaurant in Italy.

An intimate, art-filled, family-run trattoria in Montepertuso, the hill village above Positano. Refined Italian pastas and seafood from a kitchen that's been doing it the same way for three generations. Jamie Oliver became a regular years ago, then opened a London restaurant inspired by it. Feels like a secret dinner party in someone's home — with a very good wine list.

Open at 6 p.m. The line forms at 5:45. The best terrace in Positano.

Stand-up bar at Le Sirenuse — no reservations, first-come, first-served. Get there before 6 or accept that you're not getting a terrace seat. The view is the most photographed view in Positano. The Negroni is €30 and worth it for the show.

The best artisan gelato on the peninsula. The owner picks the lemons himself.

Family-owned since 1957. Mr. David sources his sfusato lemons from his own grove and his fior di latte from a buffalo dairy in Agerola. Result: denser, less sweet, more recognizable than the chains. Avoid the souvenir shops on Corso Italia; walk five minutes for half the price and twice the quality.

The crowd-pleaser. Bigger menu, faster line, equally legitimate pizza.

Third-generation pizzaiolo in the historic center. Sorbillo's grandmother had 21 children, all of whom became pizzaioli — that's the family math. Pizza here is slightly puffier than da Michele's; menu is broader (including the fritta — fried-then-baked). Reservations possible.

Open since 1870. Two pizzas on the menu. A line out the door at any hour.

The pizzeria from Eat, Pray, Love and 153 years of Neapolitan opinion. Margherita or marinara. €5 a pizza. The dough is wet, the crust is leopard-spotted, the cornicione properly puffed. Take a number outside, wait, eat at a shared table.

The first Michelin-starred restaurant in southern Italy. Open since 1959, still holding its star.

A frescoed dining room hung with vintage Amalfi ceramics and old-master oil paintings — feels more like dining inside a museum than a restaurant. The tasting menu honors traditional Amalfitana cooking with serious finesse. Formal in the old-school way: jackets recommended, conversation hushed, every course a piece of regional history.

400 candles lit at dusk. Live music drifting through tiled walls. Le Sirenuse's Michelin-starred dining room.

Chef Gennaro Russo cooks Campanian classics without overworking them — lemon risotto, grilled branzino, lobster gnocchi. Cathedral ceilings, hand-painted tiles, every table looking out toward the sea. Smart casual. Book on opening day for July or August dates.

No menu. A working farm in the hills above Positano. They pick you up in a van.

Family-run, three generations, working from a kitchen garden visible from the dining room. You don't choose; they bring antipasti, primi, a grilled secondo, dessert. Wine flows until someone says stop. The view is straight down to Positano with Capri in the distance.

A garden of citrus trees, a pasticceria since 1950, the best lemon delight in Positano.

The terrace is a small jungle of lemon and orange trees with a piano in the corner. Locals come in the morning for coffee and sfogliatella; tourists come at sunset for a Negroni they don't really need. Go in the morning. Take the cornetto al limone to the beach.

Built into the rock wall that holds Atrani up. The cheapest good seafood on this stretch of coast.

An honest trattoria with a small terrace facing the pebble beach. Family-run, no website worth speaking of, prices that won't shock you. Scialatielli is what to order — the regional pasta, hand-cut, with mussels and clams from the morning's catch.

A wooden pier over the sea. The dish Stanley Tucci called life-changing. The reason most people who go once go again.

The De Simone family opened it in 1958 and three generations later they're still serving food grown on their own farm up the hill. The spaghetti alla Nerano was invented in this town and this kitchen makes the version everyone else copies.

The only way non-residents get into Villa TreVille — Zeffirelli's old house, now a four-villa hotel.

Twelve tables, candle-lit, on a terrace looking back at Positano from above. The hotel itself is closed to non-guests by policy; dinner is the workaround. Reserve directly through the hotel three to four weeks ahead. The property has hosted everyone from Maria Callas to Diana Vreeland.

The coast's only proper nightclub. Built directly into the cliffs below Le Sirenuse.

Cover from €30, cocktails around €20, the actual late-night option in Positano. Doesn't get going until after 1 a.m. — until then the crowd is still at dinner. Bold lighting, international DJs, a setting genuinely unlike anywhere else: the cave walls are the original Amalfi rock face, lit theatrically. Dress to impress; it's flashy, unapologetically Euro, and always loud.

A small dome of sponge cake soaked in limoncello and limoncello cream. Light, almost weightless.

Same Pansa as breakfast, but the dessert is what most people don't realize they came for. Technically Sorrentine in origin, but the version at Pansa — refined, less sweet, with proper sfusato cream — is the one. Take three to-go.

Founded 1830. The historic café in front of Amalfi's Duomo, still the best sfogliatella on the coast.

Six generations of the same family. The sfogliatella Santa Rosa was invented in 1681 by the nuns at the convent in Conca dei Marini (now Monastero Santa Rosa); Pansa took the recipe down the coast and refined it into the canonical modern version on this very piazza. Order it warm in the morning with espresso, standing at the counter.

A rooftop terrace covered in lemon trees, halfway up the hill behind Amalfi's Duomo.

Wood-fired pizza, hand-cut gnocchi, a covered pergola of citrus trees, and almost no tourists despite being a six-minute walk from the cathedral. Reserve a few days ahead — there are maybe twelve tables and the regulars know about all of them.

Inside Ravello's pink palazzo. Frescoed dining room, Michelin star, less-touristed than the Caruso.

Chef Giovanni Vanacore runs a kitchen that sources almost everything from a 30-kilometer radius. The dining room is in the original 12th-century palazzo with frescoed ceilings; the terrace, in summer, is one of the more intimate fine-dining moments in the region.

One of Italy's most famous pastry chefs, on the beachfront in Minori.

Sal De Riso is to Italian pastry what René Redzepi is to Nordic cooking — a generational figure who reinterpreted regional traditions and made them famous everywhere. The ricotta and pear cake is non-negotiable; the delizia al limone is the most refined version on the coast. Beachfront café, stand or sit. Worth the detour to Minori.

Carved into the cliff a kilometer outside Positano. The most discreet luxury room on the coast.

Il San Pietro is hidden — buried into the rock so you can't see it from town. Zass sits on a terrace mostly invisible from the sea. Chef Alois Vanlangenaeker holds a Michelin star for cooking that draws on the hotel's terraced gardens above.

Sicily's oldest chocolate shop, in business since 1880 in Modica — and the keeper of the cold-process Aztec method the Spanish brought here in the 1500s.

Modica chocolate is its own thing — granular, never melted above 40°C, with the sugar crystals still visible. The technique came from the Aztecs via the Spanish viceroys and Bonajuto has been making it the original way for six generations. The flavours are old-world: cinnamon, chilli pepper, jasmine, sea salt, carob. The 'mpanatigghi (sweet-savoury pastries with chocolate, almonds, and minced beef, a Spanish convent recipe) sound wrong on paper and are addictive in person. Take a box home.

A working trattoria inside Catania's Pescheria — wedged between the fishmongers, lunching on what they sold an hour earlier.

The Catania fish market is a fifteen-minute spectacle of shouting, gutting, and tuna heads on ice — and the four or five restaurants tucked into it eat better than anything else in the city. Antica Marina is the most respected. Twelve tables, a chalkboard menu, no English version. Order whatever's marked 'oggi' (today). The raw fish platter (crudo) is the show: gambero rosso, red prawn from Mazara, scallops, oysters. Spaghetti with sea urchin in season (October–April) is the dish people come for. Book lunch, not dinner.

A Taormina granita bar that's been doing it correctly for forty years — wood counter, no fuss, the best granita in town and the locals know it.

A narrow corso bar on Via di Giovanni, two minutes from Piazza IX Aprile. The granitas are textbook: never blended, never refrozen, hand-cranked twice a day. Twelve flavours rotating with the season — mulberry (gelsi) when it appears in June is the order of the year. The brioche col tuppo is fresh from a local bakery. Stand at the bar, order a half-and-half (granita di gelsi e mandorla, the colour of a sunset), and a brioche. Open 7 a.m. till after midnight in summer.

The Corrado Assenza shop on Corso Vittorio Emanuele in Noto. Four generations of Assenzas, one Netflix Chef's Table episode, and the most influential pastry chef in Italy still running the counter most mornings.

A pilgrimage. Open since 1892, run by Corrado Assenza since the 1980s — granita made from raw almonds grown thirty kilometres away in Avola, cassata that goes by weight rather than slice, candied citrus that takes three months to set. The line out the door is real; come at 7:30 a.m. when it opens, or after 6 p.m. when the day-trippers have left. Order the almond granita with a warm brioche col tuppo (a Sicilian brioche with a topknot) and dip the brioche into the granita. The cassatine and ricotta cannoli are filled to order. You will not eat better pastry in Italy.

A Trapani institution in the Jewish quarter — and the best place on the island to eat the western-Sicilian dishes that don't really travel beyond the province.

If you're driving west, this is the meal. Three small rooms in a sandstone palazzo on Via Giudecca, run by chef Pino Maggiore for thirty years. Cous cous di pesce — fish couscous in a saffron-tomato broth, an Arab-Sicilian dish brought back by Trapani fishermen — is the headline. Busiate al pesto trapanese (the local pasta with a raw-almond, tomato, and basil pesto) is a close second. The wine list runs heavy on Erice and Marsala. €40–55 per head. Closed Mondays.

Antonio Cappadonia trained in Bronte and brought serious gelato to central Palermo — single-origin pistachio, milk from a single Madonie dairy, no commercial bases.

A small shop on Via Nicolò Garzilli that serves what most Sicilian gelaterias claim to: real pistachio of Bronte (the green-gold variety from the Etna foothills, DOP-protected), real Sicilian almonds, real Madonie milk. The flavours are old-school — no peanut-butter-pretzel-mango anywhere — and the texture is dense, slow-frozen. Pistachio + ricotta e pera (ricotta and pear) in a brioche is the order. Coffee is also serious here. Closed in winter.

A sandwich shop and salumeria at the entrance to Ortigia's daily market — the most famous panini in southeast Sicily, built theatrically by hand.

Andrea Borderi runs the counter, narrates every panino, makes you taste five cheeses before you've ordered, and constructs sandwiches the size of small handbags using local provolone, mortadella, sun-dried tomatoes, capers, pistachio cream, anchovies, and whatever else he's pulling off the shelf that day. Lunch only — they shut around 4 p.m. The line forms by 11; ticket system. Eat it standing outside in Via Trento with a glass of wine from one of the adjacent stalls. €10–15. Don't try to order a panino like a normal sandwich; let Andrea cook.

A waterfront granita bar in Lingua on Salina — universally agreed to be the best granita in the Aeolian Islands, possibly in Sicily.

Alfredo opened this place in the 1960s on the seafront of Lingua, the tiny village at the south end of Salina. The granita is made with raw Sicilian almonds, mulberry from Salina's own trees, and lemon — the texture is the gold standard, slow-stirred, never overworked. Eat it on the curb watching the ferries go past. The pane cunzato (a flat bread loaded with tomato, anchovy, capers, olive oil, oregano) is the other order — €10, lunch for two. Open May through October only.

A no-frills street-food window on Piazza Kalsa — locals lining the curb at lunch, no seating, the best panelle in the city.

Panelle are chickpea-flour fritters fried hot, stacked into a soft sesame roll with a squeeze of lemon. Crocchè are mashed-potato fritters cooked in the same oil. Order one of each, salt them, eat them on the curb. Family-run for three generations, open since the 1940s. €3 for a sandwich. Cash only. The other window on the square is the competitor; both are worth doing. Open till the food runs out, usually around 3 p.m.

A 16th-century palazzo in Palermo's Vucciria district turned into Mauricio Zillo's modern Sicilian kitchen — one Michelin star, the best restaurant in central Palermo.

A converted sculptor's atelier on Via dei Cassari, near the old Vucciria market. Brazilian chef Mauricio Zillo cooks Sicilian ingredients through a slightly more international lens — red prawns from Mazara, lamb from the Nebrodi, citrus from Ribera. Two tasting menus (fish and 'chef's choice'), plus à la carte. The wine list, curated by Antonio Lo Cicero, is one of Sicily's best, leaning hard on Etna and Vittoria. €90–130 per head. Book a week ahead in season.

A small gelateria on one of Ortigia's prettiest streets, beside the cathedral — quiet rotating list of artisanal flavours and a perfect outdoor terrace.

