Italian restaurants in Italy
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Antica Trattoria della Pesa
A recipe for instant nostalgia: take the landmark building where Ho Chi Minh stayed in the ‘30s, add literary types from nearby publishing houses, mix with comfort food - osso bucco on polenta topped with gremolata, bollito misto (boiled meat) and cotoletta (crumbed veal cutlets) - spice it up with some red, and finish with a sigh and smooth, boozy zabaglione.
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Trattoria Corrieri
Eat on the patio under a leafy trellis, or in the labyrinth of rustically decorated interior rooms at this convivial trattoria, under the same ownership as Gallo d’Oro. Everything’s top quality –from the tris di tortelli (pasta pockets with three different stuffings) to the torta di cioccolato e pere (pear-chocolate cake) for dessert.
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Sant’Andrea
The position of this excellent restaurant is a reflection of Palermo’s contradictory appeal. It’s tucked into the corner of a ruined church in a shabby piazza. Sant’Andrea’s well-heeled customers pick their way across the broken flagstones to enjoy creative, yet classic, dishes such as tagliatelle with lobster and almond pesto.
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Il Gufo
The owner/chef gathers ingredients from local markets and cooks up whatever is fresh and in season. Try dishes such as cinghiale (wild boar) with fennel (€12.50) or riso nero (black rice) with grilled vegetables and brie (€12.50). There is always a good selection of salads for €5. Note: no credit cards.
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Trattoria Fantoni
To the west of the centre of Bologna, Via del Pratello is a long-standing bohemian hang-out packed with pubs, trattorias and bars. One of the best, Fantoni is a much-loved eatery dishing up classic Italian food at welcome prices. The atmosphere’s jovial and the decor is an agreeable clash of clutter and modern art.
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Donati
Termini district is full of second-rate tourist traps, but this is a straightforward traditional restaurant serving up competent takes on dishes such as fried seafood or spaghetti with mussels and clams. You can eat inside, in the high-ceilinged hasn't-changed-for-years interior, or outside on the cobbled street.
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Ristorante Tre Re
Tre Re reigns in Viterbo as a historic trattoria, dishing up steaming plates of tasty local specialities and seasonally driven dishes. None is more typical than the pollo alla Viterbese, roast chicken stuffed with spiced potato and green olives. Heartwarmingly cheap and palate-pleasingly fantastic.
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Ristorante Pensavo Peggio
Rare value in this stretch of Florence, this recently spruced-up restaurant has simple but surprisingly savoury pastas and roast meats, plus a touch of class with its gilt frames and wood-panelled walls. Besides offering great value, the jolly owner works to make even foreigners feel at home.
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Bacaro Risorto
A shoebox of a corner bar just over a footbridge from Piazza San Marco offering quality wines and abundant cicheti, including crostini heaped with baccalà mantecato, soft cheeses or melon tightly swaddled in prosciutto, and even the occasional sushi.
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Antica Osteria da Divo
This place plays background jazz that is as smooth as the walls are rough-hewn. At the lower, cellar level you’re dining amid Etruscan tombs. The inventive menu includes dishes such as cannelloni with ricotta, spinach, grilled sweet peppers, tomatoes and Tuscan pesto sauce.
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Sfashion
Turinese comic TV presenter Piero Chiamretti’s latest culinary offering is this funky postmodern set-up with retro toys adorning its outlandish interior, and dishes such as mussels in tomato sauce or penne with zucchini.
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Caffè di Perugia
The fanciest sit-down cafe in town, its desserts are worth the high prices. It also serves a fine choice of basic pasta and meat dishes and offers outdoor seating in summer.
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Met
Michelin stars don’t mean much in Venice given that the last French critic Venetians took seriously was Napoleon, and he had armies backing him up – but you’ll find locals who would not normally patronise a hotel restaurant concede that Met chef Corrado Fasolato certainly earns his starry reputation. Moonlit lagoon panoramas and mesmerising blown-glass constellations recede once the meals start arriving. Confident and playful takes on local game and seafood dishes include savoury pheasant canneloni and decadent eel-stuffed pasta that makes foie gras seem trifling; mains arrive with red wine and horseradish transformed into sorbet and gelato. Bring a hot date, a sens…
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Il Ridotto
From an open kitchen the size of a closet comes a parade of tasty small plates: a dollop of savoury Tuscan bread pudding, Venetian crudi composed into a glistening mosaic, a silky pistachio flan. Mains are comparatively anticlimactic and pricey, but antipasti like the lobster-nectarine salad and inventive primi such as gnocchi stuffed with wild herbs make an inspired meal. There are only five tables, set close together, which makes reservations essential and haphazard service puzzling – but ever-present chef/owner Gianni Bonaccorsi is warm and attentive, and the decor of exposed brick and gossamer veils sets the scene for modern Venetian romance.
