Current Time
Currency
restaurants
Italy restaurants
While the French slave for hours, fussily transforming ingredients into perfect dishes, Italians prefer to use perfect ingredients and let them speak for themselves. Pasta is a staple across the country, eaten as a first course and usually followed by a meat or fish main course. Pizza is a popular, cheap, and cheerful alternative. Italian restaurants will often cap off your meal with limoncello or another homemade digestivo.
Italian wines are among the best in the world and are priced accordingly. But in the wine regions, you can always get a great inexpensive bottle. The best reds—from full-bodied to ephemeral—come from Tuscany (avoid straw-covered bottles of Chianti, which will invariably be bad), Umbria, and Piedmont. If you're celebrating, prosecco (sparkling white wine) is a bargain compared with its French cousin, Champagne.
Near Quattro Canti and behind Piazza Marina is this delightfully intimate medieval cave of a place—the best spot in the city to sample from Sicilian wine...more
see the Sicily guideOne of the best of Florence's "branded" wine bars, this outlet for the Antinori wine estate, in the family's palazzo on the fashion street of Via Tornabuoni, is...more
see the Florence guideThis central bakery just south of the Duomo sells Florentine breads, torte, and biscotti up front and features a bar-caffè in back. With its...more
see the Florence guideThe hamlet of Groppo is just a scatter of houses high up on the hill behind Manarola, but it's here, in two rooms of a converted private house, that you'll find...more
see the Cinque Terre + Portofino guideThe best gelato in Florence—and yes, that includes the much more famous Vivoli—comes from this gelateria not far from the Duomo, which quickly...more
see the Florence guideAustrian-born chef Andreas Zangerl consistently gets rave reviews for his creative versions of Sicilian classics. Fusionistas go gaga over his prix fixe menu,...more
see the Sicily guideNearly three decades after it first shook up the city's sluggish dining scene, Cibrèo, near Santa Croce, still ranks as one of Florence's top culinary...more
see the Florence guideMarco Proietto's seafood restaurant near the shipyards of Castello is no secret, so you'll likely have to share it with crowds of reveling tourists and local...more
see the Venice guideThis innovative Italian restaurant has put central Milan back on the foodie map of Italy with its unrepentantly contemporary Italian food. Chef Carlo Cracco...more
see the Milan guideKnown to locals simply as Le Zie ("the aunts"), this family-run trattoria still feels like the private house it once was, and is a perfect place to immerse...more
see the Puglia guide
RSS Feeds