Right beside Ortigia's Baroque duomo, on Via Roma. Compact menu, all made on-site, all with Sicilian ingredients. Fiordilatte (a milk-based gelato without any flavouring beyond the cream itself) is the test — the version here is exemplary. The pistachio is Bronte. Order one of each in a brioche col tuppo, sit on the cathedral steps, and you've had Sicily's most photographed breakfast.

A working pastry kitchen inside the cloister of the Santa Caterina convent — running the historical recipes of cloistered Sicilian nuns since the kitchen reopened in 2017.

The Santa Caterina convent housed cloistered nuns from 1311 to 2014 — they baked the elaborate sweets you'll see imitated everywhere on the island. When the last nun left, a group of professional pastry chefs took over the cloister kitchen and revived the recipes. The cassate (ricotta cakes with candied citron and pistachio marzipan) and pasta di mandorla are flawless; the cannoli shells are fried that morning and filled the moment you order. Come right at opening (10 a.m.) before the queue starts. Inside the cloister itself — the architecture is half the visit.

The Michelin-starred vegetable-only restaurant inside Therasia Resort on Vulcano — chef Davide Guidara turns the Aeolian garden into the most thoughtful kitchen on the islands.

Eight courses, no meat, no fish, no compromise. Guidara cooks vegetables grown almost entirely on the resort's own land — capers from Salina, tenerumi (a Sicilian gourd vine), tomatoes from Pachino, herbs from a single hillside. The dishes look like still-lifes and taste like the islands. Wine pairings draw on Aeolian Malvasia and Etna whites. Open only May–October. €180–220 per head with pairings. The dinner of the trip if you're on Vulcano.

Arancine specialists with two locations in the Palermo centre — the freshest rice balls in the city, fried to order in front of you.

In Palermo it's arancina (feminine, round like an orange — arancia), in Catania it's arancino (masculine, conical). Both cities will fight you on this. Ke Palle is the Palermo benchmark: fifteen rotating fillings, each a fist-sized fried saffron-rice ball, ordered from the counter and handed over in a paper wrap. The classics — al ragù (meat sauce) and al burro (ham, cheese, béchamel) — are the order. The seasonal ones (pistachio, swordfish, eggplant) reward repeat visits. €3 each, eaten standing.

Pino Cuttaia's two-Michelin-star kitchen in the small south-coast town of Licata — "la cucina della memoria", the cuisine of memory. The deepest Sicilian fine-dining experience on the island.

Cuttaia grew up in Licata, was taken north to Turin as a teenager, learned to cook in Piemontese kitchens (Il Sorriso, Il Patio), then came home in 2000 and opened La Madia. Two Michelin stars since 2009 and counting. The menus are autobiographical — childhood memories of Sicilian fishing and farm life, rebuilt as fine dining. Three tasting paths (Stairs of Sicily, Views of the Sea, The Illusion). If you're doing the Valley of the Temples and need a south-coast meal that justifies the detour, this is it. €140–200 per head. Closed Tuesdays and Sunday dinner.

A Michelin-starred kitchen carved into the limestone bedrock of Ragusa Ibla — vaulted stone ceilings, candlelight, the cellar tucked into the rock behind the dining room.

Chef Vincenzo Candiano cooks layered, ambitious Sicilian food in what feels like the world's most theatrical cave. The room was excavated from the rock under the Church of Miracles centuries ago; the La Rosa family converted it to a fine-dining restaurant in 2005 and earned its Michelin star early. Two tasting menus and à la carte; the wine list runs 2,000+ labels with serious depth on Sicilian and Italian. €110–160 per head. Book three weeks ahead in season — the room only seats 24.

Now relocated to a former farmhouse between Calabernardo and Lido di Noto — modern Sicilian dining in a candlelit stone courtyard. Sicily's loveliest dinner setting.

A husband-and-wife project that moved out of downtown Noto in the last few years and only got better for it. The courtyard, lit at dusk, with a wisteria over the dining tables, makes the case before the food does. The kitchen runs a tight tasting menu of six to eight courses — modern Sicilian, generous on vegetables and seafood, with serious wine pairings from the Etna and Vittoria regions. Service is warm without being intrusive. Drive out — taxi to and from Noto is easy. €100–150 per head with wine pairings.

Catania's most beloved modern-traditional trattoria, on Piazza Turi Ferro near the opera — Stanley Tucci-approved for Searching for Italy.

'Cumpari' is Sicilian for close friend; Turiddu is short for Salvatore. The whole pitch is feeling like you're at a friend's house, with the chef cooking out of an open kitchen. Pasta alla Norma — bucatini with fried eggplant, tomato, salted ricotta, and basil — was invented in Catania, named after Bellini's opera, and the version here is the city's reference. The caponata is sweet-sour, generous with the capers, served at room temperature on day-old bread. Excellent natural wine list. €40–55 per head. Book a day ahead.

The market that opens around 7 a.m. for produce and turns into a street-food alley by sundown — charcoal grills, plastic stools, the smell of lard hitting fire.

Capo runs along Via Carini and Via Beati Paoli, north of Quattro Canti. Daytime: a working market for produce, fish, butchery, spice. Late afternoon onward: the stigghiolari fire up portable grills over coals on the street and char-grill stigghiole — lamb or veal intestines wound around scallions, salted, eaten on a stick. €2 a skewer. Sit on a plastic stool, order a small beer from the bar next door, watch the show. Also: pannulino panini, frittola (the offcuts of pig fried in lard), and arancine if the vendor still has them.

The benchmark spleen-sandwich joint in Palermo, on Piazza Marina near the harbour. Open till 2 a.m. and the late-night call of every Palermitan.

Pane ca' meusa is veal spleen and lung, boiled, sliced, fried in lard, piled into a sesame-seeded vastedda roll. You order it 'schietto' (single — just spleen and a squeeze of lemon) or 'maritato' (married — with grated caciocavallo or ricotta on top). It sounds extreme and it's tender, savoury, deeply unglamorous in the best way. Franco's place is the one Anthony Bourdain came for and the Palermitani still go. €3, eaten standing, washed down with a Birra Messina. Pani e panelle (chickpea fritters in bread) is the vegetarian default.

On the most beautiful piazza in Palermo (Piazza Croce dei Vespri, where The Leopard's ballroom scene was filmed) — a sit-down Sicilian seafood restaurant with serious wine.

A Palermo benchmark since 1997 — one of the first restaurants to drag the city's fine dining into the present. The Galante brothers run it; the menu is sharply seasonal, the wine list is monastic in its discipline (650 labels, leaning Sicilian and Italian). The spaghettoni with sardines, fennel, pine nuts, and saffron is the dish the city quietly nominates as the platonic pasta con le sarde. Outdoor tables on the piazza in season. €70–95 per head.

The Michelin-starred restaurant at the Belmond Grand Hotel Timeo — sixteen seats on a bougainvillea-covered terrace, Etna to one side, the Ionian below, the view doing half the work.

Named for the German painter who put Taormina on the tourist map in the 1870s. Sicilian chef Roberto Toro cooks confident, restrained Mediterranean food — Mazara red prawn, Pachino tomatoes, Mozia sea salt, Bronte pistachios, all sourced within the island. The room is intimate (sixteen seats, all outdoor in season), service is unhurried, the wine list leans heavy on Etna and the Aeolians. Open seasonally, dinner only. The most photographed dinner setting in Sicily, and rare among scenic-view restaurants in that the food earns the view rather than the other way around.

A Palermo dynasty since 1940 — and the inventors of the Setteveli, the seven-layer chocolate-hazelnut cake that briefly turned into Sicily's most copied dessert.

Two locations in Palermo; the one on Via Colonna Rotta near the cathedral is the original. Look for the long counter of ricotta cannoli, paste di mandorla (almond paste cookies in the shape of citrus fruit), cassatine, and the Setteveli — a seven-layer cake the family invented in 1997 that won them an international pastry prize and a generation of imitators. Stand at the marble bar, ask for the cassata they finished that morning, and eat it with an espresso. Open from 6:30 a.m.

A 1960s neighbourhood pizzeria in the Politeama district — the locals' default for Friday-night Palermo pizza and a respected sfincione.

Sfincione is Palermo's pizza — thick, focaccia-like, with tomato, anchovy, breadcrumbs, caciocavallo, no mozzarella. The version at Biondo is one of the city's most defended. They also do regular Neapolitan-style pizzas (the diavola with salsiccia, fior di latte, and pepperoncino is famously good). Family-run since 1965, packed with Palermitani, never overrun by tourists. €15–25 per head. Open for dinner only. Closed Mondays.

Marco Baglieri's Michelin-starred Noto Alta restaurant — modern Sicilian cooking with a German pastry-school accent, in a glass-walled cellar room across from the Crocifisso church.

Marco grew up in Germany, returned to Noto, and brought a precision to Sicilian cooking that you don't often find in the south. Two tasting menus — one fish, one meat — each six or seven courses, plus à la carte. The artichoke-and-anchovy starter and the braised-onion tortello with rabbit ragù are the dishes you'll think about a week later. The glass cellar wall lets you watch the somm pull bottles. Marco's mother runs Dammuso, the family trattoria, two blocks away — the casual version. Book three weeks ahead for dinner in season.

A 1970s neighbourhood trattoria slightly off the tourist track in Olivuzza — the locals' default for a long Palermo Sunday lunch.

A ten-minute walk from the centre, on Via d'Ossuna, family-run since 1979. Pasta con le sarde — bucatini with fresh sardines, wild fennel, pine nuts, and currants — is the city's defining pasta and the version here is the textbook reference. The fritti misti antipasto (panelle, crocchè, mini arancine, fried artichokes) is the right opener. Sunday lunch is the show; you'll be the only foreigners. €25–35 per head. Lunch and Sunday brunch only — closed for dinner Sun and all day Mon.

A seaside trattoria in the fishing village of Brucoli, exactly between Catania and Syracuse — the right stop on the drive south, with a seafront terrace and fish off the boat that morning.

Brucoli sits 40 minutes south of Catania, an hour north of Syracuse, and is not somewhere you'd otherwise stop. The reason to stop is I Rizzari — a small, family-run seafood trattoria right on the water, the kind of place Katie Parla and Lonely Planet quietly both have on their Sicily list. The spaghetti with sea urchin is the dish people drive in for; gambero rosso crudo from Mazara, raw and almost-sweet, is the other order. Lunch is the move — book a table on the terrace, two hours minimum, fish chosen from a tray brought to the table. Book at least two days ahead in summer.

The eccentric, slightly bohemian one in Ortigia — mismatched tablecloths, antique dolls on the wall, a hand-painted chalkboard menu, and a kitchen that's been quietly serious about local ingredients for forty years.

A few tables on a quiet alley near the Apollo temple. The aunt-and-niece team focuses on what's at the market that morning — heavy on vegetables, octopus, rabbit (coniglio in agrodolce — sweet-sour rabbit with capers and raisins — is the classic), homemade tagliolini. The vegetable antipasti are not a table-filler but a full course: nine or ten plates of marinated eggplant, stuffed tomatoes, panelle, fava purée. Two hours minimum, no rushing.

Family-run since 1951 in Borgo Vecchio market — the trattoria Anthony Bourdain put on his short list of Sicilian benchmarks, still entirely deserved.

The Bonomo family, three generations, twenty tables, a kitchen that runs on whatever came off the boat that morning. Polpo bollito (boiled octopus on lemon), spaghetti with sea urchin roe in season, involtini di spatola (scabbard fish rolled around breadcrumbs, pine nuts, currants — the sailor's dish), and a tasting plate of buccellati at the end. Reservation essential on weekends. The buccellati come from Pasticceria Oscar, two doors down — they don't make their own and they don't pretend to.

A pasta-and-fish trattoria on Via Cavour in Ortigia. No reservations; tiny dining room; one of the best red shrimp pastas on the island.

Small kitchen, open all day, run by a husband-and-wife team for over twenty years. The pasta is made daily — paccheri, busiate, tagliatelle — and dressed with what's in the market: red prawn from Mazara, bottarga from Favignana, sea urchin in season, swordfish in summer. No reservations: come at 12:30 or 7:30 to skip the wait. €25–35 per head. Cash preferred. Closed Tuesdays.

Pietro Zito's cult trattoria in Montegrosso, in the countryside outside Andria. The Pugliese vegetable cooking benchmark — the one chefs from Milan and New York make the pilgrimage to.