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Antica Focacceria di San Francesco
A Palermitan institution, this atmospheric, informal place is one of the city’s oldest eating houses (opened in 1834). It hosted the first Sicilian parliament and was a favourite haunt of notorious Mafia boss ‘Lucky’ Luciano. Fixed-price menus including cannoli and the drink of your choice cost €6 to €12. The sandwiches (€2 to €4) are also great – try an oven-baked Vecchia Palermo moffoletta with cherry tomatoes, anchovies, caciocavallo cheese and oregano, or brave a maritata, the age-old Palermitan snack featuring milza (veal innards) and ricotta cheese.
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Trattoria da Pampo
Even though this restaurant is opposite a park in the quietest end of the city, this place boasts ‘dal pampo non c’é scampo’ (there’s no getting away from Pampo) with reason – the ombre and cicheti are irresistible happy-hour lures. During the Biennale, flocks of American performance artists and German gallerists descend on outdoor seating, attack plates of seafood risotto and polenta con seppie in umido (with squid in a tomato-onion stew), and fly off to openings in a cloud of gauzy black crêpe.
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La Beppa Fioraia
For some inventive Italian cooking, in what feels like the countryside, La Beppa Fioraia is worth going the extra mile. The homemade pasta dishes are all equally tempting, and the meat mains (sorry, no fish here) ooze flavour. Try the filetto di cinta senese con aceto balsamico (a thick, juicy pork fillet in a dark, tangy balsamic vinegar sauce, served with spinach). Before or after your meal, it's worth taking a stroll along this back lane through old olive groves and retiring villas.
You feel as though you're already deep in Chianti country.
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All’Arco
Venice’s best cicheti daily aren’t on any menu: Maestro Francesco and his son Matteo invent them daily with Rialto market finds. If you ask nicely and wait patiently, they’ll whip up something special for you on the spot – baby artichoke topped with shavings of bottarga, perhaps, or tuna tartare with mint, strawberries and a balsamic reduction. Even with copious prosecco, hardly any meal here tops €20 or falls short of four stars – might as well book your return ticket to Venice now.
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Trattoria Basile
This popular, unpretentious trattoria offers an unforgettable, authentic Palermitan eating experience. Pay first, take a number at the window for your pasta (€2 to €2.50) or main course (€3 to €4), then sidle over to the antipasti bar where you can choose three items for €2 or six items for €3.50. While enjoying your appetisers, listen for your number – they’ll bellow it out (in Italian) when the rest of your food is ready. Try to avoid the really busy period between 1pm and 2pm when every workman in town is elbowing in for his plate of pasta.
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Dai Zemei
The zemei (twins) who run this corner joint are a blur of motion by 10am, preparing for the onslaught of regulars and the odd well-informed foodie tourist by 11.45am for first crack at baccalámantecato (creamed cod) with green garlic shoots, crostini with silky cured lard and arugula panini, or gorgonzola with walnuts and a brandy reduction for adventurous vegetarians. Think past the usual prosecco, and wash it down with a rustic Raboso or sophisticated Refosco.
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Dalla Marisa
Go early or late to squeeze into that rare free spot between the elbows of dockworkers and university professors, and choose from a short daily menu of robust, no-nonsense meat-based cooking slapped down in front of you at bargain prices: €8 for a primo with house wine and coffee, or €14 with a secondo and vegetable side dish. Weekday fixed-price dinners run from €30 to €40 for seasonal specialities such as venison, duck, pheasant and lamb dishes, with the occasional fish and seafood option.
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Scringno del Duomo
Skip the set menus and you can actually dine in this refined establishment – Trento’s oldest building, dating back to the 1200s – for a good price. Tables in Scringno’s gastronomic downstairs restaurant look into a glassed-in Roman cellar that holds more than 1000 different wines. The rustic upstairs restaurant serves local specialities such as canederli di pomi con fonduta di taleggio (oven-baked dumplings with cheese) and lake-caught salmerino fish. Delizioso without exception.
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Obika Brera
Milan’s main branch of the Obika empire is stylish, with glass-box displays and French army chairs. Ordering is simple. Take your pick of mozzarella di bufula (buffalo milk mozzarella balls), from sweet to smoked, then choose an accompaniment (ranging from salads to prosciutto). The €8 aperitivo here is a shockingly good deal, an all-you-can-eat array of bufalastrewn salads, cold meats, salmon and simple, delicious pastas, and a sbagliato (a sparkling wine, Antico Rosso and Campari cocktail).
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L'erta del Mangia
Up the lane leading to the Convento di San Francesco from Piazza Mino da Fiesole, this place's pleasant location is an immediate plus. The warm terracotta and timber interior adjoins the airy, chianti wine bottle-lined terrace with views over Florence. Some dishes make surprising departures from the standard canons, like the tagliatelle con fiori di zucca, piccione e pomodorini (ribbon pasta with pumpkin flowers, grilled pigeon meat and cherry tomatoes).
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Do Mori
Lurking surreptitiously behind the kiosk-strewn tourist thoroughfare to the Rialto is this backstreet bacaro that dates from 1462 but doesn’t look a day over five centuries old, with gleaming, gargantuan copper pots hanging rather ominously overhead and incongruously dinky, dainty sandwiches called francobolli (postage stamps). Make sure to arrive early for the best selection of cicheti (€3 to €4) and local gossip (free).
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