In a village no one outside Puglia could find on a map, Zito has been quietly running one of the most important restaurants in southern Italy for thirty years. The garden out back grows everything on the plate. The bread is from his oven. The menu is whatever's in season — there are pages, but the order is "I trust you." You will not regret it. Drive an hour from anywhere. Worth it.

Ostuni's open-air aperitivo perch, on the ramps climbing toward the duomo. The unbeatable view comes free.

The seats are on the stairs themselves — quirky, slightly precarious, and the best sunset view in the city. The drinks aren't trying to be cocktails, they're aperitivi: Spritz, Negroni, Aperol with bitter, a glass of local rosato. Tapas-style snacks if you want them. Get there an hour before sundown, claim a step, watch Ostuni turn pink.

Ostuni's serious-coffee café in the centro storico. Properly trained baristas, Viennese pastries, a stop on the way up to the duomo.

If you're staying in Ostuni and want breakfast that isn't a sad masseria buffet, this is the move. Small, sharp, light — flat white-adjacent espresso drinks, a pastry counter that respects laminated dough, outdoor tables that catch the morning light. Locals come for the cornetti and the conversation, in that order.

Lecce's historic café on Piazza Sant'Oronzo, with outdoor tables facing the Roman amphitheater.

Open since 1950, Alvino is the city's living room. Stand-at-the-bar prices, sit-down prices that are still reasonable for what you get — which is a perfect view of the second-century amphitheater unearthed in the middle of the piazza. Rustico (warm puff pastry filled with béchamel, mozzarella, and tomato) at 11 a.m. is the move. So is anything from the pastry case.

Michelin one-star plus a Michelin Green Star — the first sustainability star awarded in Puglia — inside a turn-of-the-century castle in the Primitivo wine country.

The reason to make Manduria a full day rather than a wine-tasting stopover. Chef Pietro Penna — trained at the Four Seasons Milan and George V in Paris — came back to Puglia to cook the food he grew up with, refined by French technique. The estate's own garden supplies most of what's on the plate; the wine list naturally leans into Primitivo and Negroamaro from the surrounding vineyards. The 1900s Schiavoni castle setting, with olive trees outside the windows, is part of the experience. Pair the eight-course menu with the wines and stay the night in the Vinilia Wine Resort upstairs.

A Slow Food landmark and Michelin Bib Gourmand in Ceglie Messapica — the food capital of Puglia that almost no tourist bothers with.

In a 15th-century building in the historic center of Ceglie Messapica, the town that quietly produces some of the region's best cooks. Cibus was the first Puglia restaurant to receive the Slow Food Snail in the 1990s and has held a Bib Gourmand ever since. The opening antipasti del territorio is a parade of local cheeses, vegetables, salumi, and warm fried things that will outlast your appetite — pace yourself. The wine cellar is one of Puglia's deepest. Family-run by Angela and Angelo Silibello. Closed Tuesdays.

Borgo Egnazia's flagship Michelin-starred restaurant. Chef Domingo Schingaro's elevated take on Pugliese tradition.

Inside Borgo Egnazia, but worth eating at even if you're not staying. The kitchen takes the cucina povera vocabulary — fave, cicoria, orecchiette, ricci di mare — and applies serious-but-not-show-off technique. The Pugliese tasting menu is the order; do the wine pairing. Service is the kind that's been trained to a Mediterranean luxury standard without going stiff. The pricing reflects the address.

Polignano's gelato landmark at Piazza Garibaldi 22 — the Campanella family operation that's been here since 1935.

Giuseppe Campanella walked into Polignano from Conversano in 1935 with a mobile cart of almonds and invented the "grattose" — flavoured grated ice — that became the local thing. His son Mario took over the small shop on Piazza Garibaldi and turned it into a pilgrimage stop (Pippo Baudo, Gianni Morandi, Monica Vitti, Lina Wertmüller have all eaten here). Order the Caffè Speciale — the house signature, a layered cup of coffee, whipped cream, lemon zest, and a hit of almond liqueur. The almond (mandorla) gelato is the other order — Puglian almonds, and this is the place to taste them.

Polignano's mojito specialist on Via Annunziata in the old town — fifteen-odd variations, fresh juice, around €7–8 a glass.

A tiny bar on Via Annunziata in the old town with a handful of high stools out front and the rest of the crowd spilling onto the lane. The menu is mojito after mojito — classic, fruit, herb, plus a limoncello version made with lemons from the owners' own farm. Cocktails arrive in proper glassware with fresh-pressed juice, the bartenders are friendly, the prices stay reasonable. Where you go in Polignano if you've eaten and you want a drink that isn't a Spritz on a piazza full of tourists. Walks home from Lama Monachile are easy.

A working fisherman's family's harbor-side seafood restaurant in Tricase Porto — the prettiest small harbor in the deep Salento.

The Coppola family — three siblings and their father Mario, a lifelong fisherman — opened the Taverna in 2014 in their family's home village on the Salento coast between Otranto and Santa Maria di Leuca. Chef Alfredo De Luca runs the kitchen. The pesce is what the local boats brought in that morning — you pick yours from the case — and the crudo platter is among the best in the south. Lampshades like fishing buoys, white-and-blue interior, a deckchair to wait on with a glass of Verdeca. Open year-round, which is unusual for the coastal south. Closed Wednesday and Sunday evening.

Lecce institution since 1950, with multiple locations across Salento and a shop on Piazza Sant'Oronzo.

If Natale is the connoisseur's choice, Martinucci is the locals' default. The pasticciotti are perfect — slightly warm, slightly soft, with custard that hasn't been sitting around since dawn. The fruttone (chocolate-coated almond paste with quince jam) is the other order. Caffè leccese here is the cold drink summer was invented for.

Lecce's "destination fine dining in the traditional sense" — refined Salento cooking in a courtyard restaurant a short walk from the duomo.

A step up from the trattoria genre without ever leaving its vocabulary. The kitchen works with predominantly local ingredients prepared with the kind of considered precision that lifts the meal from warmth into something more deliberate. Beautiful courtyard garden in summer. Wine list deep on Salice Salentino and Negroamaro producers.

Ostuni's most beloved cellar restaurant, set in a converted bakery cave with vaulted limestone ceilings.

Yes, the tourists found it. They found it for a reason. The setting alone — descending into a candle-lit grotto carved into the white limestone the city is built from — would be enough. The food backs it up: charcuterie boards thick with capocollo, the slow-cooked braciole over orecchiette, grilled fish for the table. Madonna celebrated her 63rd birthday here. Make of that what you will.

Michelin one-star in Conversano, set inside the Palazzo del Seminario Vescovile — fifteen minutes inland from Polignano.

The fine-dining anchor for the Polignano-Monopoli stretch when you don't want to drive back into the Itria Valley. Chef Michele Spadaro's modern Pugliese cooking — caviar with Altamura buffalo mozzarella, lamb with shallot — under the vaulted ceilings of a 17th-century bishop's seminary. Sommelier Juan Pablo's wine list spans Puglia and well beyond. Two tasting menus, five or seven courses; the longer one earns it. Reserve weeks ahead. Closed Tuesdays.

A few steps off Piazza Sant'Oronzo, Natale is the Lecce purist's pasticciotto — traditional custard only, eaten warm.

The pasticciotto was invented in Salento — a small, oval shortcrust pastry filled with custard. Natale is the address for the traditional version: shortcrust well-baked and fragrant, custard fresh and clean. Don't get distracted by the variations — order the classic crema, ask for it caldo (warm), and eat it standing. For breakfast: pair it with an espressino freddo. Cash is faster than the card line.

The fish-sandwich counter on Piazza Aldo Moro that turned Polignano into a food destination. Now has outposts across Italy — Milan, Rome, Trani, and counting — but the original still sets the standard.

The polpo panino — fried octopus, cime di rapa, anchovy oil, fig syrup, ricotta and pepper — is the dish everyone in Italy stopped pretending to be surprised by years ago. Still excellent. The red shrimp tartare with passion-fruit mayo is the second-best thing on the menu. Order at the counter, listen for your number. The line wraps the block at peak — go before 12.30 or after 3.

Chef Solaika Marrocco's Michelin-starred restaurant in Lecce. Avant-garde Salentine cooking inside a vaulted Lecce-stone room.

The most interesting kitchen in Salento right now. Marrocco won the star young and works regional ingredients with serious technique — parmigiana with burnt-wheat béchamel, sweetbreads with raw Gallipoli shrimp. Two tasting menus, seven and ten courses. The wine list, by sommelier Silvia Antonazzo, is the southern Italian wine education most people miss. Limited seating. Reserve well ahead.

Fine seafood dining at the La Peschiera hotel — terrace tables literally over the Adriatic, with a 19th-century Bourbon fish reserve as the setting.

The terrace at La Peschiera, a former royal fish reserve converted into one of Puglia's most romantic small hotels, is set right at the edge of the Adriatic — the sea is a few meters away on three sides. The kitchen does fish with the kind of light hand it deserves: marinated anchovies, raw red shrimp from Gallipoli, spaghetti with sea urchin, simply-grilled catch. Book a sunset table. Wear linen.

The Lecce home-cooking benchmark. An unmarked door on a quiet street, a hostess who treats you like family, and a menu that has not chased a single trend.

Operates from an unmarked entrance on Via Colonnello Archimede Costadura — the kind of setup that gets called a "hidden gem" by people who haven't been here, and called dinner by the people who have. Order the purè di fave with chicory, the taiedda (the layered bake of potatoes, courgette, and mussels), pasta with chickpeas. Cash and reservations preferred. Booking essential — the room is small.

If you only eat at one place in Lecce, this is it. Homestyle Salento cooking, no surprises, prices that haven't moved in years.

Big antipasti, generous primi, the orecchiette with cime di rapa is the dish you'll think about on the flight home. Ask the waitress what's good. She will, in fact, set you up. The room is plain in the way places with this much skill are allowed to be — they're not paying anyone to decorate; they're cooking.

Monopoli's harbor-side wine bar, in the centro storico. Small inside, perfect outside, the table you want is the one facing the boats.

The all-Puglia wine list is the point. The owner has opinions; ask. Sit outside if there's any way at all — the harbor at sunset is the answer to the question "what's the best free thing in Monopoli." Cheese boards, taralli, small plates. Aperitivo through late dinner. They have a small inside table that overlooks the harbor through an open window. That's the table.

A hole-in-the-wall window in San Polo serving fried lagoon seafood in paper cones — Venetian street food at its most honest. €5 to €10, eaten standing in the calle.

Campiello dei Meloni, near Rialto. Chef Alvise — a former fine-dining cook who reset to do this — fries to order: small whole anchovies, calamari, shrimp, sardines, baby octopus, plus a slab of grilled polenta at the bottom of the cone to keep everything hot. The scartosso is the Venetian word for the folded paper cone. There's no seating; locals walk to a nearby campo with a fountain and eat there. Cash easier than card. Closed Sundays. Phil Rosenthal filmed here for Somebody Feed Phil.

Sixteen seats in Castello. Chef Claudio De Lauzieres cooks Venice-meets-Naples; his partner Claudia runs pastry. Indagare-listed sibling to the more famous Al Covo.

Castello 3829 — five minutes from the Arsenale, on a calle most maps skip. The room is small enough that the open kitchen and the dining floor are basically the same space. Three-course prix-fixe at €40, wine pairings €15 — for Venice, that's a steal. The menu changes weekly. Slow Food principles, mostly local fish, a Neapolitan accent on the seasonings (Claudio's from Naples). Claudia's caprese cake is the dessert to order; the cassata is the one to know about. Reserve a week ahead, two for weekends.

A tiny hole-in-the-wall on the campo behind Rialto, no inside seating at all. Possibly the best mini-panini in the city.

A shoebox-sized counter on Campo Bella Vienna, identifiable from a block away by the crowd of locals spilling into the square with cocktails. Order a mini-panino — the porchetta, the mortadella with pistachio, the soppressa with smoked scamorza — and a Select spritz (Venetian preference, not Aperol). €2 each. Stand in the campo, watch the market wind down, repeat. Best between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. or 6 to 8 p.m.

The Cannaregio aperitivo anchor on Fondamenta dei Ormesini. A moored boat in front of the bar that doubles as outdoor seating in the warmer months.

Open since 2008, run by Stefano Maraffin and his wife. The cicchetti are good, the wine list is solid, and there's a Fiorentina steak on the menu if dinner becomes an option. The genuine appeal is the wooden boat tied to the fondamenta out front — you can grab a glass and a plate and post up there, watching the rest of Cannaregio do the same. Live music two nights a week in summer. The Misericordia strip is where Venetians actually drink at 7 p.m.

A bacaro tucked into a hidden courtyard behind Campo San Bartolomeo — three minutes from the Rialto Bridge and the only tourist who finds it is one who's actually looking.

Walk under the sottoportego della Bissa and you land in a tiny stone courtyard with a single doorway. Inside, the cicchetti rotate hourly — fried zucchini flowers stuffed with ricotta, polpette in tomato, mini-panini with speck or truffle salami, seafood skewers from the morning's catch. Eight-hundred-something liquors behind the bar, a small upstairs room for a sit-down dinner if needed, occasional live music on weekends. Ginger Spritz here is the unexpected order. Stay for one round; the place fills up after 7.

A closet-sized standing bar near the train station, beloved by students and shipyard workers. Mini-paninis for €1, wine for €0.80 a glass.

If All'Arco is the connoisseur's bacaro, Lele is the people's. The mini-panini — crisp little rolls filled with cheese, salami, mortadella, or vegetable spreads — cost €1 each. Wine starts at €0.80. The crowd is half student, half local construction worker, all standing in the campo out front. Cash only, no seating, opens at 6 a.m. for the workers and closes at 8 p.m. The first or last ombra of the trip, depending on direction.

Open since 1720. The most touristy café in Venice and, somehow, still the most beautiful room. Once a year, do it once.

Goethe drank here. Casanova drank here. Byron, Proust, Dickens, Andy Warhol. The orchestras play on the terrace from 10 a.m. to midnight and the orchestra surcharge is real — €6 per drink for the music. Inside, the gilded rooms (Sala del Senato, Sala Liberty, Sala Cinese) cost the same as the terrace but feel like a museum after dark. Go in at 10 a.m., order the thick cioccolata calda — denser than pudding, served with whipped cream — and sit in the Sala degli Uomini Illustri. €18 well spent.

The oldest bacaro in Venice — open since 1462, behind the Rialto Market. Copper pots dangling from the ceiling, no seating, and a working-man's wine list.

Casanova is supposed to have drunk here. So have a few hundred thousand Venetians since 1462. The francobolli — postage-stamp-sized tramezzini filled with crab, salami, mortadella — are the speciality, eaten by the dozen. There's no menu posted; point at what you want, the bartender pours an ombra to match. Closes at 7:30 p.m., closed Sundays. Cash strongly preferred. The room is a time capsule.

A 15th-century bacaro near Rialto that was reportedly in Casanova's little black book. Famously serves the city's best polpette.

More dining-room than counter, with a proper sit-down option in the back if cicchetti aren't enough. Their spicy polpetta — beef and salami with smoked scamorza — is the signature, and the fried calamari is among the best in the city. Order at the counter for cheaper bar prices. Excellent regional wine list, particularly the Rabosos and Soave classico. Open till 10 p.m., which is late for a bacaro.

A Dorsoduro family bacaro on the canal across from the gondola workshop. The inventive crostini are the most photographed in Venice — the tuna-with-cocoa one earned the legend.

Run by the De Rossi family for three generations, with a wall of wine bottles inside and a glass case of about 40 different crostini at any given moment — tuna with cocoa, gorgonzola with pear, sarde in saor, pâté with truffle. Standing room only inside. Take your glass and plate across the calle to the canal edge, sit on the stone wall, watch the gondolas being repaired across the water. This is the Venice Instagram cliché, executed correctly.

A garden-courtyard seafood trattoria in Castello, hidden behind an unmarked door — the kind of long, late, wine-drenched dinner Venice was made for.

Calle del Pestrin, Castello, behind a door with no sign. Once inside, a tiled courtyard with about a dozen tables under a wisteria-strung pergola. The kitchen sends out a parade of seafood antipasti — twelve to fifteen small plates, in sequence, from raw scampi to baby octopus to salt-cured mackerel. Then a pasta (the spaghetti with bottarga is the classic). Then a fish second. Two-and-a-half hours, easily. Hemingway loved this place when it was still secret; now it's still hard to find but no longer secret. Reservations essential. Closed Sundays + Mondays + most of August.

A natural-wine restaurant in Dorsoduro from the Spezzamonte brothers — 600 bottles, modern Venetian cooking, the most considered young dining room in the city.

Alberto buys the fish at Rialto every morning; Dario runs the floor and the wine. They opened in 2014 and the room has been quietly filling with the right kind of Venetian since — university faculty, gallery types, off-shift hotel concierges. The menu is short and changes daily, anchored to whatever's coming out of the lagoon plus vegetables from Sant'Erasmo. The wine list is the heart of the place: 600 bottles, all natural, organized by producer instead of region, which is the giveaway. The crystal-bread amuse-bouche with egg yolk is theirs. Closed Tuesday.

The bar inside Il Palazzo Experimental on the Zattere — discreet side entrance, Cristina Celestino interiors, the most serious cocktail program in Venice.

Part of the Experimental Group (Paris, London, New York, Menorca), tucked into the corner of Il Palazzo Experimental's lobby with its own quiet entrance on the canal-side fondamenta. Celestino designed the room around polychromatic marble countertops and torchon rope mouldings — a sober nod to Carlo Scarpa. The menu rotates seasonally and favors Italian spirits (Cynar, Select, grappa) with global technique. Reserve for weekends; the room seats maybe thirty. Open Thursday to Monday, 6:30 p.m. to 1 a.m., until 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

On the Zattere promenade since 1935 — the inventor of the Gianduiotto (hazelnut gelato submerged in whipped cream). Eat it walking. The view is the room.

The classic. Nico opened in 1935, and four generations of the same family have run it since. The Gianduiotto da passeggio is the signature: a block of dense hazelnut gelato dropped into a cup of whipped cream — heavy, ridiculous, walked along the Zattere with the Giudecca canal on your left and the sun on your face. The cocktail menu is also good if you'd rather a spritz — same prices, same view. Open until midnight in summer.

Where Giuseppe Cipriani invented the Bellini (white peach + Prosecco) in 1948 and where Hemingway parked at the bar for two decades. The classic Venice cocktail moment.

Yes, a Bellini costs €27. Yes, the room is small and clubby and feels exactly like 1955 (it should — almost nothing about it has changed). Go once. Sit at the bar, not a table — table service adds the surcharge but the bar gives you the view of the door, which is the entire point. The Bellini is best March–September when white peaches are in season; the rest of the year they use frozen purée and it's not the same. Order one, drink slowly, leave.

A 19th-century café reborn as one of Venice's most ambitious cocktail bars. Travel-inspired drinks, candlelight, no street noise. The romantic option.

Inside a small café next to the Frari Basilica that already had a 200-year history — now run by a bar team that ranks in the World's 50 Best Bars conversation. The menu rotates seasonally around a travel theme (Marrakech, Tokyo, Mexico City) with cocktails built around ingredients from those places. Reservations recommended after 9 p.m. The room is small, the lighting is low, the music is jazz. Closed Mondays.

A one-Michelin-star modern Venetian in Castello — chef Salvatore Sodano cooking lagoon ingredients with technique and restraint. The "fancy dinner" pick.

If Testiere is the platonic Venetian trattoria, Local is the platonic next-step Venetian. Sodano's menu reads like a love letter to the lagoon: cuttlefish-ink risotto, branzino aged in seaweed, sgroppino reinvented as a palate cleanser. Two tasting menus (six or nine courses), or à la carte. The room is white-tablecloth-modern, not formal — jeans and blazers are fine. Wine pairings are excellent. Closed Tuesday and Wednesday.

Directly across the canal from Squero di San Trovaso — the working gondola repair yard — this Dorsoduro bacaro has the best view-to-price ratio in Venice.

Twelve seats inside, none outside, but the whole sidewalk along the canal is fair game. Get an ombra (€1.50–2), a baccalà mantecato crostino, a polpetta or two, and sit on the stone steps watching gondolas getting their hulls scraped at one of the last working squeri in the city. The vibe is local-young, the cicchetti are honest, and the canal scene is unmatched.

The most famous bacaro in Venice and arguably the best — a tiny counter behind Rialto Market run by Francesco Pinto and his son Matteo. The crostini are the city benchmark.

Open since 1962, no tables inside, three small ones outside that you'll never get. Stand at the window or out in the calle, hold a glass of prosecco in one hand and a plate of crostini in the other. Their thinly toasted baguette base is what sets them apart — the crostini stay crisp under whatever's on top. Order three: the raw tuna with lardo, the soft-boiled egg with anchovy, and the baccalà mantecato. €2 each, €4 for the prosecco.

The Venice seafood benchmark. Twenty seats, two seatings a night, chef Bruno Gavagnin in the kitchen and Luca Di Vita running the room since 1993. Book three weeks ahead.

A pocket-sized room in a Castello alley with hand-painted bed-headboards (testiere) on the walls — that's where the name comes from. The menu changes daily based on what came in at Rialto market that morning. Order whatever Luca recommends; he speaks four languages, he knows what's perfect, and he's not wrong. The razor clams in garlic and herbs are legendary, as are the gnocchetti with spider crab. The wine list is small and impeccable, leaning natural Veneto and Friuli. Two services: 7 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. Book direct by email or phone; Resy is not happening here.

A canalside trattoria in Cannaregio with tables on the fondamenta, opposite the old Jewish Ghetto. Creative Venetian — modern execution, traditional roots.

Named for star anise — the spice route into Venice is the conceit — and the kitchen plays with that idea (a touch of cumin in the pasta water, a hint of curry on the octopus), but never enough to overwrite the Venetian base. The fegato alla veneziana (calf's liver with onions) is one of the best in the city; the grilled octopus is the universal table order. Sit outside in spring and autumn — the canal traffic is mostly residents this far from San Marco. Closed Sunday and Monday.

Run by twins (zemei in Venetian) Franco and Giovanni Tagliapietra near Rialto. Photos of other twins line the ceiling. Some of the most inventive cicchetti in the city.

A tiny rustic-chic counter on Ruga Vecchia San Giovanni, where the twins have been doing cicchetti since 2002. The crostini topping rotates daily — recent hits have included radicchio with smoked goat cheese, mackerel with apple, and a baccalà mantecato with chestnuts. Their Select spritz is consistently called the best in San Polo. Pull up at the counter, order three, repeat.

Two minutes from Santa Lucia station, run by the same family since 1906 — the right first breakfast if you arrive by train.

A working bakery on Rio Terà Lista di Spagna, with a proper pasticceria counter behind a vintage neon sign. The cornetti are warm, the laminated dough is the real thing (Dal Mas keeps a separate "atelier" workshop for serious pastry), and the prices haven't been reset for tourists. Drop your bag at the hotel, walk back here, eat standing, and start the day. Open from 6:30 a.m.

The most beloved pastry shop in Venice, in business since 1886. Standing-room only, screaming-match ordering at the counter, the best krapfen (cream-filled doughnut) in the city.

A Dorsoduro institution, packed every morning with students from Ca' Foscari and locals on their second coffee. Order at the cassa, take the receipt to the counter, point at what you want. The cream puffs are the headline — pistachio, dark chocolate, and the classic crema all deserve the trip. During Carnevale (Jan–Feb) the line goes around the block for their frittelle, which are arguably the best in Italy.

A 40-year husband-and-wife operation in Castello — Cesare Benelli in the kitchen, Diane (from Texas) running the room. Honest Venetian seafood, no menu shortcuts.

Cesare buys every fish from the Rialto market himself, every morning. The result is a kitchen with no excuses — if the rombo isn't perfect, it doesn't go on the menu that night. The black ink-stained cuttlefish over polenta is the dish to order; the tiramisù has been called the best in the city by people who've tried them all. Diane will tell you exactly what to drink, in English, and she's never wrong. Closed Wednesday and Thursday.

Venice's only two-Michelin-star restaurant — Enrico Bartolini's outpost inside Palazzo Venart, run day-to-day by chef Donato Ascani. Thirty seats, courtyard under a magnolia, the Grand Canal a few steps away.

Bartolini is Italy's most-decorated chef (twelve Michelin stars across his restaurants). Glam opened in 2016, took its first star in 2017, its second in 2023 — the only restaurant in Venice with two. Donato Ascani has been resident chef since opening. The cooking is rooted in the lagoon and the kitchen gardens of Sant'Erasmo — the menu is "instinctive," in Bartolini's word, guided by the morning market. €220 for the tasting menu, lunch a notch under. Book three weeks out. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

The Michelin-starred dining room directly above the Piazza San Marco crowds — Alajmo family kitchen, velvet banquettes, Murano chandeliers, the only dinner in the city where San Marco is the wallpaper.

Massimiliano and Raffaele Alajmo took over Quadri in 2011 — same family that runs three-star Le Calandre in Padua — and the room is now a Philippe Starck redesign in dusty pink, gold, and Murano glass. The food is contemporary Venetian: rice with seven kinds of garlic, lagoon shrimp with a tomato water, langoustine with bergamot. €230 tasting menu, lunch from €130 for a shorter version. Book a window table looking down onto the piazza — the music from the cafés below comes up through the floor. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

A 150-year-old Venetian institution with three locations across the city. Old-world service, marble counters, the city's most elegant breakfast.

The grandest of the historic pasticcerie, founded in 1879 and still family-run. Three locations — the one on Campo San Giovanni e Paolo (Castello) is the most photogenic, the one in Calle Fiubera (San Marco) is the most convenient. Zaeti — the yellow cornmeal-and-raisin biscuits — are the Venetian classic. Their tiramisù is a top-three in the city. Sit-down service costs more but the room is worth it once.

Open since 1930 near the Rialto, the rosticceria locals come to when they don't want to dress up. Mozzarella in carrozza for €2, served with no ceremony.

A few steps off Campo San Bartolomeo, follow the neon sign down the calle. Ground floor is self-service: point at what looks good — fried mozzarella sandwiches, baccalà fritto, arancini, lasagne, grilled cuttlefish, sarde in saor. Eat at the counter or a stool. The mozzarella in carrozza with anchovy is the order; the version with prosciutto is also good. Upstairs is a sit-down dining room with the same food at slightly higher prices and more tourists. Stay downstairs. Excellent value for Venice — a full lunch for €15.

A small Venetian-owned operation two minutes from Rialto with the most inventive flavours in the city. Their signature "Manet" is the legend.

Opened in 2012 by a local family, with two locations now — both close to Rialto. The flavour list rotates weekly around Italian dessert classics: tiramisù gelato, salted pistachio with dark chocolate, butter biscotti with vanilla, an excellent dairy-free sorbet bench. Their Manet — chocolate-hazelnut topped with salty pistachio cream — is the bestseller for a reason. Lines wrap the calle in summer; come at 11 a.m. or 4 p.m. to avoid them.

Venice's serious coffee roaster — beans roasted on the premises, on a quiet canal in Cannaregio. The barista actually knows what she's doing.

A two-minute walk off the Strada Nova, the Marchi family has been roasting here since 1930. Twenty-plus varieties on the wall (single-origin Ethiopian, Brazilian, Indian Mysore), all roasted on-site. The espresso is correctly pulled — short, dense, brown crema — which sounds basic until you've had three weeks of charred hotel coffee. Locals come in for a quick standing macchiato and a 250g bag of beans on the way to work. €1.20 at the counter. Take a kilo home.

San Polo's beloved seafood hideout — a sign at the door that famously reads "no pizza, no lasagna, no tourist menu." That's exactly the energy.

Tucked down an unmarked calle near Ponte delle Tette (yes, that's the actual name — Bridge of Breasts, a former red-light district reference), Carampane has been a serious fish trattoria since the 1980s. The spaghetti alle vongole veraci uses the proper small Venetian clams, not the larger imported ones — the difference is everything. The fritto misto for two is the table order; the soft-shell crab (moeche) in season is once-in-a-lifetime. Booking weeks ahead. Cash and card both fine.

A husband-and-wife trattoria on a quiet Dorsoduro campo — Venetian, Friulian, and Sardinian cooking, all done at home and served outside under the church wall.

Campo dell'Angelo Raffaele, Dorsoduro 1722. Previously called "Pane Vino e San Daniele" — they reverted to the older name in the 2010s. The kitchen runs on three traditions: Venetian fish, Friulian cured meats (the San Daniele prosciutto is sliced thin enough to read through), and Sardinian touches from the owners' second home — they make their own small-batch wine and olive oil there. Outdoor tables on the campo are the move in spring and fall; the inside dining room is warm in winter. Service is unhurried in the proper way. Reserve a few days out.

On the island of Mazzorbo, off Burano — a one-Michelin-star restaurant inside a walled vineyard. The most special-occasion dinner in the lagoon.

The Bisol family bought a forgotten vineyard on Mazzorbo, replanted the ancient Dorona di Venezia grape, and built a small inn and restaurant around it. Chef Francesco Brutto cooks tasting menus drawn from the orchard and the lagoon — wild herbs picked that morning, fish from the Burano fishermen, vegetables from the kitchen garden. You take the vaporetto out, eat dinner over four hours, sleep at the inn upstairs, return on the morning boat. The clearest expression of the lagoon as a place that produces food.

The natural-wine bacaro on the Misericordia aperitivo strip. The most stylish wine list in the city and creative cicchetti that go beyond tradition.

If Schiavi is the classic and Al Squero is the laid-back local, Vino Vero is the new-Venetian. A blackboard of natural wines by the glass — organic, biodynamic, lots of orange wines and obscure varietals from the Veneto and Friuli — paired with cicchetti that lean modern (burrata with anchovy and lemon, beef tartare crostini, smoked tuna). Stand inside or take your glass across the fondamenta to the canal.

A Michelin-starred kitchen on a quiet rio in San Polo — Andrea Martin and Max Rossetti out front, chef Valerio Dallamano cooking modern Venetian. Terrace tables under actual wisteria.

San Polo 2908, on the Rio de la Frescada — fifteen minutes from anywhere. Andrea and Max have been partners since the '90s; they opened Wistèria after a long stretch running a humbler place around the corner, and the Michelin star came in 2021. The restaurant is named for the wisteria vines that cover the outdoor terrace from April through June (book the terrace then, only then). Six- or eight-course tasting menus, no à la carte, vegetable-forward without being precious. The matzo meatball with mustard and onion is the surprise; the Sant'Erasmo radish course is the room's loved one. Reserve three weeks ahead.

A family-run agriturismo in the Gallura hills above Costa Smeralda — vines over the dining tables, the porceddu turning on the spit, and a multi-course Sardinian feast that goes for three hours and then keeps going.

In the granite countryside between Arzachena and Tempio Pausania — twenty minutes inland from Porto Cervo, but in a different country, gastronomically. Prix-fixe only, family-style, no menu: a dozen antipasti rolling out (their own pecorino at three ages, salumi, ricotta with citrus, pane carasau warmed by the fire), then ricotta-and-spinach ravioli, then the porceddu, then seadas with mirto-soaked oranges, then mirto and grappa from the family's own stills. The closest a coastal trip will get you to inland-Barbagia cooking without driving inland. Reservations only, several days ahead in summer.

A working farm in the hills above Nuoro — set-menu lunches and dinners, everything from their land, an antipasti parade that turns into a meal before the pasta arrives.

Località Testone, ten minutes out of Nuoro. Reservations only, set menu of around €40 per person including wine — and you finish it with one course untouched. Twelve antipasti rolling out family-style (smoked sausage, three pecorinos, ricotta, sa fregula incasada with broth, suppa cuata), then the pasta, then either lamb or porceddu, then seadas. The dining room is a barn; the family does most of the serving. This is what shepherds eat when they want to impress someone. Bring time.

The Catalan-Sardinian standard-bearer of the old town. Founded in 1973 by Benito Carbonella, now under chef patron Francesco Pais — two rooms, candlelight, and the lobster dish Alghero is famous for, done as well as anywhere.

Via Majorca 113, inside a centuries-old stone building. Three set menus — fish, meat, or vegetarian — built around what came in that morning. The Catalan lobster is the dish to come for: poached, split, dressed with raw tomato, sweet red onion, salt, oil, lemon. Five appetisers, a pasta, a main, dessert. Closed Sundays. Book a couple of days ahead in shoulder season; a week ahead in July or August.

The pizza place locals defend. Wood oven, dough that's been resting since yesterday, prices that haven't caught up to the rest of the old town.

Small, family-run, on Via Don Deroma. The dining room is hot and loud in the best way — you can watch the pizzaiolo tossing dough straight into the stone oven. Pizzas start around €7. They take walk-ins until they don't; by 8 p.m. in summer there's a line. Go at 7 when they open. The kids' table on the corner is the giveaway that this is where Alghero actually eats.

The classic Castello breakfast spot — terrace built into the city's medieval walls, the entire Gulf of Angels in front of you, the locals' morning move.

Via Santa Croce 33, on the ramparts of the Castello quarter. The cornetti are properly flaky, the cappuccino is strong and not over-foamed, and the view is what makes you stay for a second one. Comes to life again in the evening for aperitivo — a Vermentino spritz on the wall as the lights come on across the harbour is one of the small free pleasures of a Cagliari trip. No fuss, no fine dining, no reservations. Just one of the best vantage points in the city and a kitchen that doesn't ruin it.

A Michelin-recommended sleeper inside Palazzo Doglio, with the best sunset terrace in central Cagliari.

The kitchen runs a tight modern-Sardinian line — local catch, French technique, a wine list that's almost all Sardinian. The terrace looks out over Largo Carlo Felice toward the harbour, and at sunset (May–Sept) it's the table to book in town. Service is polished without being stuffy. Two tasting menus, both worth doing; à la carte is shorter. If you only have one dinner in Cagliari, this is it.

The restaurant at Petra Segreta in the granite hills above San Pantaleo — awarded its first Michelin star in the 2026 Guide. Resident chef Alessandro Menditto cooks in collaboration with mentor Enrico Bartolini. Open-air garden tables under the cork oaks.

Strada Buddeu, three minutes from San Pantaleo. The hotel is a destination of its own; the restaurant is open to non-guests, and the booking pays off — open-air dining room under the granite boulders and cork oaks, candles on every table. Resident chef Alessandro Menditto cooks under owner-patron Luigi Bergeretto in collaboration with mentor Enrico Bartolini (Italy's most Michelin-starred chef); the kitchen is built around Gallura ingredients (lamb from down the valley, the lobster from the morning's catch off Porto Cervo). The wine cellar is one of the deepest in the region. Book a sunset table.

The Michelin star in Porto Cervo. Italo Bassi's open-kitchen room above the Promenade du Port — fish first, technique loud, ingredients quiet, prices on the upper end of what Porto Cervo charges.

On the Promenade du Port, the marina-side strip. Bassi did his decades at Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence before opening here; the cooking shows it — disciplined, precise, with a flair for Sardinian-Mediterranean ingredients pushed to their best version (the sole with mint-marinated zucchini and beurre-blanc foam is the textbook dish). Two tasting menus, classics or new creations. The Bubble Bar downstairs is the more relaxed move if you don't want a four-hour dinner — bistrot food, champagne by the glass, the same kitchen.

The restaurant at Phi Beach — the open-air club built into an 1800s military fortress on the Baja Sardinia rocks. DJ Mag's #1 club in Italy. Dinner runs into the night, the rocks light up, and the sunset is the actual reason you're there.

Inside the Forte Cappellini fortress in Baja Sardinia — 10 minutes from Porto Cervo. Luciano's is the kitchen side of the operation (Nammos handles the day-club beach lunches; Phi Beach is the club proper after dark). The new menu under the Luciano Guidi name is built around Mediterranean coastal cuisine — catch of the day, seasonal vegetables, fish handled simply. The point isn't to chase a Michelin star; it's to eat well in one of the most cinematic open-air rooms on the island. Book a Pied dans l'Eau room or a terrace table for sunset (8 p.m. in July) and stay for the DJ set, which starts when dinner winds down. Reservations a month ahead in August.

Antonio Mellino's Porto Cervo project — the seafood spin-off of the Mellino family's former three-Michelin-star Quattro Passi in Nerano (the parent restaurant was seized by Carabinieri in January 2026 over construction-permit issues and is currently closed; the Sardinian spin-off operates independently). The Costa Smeralda table to book if money isn't the conversation.

On the marina at Porto Vecchio. The setting is white-on-white with a terrace over the water; the kitchen is Campanian-Sardinian, fish-led, technique-forward without being fussy. The lobster spaghetti and the whole fish in salt crust (deboned tableside) are the dishes. Service is the smoothest in town. Reservations are difficult in August — go for lunch instead of dinner if you can; same food, slightly more bearable wait list.

The sunset table in Alghero — terrace on the Bastioni Marco Polo, water below you, Capo Caccia in the distance, and the kitchen actually holds up.

Most sea-view restaurants on the bastions are tourist traps. This one isn't. The crudo plate — raw red prawns, oysters, tuna, sea bass — is the way in. Then spaghetti vongole or the squid-and-vongole pasta, which has its own following. Cocktails are good. Service is friendly without being slow. Book the terrace for an hour before sunset and don't rush.

A working sheep farm on the road to the airport. The most Sardinian meal you'll eat near the coast. Bourdain-recommended; the locals still go.

Strada Aeroporto Civile, ten minutes inland from Alghero. The Murrocu family runs it — shepherds for generations, restaurateurs since the seventies. There is no menu. There is a set parade: a dozen antipasti (their own pecorino at three ages, prosciutto, salumi, ricotta, bread baked that morning), handmade pasta, lamb or porceddu spit-roasted over juniper, seadas, mirto (the local myrtle liqueur). Done in two and a half hours, family-style. The best way to understand what Sardinian food actually is. Reservations only — and book at least a few days out.

A trattoria in Mamoiada — the carnival-mask town in the heart of Barbagia. Family-run, mountain food, the kind of place you don't find unless someone tells you.

Via Vittorio Emanuele, in Mamoiada. The dining room is small and a little plain on purpose; the kitchen does mountain Sardinian properly. Order the culurgiones (pleated by hand on the spot — Mamoiada is one of the towns that takes the pleating seriously), the lamb with wild fennel, and a glass of Cannonau from the surrounding hills, which include some of the better small producers in Sardinia. If you're in town for Autunno in Barbagia (Sept–Dec festival weekends), come on a Sunday for lunch and stay for the procession.

The cagliaritani consensus pick for serious seafood. A small osteria on Via Sardegna in the Marina quarter, a few minutes from the port.

Footballer Gigi Riva ate here for decades; his table is still pointed out. Don't let that put you off — the kitchen is properly run, the fish is from that morning, and the sea-urchin spaghetti (in season, Nov–Apr) is the dish that turns Cagliari sceptics around. Fregola allo scoglio (Sardinia's couscous-meets-pasta with mixed shellfish) is the other order. Book a terrace table at sunset. Closed Mondays.

The Marina-quarter trattoria where the porceddu (suckling pig) is the order — fixed menu, family-run, decades old.

On Via Napoli, just off Largo Carlo Felice in the Marina. Brick-vaulted dining room, marble-topped tables, and a kitchen that doesn't try to be anything it isn't — this is rural Sardinian food in the middle of the capital. Order the antipasto della casa (cured meats, pecorino at three ages, pane carasau), then the malloreddus alla campidanese (Sardinian gnocchetti in a fennel-sausage ragù), then the porceddu — crisp-skinned, smoky from the juniper coals. Finish with seadas (fried pastry, pecorino, hot honey). The same family runs Su Cumbidu Mare next door for fish.

The most famous restaurant in inland Sardinia, attached to the Palimodde family's hotel of the same name. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, open since 1967, three generations of women running it, the porceddu cooked over the open fire in the dining room.

In Oliena, at the foot of the Supramonte mountains. Open to non-guests with a reservation. Sit on the terrace under the bougainvillea if the weather plays; otherwise the rustic stone dining room around the huge fireplace where the suckling pig roasts on the spit. Order the antipasto parade (pecorino, prosciutto, pane carasau warmed by the fire), the maccarrones de busa (handmade bucatini), the porceddu, the seadas with hot honey. Drink Nepente — the Cannonau that grows in the surrounding hills, called out by name by D'Annunzio in 1909. Closed Nov–March. Book through the hotel.

The birthplace of the Negroni Sbagliato, served in oversized Murano glasses since the seventies. Open since 1947, unchanged in any way that matters.

A neighborhood bar in Porta Venezia that became a global landmark by accident — bartender Mirko Stocchetto reached for prosecco instead of gin in 1972 and the rest is cocktail history. The room is exactly as it was in the postwar era: red neon, old wood, oversized custom glasses, a 500-drink menu, no concessions to the present. Maurizio Stocchetto (Mirko's son, UC Berkeley-educated, fluent English) still runs the bar. The crowd is half locals, half design pilgrims, full-on Salone del Mobile every April. Get a Sbagliato in the big glass, sit outside if you can, order a second one.

Wes Anderson designed this one. Inside the Fondazione Prada in southeast Milan, it's a perfect recreation of a 1950s Milanese café — pinball machines, formica, pastel tones, the works.

Wes Anderson built Bar Luce in 2015 as part of the Fondazione Prada's new arts complex. The reference is to a midcentury Milan that mostly doesn't exist anymore — pistachio walls, Cassina chairs, a vintage jukebox that actually plays, two pinball machines from the 1950s. The food is intentionally simple (panini, cake by the slice, espresso, cocktails), because the point isn't the food; the point is being inside the Wes Anderson set. Pair with the Fondazione Prada itself — three hours of contemporary art before lunch.

Opened by Davide Campari himself in 1915, in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II directly facing the Duomo. The most beautifully-located bar in Italy. The 27th best bar in the world by the official 50 Best list.

The ground floor (Bar di Passo) is a standing-room counter for tourists and quick drinks. The first floor (Sala Spiritello) is where you actually want to be — moody, reservation-only, with a sweeping view down into the Galleria itself. The mosaics on the lower-floor walls were designed by Angelo d'Andrea in the 1910s and look exactly that age. Order a Campari Seltz the way Davide Campari intended, or work through the cocktail program upstairs. Closed Mondays. Reserve the upstairs table ahead — it's a separate experience and worth the planning.

Carlo Cracco's multi-level restaurant inside the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II — one Michelin star, a private fumoir, a wine cellar with 10,000 bottles, and the most spectacular dining room in Milan. The address is the argument.

Cracco opened in 2018 inside the Galleria itself, which makes it the most architecturally remarkable restaurant in the city — the dining room looks out at the cathedral side of the Galleria's glass roof. Carlo Cracco's cooking is contemporary Italian, technically precise without being cold: the marinated egg yolk with asparagus and black truffle is the signature; the saffron risotto with grilled marrow and liver ragù is the local touchstone. There's a ground-floor café for daytime, the fine-dining room above, and a private fumoir for caviar and oysters. The cellar holds over 10,000 bottles. Lunch tasting is the best-value way in; dinner is the full statement.

Two minutes from the Duomo, behind it on Via Santa Radegonda. Run by the same family since 1949. The panzerotto is a southern import that became Milan's most beloved street food. Made to order, served piping hot. Expect a line — it moves fast.

Giuseppina Luini brought the recipe from Puglia in 1949 and the dough has been a family secret ever since. The classic is mozzarella and tomato, fried to order, served in paper, dangerously hot. Two and a half euros. You can eat one walking, two if you're committed. The baked options exist; they're not the point. The line on weekends wraps the block — locals know to go on weekdays before 12:30 or after 2:30. Cash speeds things up but cards work. Closed Sundays.

Navigli's serious cocktail bar — vintage furniture, a long drinks menu, and the kind of bartenders who'll ask what you want and improve on it.

Mag Cafè has been on the Naviglio Grande since 2012 and has somehow stayed actually good while everything around it slid into tourist bait. The interior is curated junk-shop chic: chandeliers, old radios, taxidermy, vintage portraits. The cocktail list runs deep — house infusions, serious classics, plus original drinks that don't feel forced. Aperitivo is generous (a real spread, not just olives) and runs until 9. The crowd skews local on weeknights. A second location in Porta Romana opened more recently and is the easier reservation.

Milan's oldest pastry shop, founded 1824, since acquired by Prada and run with the kind of restraint that money buys. The original Via Santa Maria alla Porta location is the one. Two other shops in the Galleria and on Monte Napoleone.

The Belle Époque interior — coffered ceilings, original mirrors, art deco lighting — has been almost untouched for a century. The panettone, prepared by Diego Crosara on a 45-hour fermentation cycle, was declared Italy's best in 2023; you can order it by the slice year-round. The pastries are precise rather than playful. Stand at the counter for the full ritual: espresso, a brioche, the slow look around the room. The Monte Napoleone branch (just steps from the Prada flagship) is the see-and-be-seen one; the Galleria branch is the postcard. The original is the better coffee.

Inside the Stazione Centrale building. Two floors of curated food counters: pasta, pizza, fish, gelato, coffee. The most useful arrival or departure meal in the city.

Opened in 2021 inside Milan's monumental central train station, Mercato Centrale is a covered hall of artisan food counters — Egidio's pizza, Salumeria Roscioli's salumi, fresh fish, fresh pasta, coffee from Lavazza's flagship stand, plus a serious cocktail bar on the mezzanine. The point: you can land in Milan, drop bags, and eat well in twenty minutes. Or eat well right before a train without committing to a sit-down. The vibe is bustling rather than refined, and that's the right speed for what it is. Open every day 8 a.m. to midnight.

A pastry laboratory and a "living room with a kitchen," near Porta Venezia. The signature brioche weighs 160 grams — 100 of which are homemade apricot jam. Sit-down breakfast, the way Milan rarely does it.

Three friends opened Pavé on Via Felice Casati in 2012, and it became the Milan pastry argument almost immediately. The Brioche 160 is the dish — buttery, fragrant, filled with their own apricot jam and named for its weight in grams. The cappuccino is among the best in the city. The space looks like someone furnished their grandmother's living room with intent: velvet couches, vintage dressers, mismatched chairs, an open laboratory at the back. Lunch from noon (panini, soups, mixed cheese and salumi boards), aperitivo from 6. Closed Mondays.

Cesare Battisti's modern osteria in Isola, in a low 1900s railway building under the Bosco Verticale. The risotto alla Milanese here is the city's benchmark. In the 2026 Michelin Guide.

Open since 2009 inside a converted early-1900s railway depot in the Riccardo Catella Foundation's grounds, Ratanà sits in surreal contrast — low and Liberty-era — under the Bosco Verticale towers across the park. Battisti's cooking is a contemporary read of Milanese and Lombard tradition: the saffron risotto uses Lodigiano cheese (sweeter than Parmigiano) for a creamier finish; the mondeghili (Milanese meatballs) are the version locals measure others against; the wine list rewards engagement. The five-course tasting at €70 (€115 with wines) is the right way in. Closed never — open seven days. Terrace tables in summer are the move.

Andrea Berton's eponymous restaurant in the new Porta Nuova business district. One Michelin star. His philosophy: extract the essence of an ingredient with near-scientific precision. The broth courses are the case in point.

Berton trained under Gualtiero Marchesi and ran the kitchen at Trussardi alla Scala before opening his own restaurant in 2013, in a glass-walled corner of the redeveloped Porta Nuova district. The cooking is conceptually rigorous — Berton built his reputation on broths and consommés extracted to their absolute essence, served as standalone courses. The room is modern, calm, light-filled by day. The tasting menus run lighter than Seta and more technically focused than Cracco. The right pick if you've already done both and want the most chef-forward of the three.

Two Michelin stars, inside the Mandarin Oriental on Via Andegari just off Brera. Chef Antonio Guida's project since the hotel opened in 2015. Quiet, precise, the kind of Milan dinner you book six weeks ahead and remember for a decade.

Seta opened with the Mandarin in 2015, earned its first star within a year and its second by 2017, and has held both since. The cooking is southern-Italian-roots-meets-modern-technique: spaghettoni with sea urchin and lemon is the signature dish; the langoustine with bone marrow and the tasting-menu dessert sequence are the rest of the argument. The dining room sits in the hotel's quiet inner courtyard — outdoor tables in summer are the city's most beautiful — and the service runs at the international hotel standard without slipping into formality theatre. Two tasting menus, both worth doing. Book six weeks out for weekend evenings.

Cesare Battisti's (of Ratanà) second project, opened in NoLo with partner Vladimiro Poma. Officially a wine bar; cooking better than the format suggests. Gambero Rosso awarded it 3 Tavole — the top bistro rating in Italy.

NoLo (north of Loreto) is one of Milan's fastest-shifting neighborhoods and Silvano Vini e Cucina is its food anchor. Salumi, anchovies, burrata, handmade pastas, daily specials chalked on a board — the bones of a Lombard wine bar with the precision Battisti brings from Ratanà. The wine list is genuinely interesting: small producers, low-intervention bottles, plus a tight selection of grower Champagne. Lunch is a real meal at €25; dinner is when the kitchen opens up. Book ahead — the room is small and the press caught up to it fast.

A family-run trattoria opposite the historic Macello slaughterhouse, open since 1928 — the kind of Milanese institution everyone in the city has an opinion about. The Traversone family has run it since 1998; the cotoletta is one of the best in the city, full stop.

A short walk from the old Macello slaughterhouse east of the centre — the location explains the name and the menu's quiet emphasis on meat. The restaurant opened in 1928; the Traversone family took it over decades later and the third generation has been running it since 1998 — Paola Traversone and her husband Claudio out front, her brother Giovanni in the kitchen. In the 2026 Michelin Guide selection (one knife-and-fork, not a star). The cotoletta alla milanese — bone-in, the veal aged 40 days by Bianchi butcher, hammered thin, golden, served with a wedge of lemon — is the canonical version locals point to. The cotoletta-and-risotto pairing is the way in if you came for the city's classics done right. Reserve two weeks out.

The hardest table in Milan. Diego Rossi and Pietro Caroli's nose-to-tail trattoria has been sold out every single night for years. Cucina povera elevated; menu chalked on a board; natural wine list that earns the price.

Open since 2015 in a small dining room near Piazza Buozzi (south of the centre), Trippa was the restaurant that proved Milan still had room for an opinionated chef-driven trattoria. The name is honest — tripe is on the menu — but the rest of the cooking ranges across Italy: vitello tonnato (the version everyone now compares against), grilled bone marrow, tortelli with seasonal fillings, daily specials chalked. The wine list runs low-intervention, well-priced, smart. The room is warm wood and burnt orange and packed every night. Reserve on the dot at 9 a.m. on the booking website thirty days ahead — that's how this is done. Closed Sundays.

Niederkofler's casual project at 2,275 metres, on top of Plan de Corones inside the Lumen mountain photography museum. The view is the dish.

Reach it by cable car from Bruneck, Riscone, or San Vigilio — last car back is 5 p.m., do not miss it. The dining room is an all-glass box hanging off the summit, with the Dolomites filling every window. The food is "Cook the Mountain" in its democratic form: a la carte at lunch, four-course tasting at dinner (book ahead — five tables only). The spaghettone with mountain-herb powder is the dish; the venison and the fermentation-driven sauces are the rest. Open daily 9:30–4:15 in season. Closed shoulder periods.

One Michelin star inside the Gardena Grödnerhof in Ortisei. Chef Reimund Brunner, a wine cellar with 650 labels, and a 30-seat dining room that gets booked out months ahead in ski season.

The Bernardi family's hotel has been here since 1923; Anna Stuben is the gourmet restaurant they built around it. Brunner cooks creatively from local ingredients with a noticeably lighter hand than the Tyrolean default — less butter, less sugar, more vegetable. Pumpkin with seasoned buffalo cheese, beetroot gnocchi with cave-aged cheese, Villnöss lamb with thyme gremolata. Sommelier Egon Perathoner runs the pairings; ask for an Alto Adige white you wouldn't think to order. Mon–Sat 7–9 p.m. Closed Sunday. Reservations: +39 0471 796315.

Three Michelin stars plus the Green Star — the highest-rated restaurant in the entire Dolomites region, and the heir to the old St. Hubertus at Rosa Alpina.

Niederkofler closed St. Hubertus when Rosa Alpina became Aman, then re-opened his fine-dining flagship at Atelier Moessmer in Brunico (Bruneck) in 2023. Six tables. One menu. Every ingredient sourced within South Tyrol — no citrus, no olive oil from outside, no cheating. The cooking is the most precise mountain cuisine on earth: trout aged like beef, mountain herbs that get harvested at altitude that morning, fermentation programs that take years. The wine list runs to Alto Adige and Trentino only. Lunch and dinner Tue–Sat. Book three months out. The single most expensive meal you'll have in the Dolomites and the one you'll talk about for a decade.

SanBrite's casual sibling — the family agriturismo at 1,800 metres, in a larch wood off the road to Misurina. Reachable only by car or a 30-minute uphill walk.

This is where the Gaspari project started, twenty years before SanBrite earned its star. The menu is the simpler version of Riccardo's cooking — casunziei (beet ravioli) made with their own ricotta, grilled lamb and pork from their stable, salumi and butter and cheese all from the farm just behind. Open for lunch and dinner; lunch on the terrace in summer is the move. Reservations required. Closes most of November and mid-April to mid-May.

Inside Hotel La Perla in Corvara — one Michelin star, run by Chef Simone Cantafio, with the most atmospheric dining room in the valley.

A 17th-century stube — original Tyrolean farmhouse panelling, candlelight, eight tables. Cantafio came to La Perla after running the Bras family's two-star Toya restaurant in Hokkaido, and that Japanese influence shows: precision, restraint, the same respect for a single ingredient as a whole course. Two tasting menus, both worth doing. The mahatma wine cellar below has 30,000 bottles and a room dedicated entirely to Sassicaia — head sommelier Paolo Baraldi will pour you a vertical if you let him. Dinner only. Closed Sundays and Mondays. Hotel guests get priority.

Paolo Donei's one-Michelin-star — held without interruption for over thirty years. Inside a 19th-century malga (alpine dairy) at 1,400 metres above Moena, with one of the best dining-room views in Val di Fassa.

The Donei family's century-old farmstead has been a restaurant since the 1950s; Paolo took over in his early twenties and earned his first star at nineteen. The original wood-and-stone walls remain, with a new glass-walled dining room cantilevered out toward the valley. Donei's cooking is the Trentino tradition rewritten — wild herbs from the surrounding pastures, smoked and brined meats made in-house, mushrooms, game, mountain cheeses, all on plates that look more like Tokyo than Tyrol. He recently launched a €20 six-course summer menu — a deliberate provocation against fine-dining inflation. Closed Mondays and Tuesday lunch. From Selva or Corvara, the drive is 45 minutes; from Cortina, 1h45.

The Ladin farmhouse outside Pedraces with the seven-course fixed menu — no choice, no substitutions, just the food of these valleys done the way grandmothers did it.

A wood-shingled farmhouse run by the Frenademez family for generations. There's no menu — you sit down and the courses come: barley soup with speck, tutres (deep-fried sauerkraut-and-poppy pastries), schlutzkrapfen, smoked pork with cabbage, semifreddo, and furtaies for dessert. The price is €45 for the whole sequence. House wine in a carafe. Closed Mondays. Book a week ahead in season — there are only six tables and the entire valley knows about it. The single best-value meal you'll eat on the trip.

The fanciest rifugio in the eastern Dolomites — at 2,413 metres, with a Tofane view, a wine list that goes properly deep, and food a step above the standard hut menu.

Above Cinque Torri, the five towers near Cortina — reachable by chairlift from Bai de Dones in summer, or a 30-minute hike up from Rifugio Scoiattoli. Run by the Sebenicher family, who source most of the meat from their valley and let the wine list (350+ labels, very Italian) do the rest of the talking. Tagliolini al ragù di cervo is the dish; the strudel for dessert is also legitimate. Eight rooms upstairs — book at least a month ahead in summer for the sunset (the enrosadira on Tofana is one of the great Dolomites moments). Open mid-June to mid-October.

The Rossi family's Michelin-listed rifugio in an Alpine basin above Passo San Pellegrino — gourmet mountain cuisine, a 600-label wine cellar, and a 40-minute walk through larch wood to reach it.

Sergio and Emanuela Rossi rebuilt this from an old hay barn in 1983; their son Martino now runs the kitchen. Cajoncìe (the Ladin name for schlutzkrapfen), polenta gnocchetti with smoked ricotta, veal stew, wild herb risottos, plus a wine list that's the most serious in any rifugio in the range. In summer, walk in from Passo San Pellegrino (40 min, flat, suitable for everyone); in winter, the kitchen runs a free shuttle / snowcat or you snowshoe. Open lunch and dinner with guest rooms upstairs (book months ahead for the dinner-with-stay package — it's the move). 1h from Bolzano, 50 min from Corvara.

Europe's highest microbrewery — five Reinheitsgebot beers brewed in-house at 2,050 metres, by Hungarian brewer Gábor Sógorka, inside the Fanes-Sennes-Braies Natural Park.

A two-hour hike from Pederü Berggasthaus in San Vigilio di Marebbe. The reward is one of the more singular drinks-and-dinner experiences in the Alps: Bavarian-style beers brewed on-site at the highest microbrewery in Europe (2,050m), a kitchen that runs serious Ladin food (canederli, schlutzkrapfen, smoked meats from the valley below), and a dining room that looks at the white walls of the Lavarella massif. Eight rooms upstairs if you stay over — book months ahead in summer. Open mid-June to early October. Cash and card both work but bring cash to be safe.

The grill rifugio. A 30-minute walk from Lagazuoi cable car, with a kitchen that has been smoking and grilling meats over wood the same way since the 1950s.

Owned by the Alfarè family for four generations, sitting at 1,985 metres under the Lagazuoi peaks. The mixed grill — pork ribs, sausage, polenta, sometimes lamb — is the order, brought to the table on a wood board, no menu, no fuss. Pair it with a Lagrein from the carafe. They also do canederli and a strong barley soup if you'd rather. In winter it's a famous toboggan stop on the Armentarola ski run, in summer a hiking lunch stop. Open roughly Christmas through Easter, then late June through early October. Closed Tuesdays in summer. Cash preferred.

Riccardo Gaspari and Ludovica Rubbini's one-Michelin-star (plus the Green Star for sustainability). The dining room is tiny — ten tables in elegantly recycled wood — and the food comes from their own farm.

Località Alverà, ten minutes from the centre. Gaspari was a champion skier, then a cheesemaker, then trained under Massimo Bottura at Osteria Francescana before opening this in 2017. The dinner opens with butter — actual mountains of his father's whipped butter, ferried out on trays, served with bread that locals drive in for. Then the Herbarium: a raw taste of berries, leaves, fermented bits, dried fish that becomes the alphabet of everything coming. The mountain-pine spaghetti is the dish. The milk-and-larch-bud gelato finishes it. Bookings open one month ahead. Take the waitlist if needed.

Chef Graziano Prest's one-Michelin-star — Cortina's other star, and the older one. Seafood from Venice and Chioggia, daily, in the mountains.

A 15-minute walk from Corso Italia toward Pocol. Unlike everything else in this valley, Tivoli cooks Venetian — not Tyrolean — and the fish arrives by van from the Adriatic at sunrise. Bigoli with cuttlefish ink, scampi crudo, soft-shell crab when in season, plus the regional things (handmade pasta, a strong polenta game). The dining room is warm-lit and old-Cortina — Loden coats, sommelier in a vest, locals at the corner tables. The lunch tasting is the better-value way in. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays in shoulder season.

The main restaurant at Castello di Reschio, the Bolza family's 1,500-hectare estate on the Umbrian–Tuscan border. Vaulted dining rooms in an 11th-century castle, produce grown on the property, the kind of dinner you remember.

Reschio is the most talked-about hotel opening in Umbria of the last five years, and Al Castello — the formal restaurant inside the castle — is where you eat the headline dinner. The kitchen leans on the estate's own gardens, olive oil, and wine; the menu is modern Italian without showing off. You can also eat more casually at Alle Scuderie, the rustic-sibling restaurant in the old stables, but if you've come to Reschio for the night, eat at Al Castello at least once. Book through the hotel concierge. Non-guests can dine but should reserve well in advance.

One Michelin star, in Loreto in central Le Marche. Chef Errico Recanati cooks over open fire — wood, embers, smoke. The most distinctive kitchen in the region.

Andreina is the family restaurant Errico Recanati took over from his grandmother and turned into one of Italy's most original kitchens. The whole dining room runs on fire — wood-burning grill, oven, hearth — and almost everything that arrives at the table has been touched by smoke. The pigeon is the dish people return for: aged, then cooked over coals, then finished in the wood oven. The tasting menu is the best way in. Wine list is short and serious. Loreto is a small pilgrimage town twenty minutes from Senigallia — easy to combine with the coast.

The Urbino restaurant that does vincisgrassi the way it should be done — the Marche's great baked, layered pasta, richer than lasagna and slightly more serious about itself.

In the Renaissance quarter of Urbino, a few minutes' walk from Raphael's house and the Palazzo Ducale, in a stone-walled room dating to the 1500s. Small, atmospheric, without being theme-park about it. The vincisgrassi is the dish — sheets of pasta layered with a slow-cooked ragù, sometimes chicken livers, sometimes black truffle, baked until the top is crisp. Pair it with a glass of Verdicchio di Matelica, the local white. The crescia (Marche flatbread) is the right starter. Service is friendly, occasionally distracted, fairly priced.

A vaulted stone room a few steps from Spoleto's Duomo. Quietly serious about Umbrian cooking — handmade strangozzi, slow-braised meats, a short wine list weighted to local producers. The right Spoleto dinner.

Apollinare sits in the centro storico of Spoleto, in a 13th-century building with vaulted ceilings and that particular Umbrian restaurant feeling — quiet, candlelit, not trying. The kitchen is led by chef Giuseppe Sinisi and the menu rotates with the season. Strangozzi alla spoletina (with garlic, chilli, tomato — a Spoleto dish) is the right opener; the lamb or the tagliata di manzo to follow. Order a glass of Trebbiano Spoletino with the pasta, switch to a Sagrantino with the meat. Service is gracious, paced, and never rushed. Book ahead in summer during the Festival dei Due Mondi.

The Art Nouveau caffè on the corner of Piazza del Popolo, in business since 1907 and still pouring the Meletti anisette that made it famous. Hemingway and Sartre passed through; you'll see why.

The most beautiful caffè in Le Marche, and a Patrimonio Storico (national historical landmark) for good reason. Liberty-style mirrors, marble counters, gilt lettering, and a terrace looking onto one of Italy's prettiest squares. The anisette they make in the back is sweet, sticky, and best chased with a few olive all'ascolana — the fried, meat-stuffed olives invented in this town. Sit outside at aperitivo hour. Order the Meletti Spritz if you want to feel local. Open from 7 a.m., good for both first coffee and last drink of the night.

The Perugina factory and museum just outside Perugia. The Baci chocolate kiss was invented here in 1922. Tour the production line, then taste in the café.

Perugia is a chocolate town, and Perugina — owned by Nestlé since the 1980s, but still made in Umbria — is the institution. The Casa del Cioccolato is the visitable factory in San Sisto, a short drive from the centre. You book a tour through the website (English-language ones run several times a week), walk the production line, see Baci being wrapped, then end at the museum and café for the tasting. Touristy in the best sense — well-organised, fun, and the chocolate is genuinely good. Skip in October if you can't deal with crowds; EuroChocolate happens in town and the place is mobbed.

A wine bar and tasting room in the centre of Spoleto specialising in Umbrian wines — Sagrantino, Trebbiano Spoletino, Grechetto. Stand at the bar, order by the glass.

The right Spoleto aperitivo. The Enoteca Provinciale is the official tasting outlet of the region, with maybe 50 Umbrian producers represented and a knowledgeable team behind the bar happy to walk you through them. Sagrantino di Montefalco is the headline red — heavy, tannic, age-worthy — but the white Trebbiano Spoletino is the real revelation, mineral and underrated. Order a tagliere of pecorino di fossa (aged in caves) and salame umbro to go with. A short walk from the Duomo. Closed Mondays.

One Michelin star plus a Michelin Green Star, in a 700-person village on the slopes of the Sibillini mountains. Chef Enrico Mazzaroni rebuilt the restaurant after the 2016 earthquake. Worth the drive — every kilometre of it.

The first Michelin star ever awarded in the province of Ascoli Piceno, and one of the most distinctive kitchens in central Italy. Mazzaroni grows or raises most of what's on the plate — vegetables, chestnuts, truffles, lamb — and what he doesn't, he sources from neighbours on the mountain. The cooking is creative, deeply rooted, occasionally surprising (trout with veal, mountain herbs, mushroom). The drive in is theatrical: switchbacks, oak forest, Monte Sibilla in the windshield. Lunch is the easier booking. The price-to-quality ratio is among the best in Italy at this level.

A family-run osteria on the main square of Montone, the tiny medieval hilltop town where Sir Terence Conran kept a house and the Umbria Film Festival has run since 1997. Slow service. Local everything. The reason to detour.

Montone is 25 minutes from Perugia airport and one of the prettiest small towns in northern Umbria — walled, perched, with maybe 1,500 people in it. L'Antica Osteria is on the main piazza with a few outside tables under wisteria. The tagliatelle al tartufo nero is what you order in autumn (shavings over fresh pasta, butter, no sauce — the truffle does the work). In other seasons, the cinghiale alla cacciatora (wild boar braised in red wine, tomatoes, juniper) is what you order. Local Sagrantino by the glass. Sit outside if the weather allows.

A small, low-intervention Verdicchio producer in the hills above Jesi. Riccardo Baldi makes some of the best mineral-driven white wine in central Italy. Tastings often run with the winemaker himself.

If you only drink one Marche wine on this trip, drink Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi — and La Staffa is the producer to know. The estate sits in Staffolo, forty-five minutes inland from Ancona, and farms biodynamically without making a big deal of it. The wines are bright, mineral, structured, the kind of white that pairs as well with brodetto as it does with truffle pasta. Tastings are intimate, hosted in a converted barn, often led by Riccardo Baldi himself. Book in advance — small operation, small windows.

Moreno Cedroni's two-Michelin-starred Marzocca di Senigallia restaurant — open since 1984, technically inventive, the best raw fish program on the Adriatic.

Twenty minutes south of Uliassi along the same coast. Moreno Cedroni is one of the most experimental Italian chefs of his generation — the man who introduced Italians to crudo of Adriatic fish in the 1990s, and who keeps pushing fermentation, smoking, and aging techniques without losing the plot. The dining room is small, clean, modern, with a long sushi-style bar where you can watch the team work. Order the raw fish tasting menu and let them drive. Pair with Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi. Book early.

The takeaway window on Piazza Arringo making the platonic ideal of olive ascolane. Three generations of the same family, frying to order, paper cones over the counter.

Not a sit-down meal — a stop. Olive ascolane are large green Ascolana Tenera olives, pitted, stuffed with a mix of pork, veal, chicken, parmigiano, and nutmeg, breaded and deep-fried. Migliori is the source. Order a paper cone of olives plus a few crema fritta (fried custard cubes) for the salty-sweet move, and eat them standing in the piazza. They open early and they sell out by mid-afternoon on weekends. Cash is faster than card.

One Michelin star in Pesaro, on the Marche coast. Chef Stefano Ciotti is one of the region's most thoughtful cooks — Adriatic fish, fermentation, hyperlocal sourcing, no shortcuts.

Nostrano sits on the seafront in Pesaro, in a clean modern room with windows onto the boats. Ciotti's cooking is Marche-rooted but unfussy and contemporary — the brodetto (Adriatic fish stew) is the dish he's known for, slow and concentrated, served with a piece of grilled bread. His tasting menus rotate with the season and pull from the hills as much as the sea. Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi is the right pairing. Less theatre than the Senigallia heavyweights — and a little easier to get a table at.

A small, modern-feeling osteria in the centre of Ascoli, doing Marche cooking with care and a light hand. Excellent fried mixed plate, perfect olive ascolane, fresh pasta with truffle.

The Ascoli restaurant for when you want all the things you're supposed to eat in Ascoli, on one table, prepared with technique. Start with the frittura all'ascolana — a mixed fry of olives, crema fritta, cremini di carne, and lamb chops. Then chitarrine (square-cut fresh pasta) with black truffle. The wine list runs deep on Rosso Piceno and Pecorino. Small room, friendly service, sane prices for the quality. Book on weekends. Closed Mondays.

The Lunghi family has been roasting whole pigs over wood with wild fennel and garlic in a small town outside Assisi for three generations. Umbrian porchetta is born here — eat it from the market van, in a roll, standing up.

Costano is a village outside Bastia Umbra, fifteen minutes from Assisi, and the Lunghi porchetta van is the Umbrian street-food anchor. They show up at markets across Umbria — Spello, Foligno, Perugia, Assisi — most mornings; check the Facebook page for the day's location. Order a porchetta panino, get extra wild fennel, eat it on the curb with a plastic cup of red wine. The skin is the move. Cash. They sell out by 2 p.m.

A beachside trattoria on the Conero coast, in the cove of Portonovo — the Slow Food Alliance anchor for moscioli, the wild Adriatic mussels harvested off this exact stretch of shore.

Portonovo is a small beach in a national park south of Ancona, hemmed in by white-cliff headlands and pine forest. Emilia — known to locals as "Da Marisa" — has been on this beach since 1956 and is the Slow Food Foundation's flagship for moscioli, the wild rope-grown mussels native to this rocky coast (prized for a sweet, briny flavour you don't get from farmed Adriatic mussels). Order them done "alla portonovese" (with tomato, white wine, garlic, parsley, breadcrumbs) and a chilled Verdicchio. Lunch with your feet near the water. Open spring through autumn.

The historic pasticceria on Corso Vannucci, Perugia's main pedestrian artery, going since 1860. Frescoed ceilings, glass cases of pastry, the same families coming in three generations.

If you only have one breakfast in Perugia, have it here. The torciglione (a snake-shaped almond-paste sweet, an Umbrian Christmas specialty made year-round) is the move. So is the rocciata, a rolled-up pastry stuffed with apples, walnuts, and raisins that's essentially Umbria's answer to strudel. The cappuccino is correct. The room is what you came for — frescoes, gilt, marble — and the location is the heart of the city. Closed Mondays in low season.

Six tables in the centre of Macerata. Chef Michele Biagiola cooks Marche cuisine through a foraged, vegetable-first lens — wild herbs, fermentations, dishes plated by the chef himself.

A Michelin-recognised kitchen that flies under the radar because it's in Macerata — not Senigallia, not Ascoli, not on anyone's tourist map. The room seats maybe twenty. Biagiola walks each plate out and explains it. The cooking is rural-Marche reinterpreted: garden in a dish, spaghetti all'arrabbiata that reframes the classic, herbs picked that morning. Lunch is the gourmet expression, dinner the looser one. The wine list is small and almost entirely Marche. Closed Tuesdays.

A cave-walled trattoria in the centre of Orvieto, family-run since the 1960s. The menu is one page. The truffle pasta and pigeon are the reason locals send out-of-towners here.

La Palomba ("the dove") sits on Via Cipriano Manente in the centro storico, three minutes from the duomo. Vaulted, stone-walled, small. Order the umbrichelli (Umbrian thick spaghetti) with summer or winter truffle depending on the season — it's the house dish. Piccione disossato (boneless pigeon) and the cinghiale in umido are the right second courses. The wine list is short, smart, and almost entirely from Orvieto and the surrounding hills. Lunch is more relaxed than dinner. Closed Wednesdays.

Family-run since the early 1900s, a few minutes from the Piazza del Comune in Assisi. Vaulted stone room, handwritten chalkboard menu, the Pallotta family still cooking and serving.

The Assisi locals' restaurant — not the one the tour buses pull up to. Stringozzi (a hand-rolled Umbrian pasta like fat shoelaces) with black truffle is the move when truffles are in season. Piccione (pigeon) with juniper and sage is the dish people make the trip for. The wine list is short and entirely Umbrian. The room seats maybe 40. Lunch is calmer than dinner; both need a reservation. The handwritten dessert list usually includes a torta della nonna worth the calories.

Three Michelin stars on the molo di levante in Senigallia. Mauro and Catia Uliassi have been running it since 1990, and the food is one of the great expressions of Adriatic cooking — exact, modern, anchored.

It looks, from outside, like a beach restaurant — a low building between the sand and the breakwater. Inside, three Michelin stars and a kitchen that has been quietly defining what Marche seafood can be for thirty-five years. The smoked spaghetti with clams and roasted date tomatoes is on every menu for a reason. So is the wild duck (lab di mare) tasting that flips between sea and game. Two tasting menus, multiple courses, hours at the table. Book several months ahead for summer; shoulder season is slightly more forgiving. Closed Monday and Tuesday lunch.

One Michelin star plus a Michelin Green Star, inside Palazzo Seneca in Norcia. The Bianconi family has been running hotels here for five generations; the kitchen is led by Fabio Cappiello and Fumiko Sakai.

Norcia is the Umbrian truffle and salumi town, half-rebuilt after the 2016 earthquake, and Vespasia is its anchor restaurant. The dining room is inside the 16th-century Palazzo Seneca — terracotta columns, wooden ceiling, leather armchairs, none of it overdone. The cooking pulls from the Sibillini mountains: lamb, lentils, black truffle, river fish. The signature dish, Nursino Ramen, marries mushroom and ham consommé and is the reason the Michelin inspectors keep coming back. Five tasting menus including a vegetarian one. Dinner only; Wednesdays closed; book by 8 p.m. the night before.