Italy’s Best Restaurants to Check Out in 2019

In our travels here at Villas of Italy we always take copious notes about restaurants, new or old, hotels, sights and attractions. We use these when crafting our tours in order to give our guests the best possible tour experience. And, we are always on the lookout for the best restaurants no matter where we go.

Silvia Donati at Italy Magazine shares with us The 41st edition of “Ristoranti e Vini d’Italia” (Restaurants and Wines of Italy), the guide published every year by L’Espresso, one of Italy's foremost weekly newsmagazines, was presented last week in Florence (inaugurating the ‘2019 season’ of the culinary guides, which concludes in November with the release of the most prestigious of all, the Michelin guide).

More than 2,000 dining establishments are featured in the L’Espresso 2019 guide, and not just the fanciest ones, but also trattorie, osterie, pizzerie, street food places, vegetarian and vegan-friendly restaurants, hamburger places, panino (sandwich) places, and more. 

Restaurants in the guide are assigned from one to five hats, with one hat indicating good cuisine
and five hats indicating excellence . . . the best overall.

There are seven restaurants in the guide with five hats;

• Lido 84 in Gardone Riviera (new entry), on Lake Garda
• Casadonna Reale in Castel di Sangro, L’Aquila (Abruzzo)
• Le Calandre in Rubano, Padua (Veneto)
• Osteria Francescana in Modena (Emilia-Romagna)
• Piazza Duomo in Alba, Cuneo (Piedmont)
• Uliassi in Senigallia (Marche)
• St. Hubertus in San Cassiano, Badia valley of South Tyrol (new entry)
  
  

A new category was introduced last year, the ‘Cappello d’Oro’ (Golden Hat), this signals those
restaurants that make the best classics of Italian cuisine;

• Caino in Montemerano, Grosseto (Tuscany)
• Casa Vissani in Baschi, Terni (Umbria)
• Colline Ciociare in Acuto, Frosinone (Lazio)
• Dal Pescatore in Canneto sull’Oglio, Mantua
• Don Alfonso 1890 in Sant’Agata sui Due Golfi (Naples)
• Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence
• Lorenzo in Forte dei Marmi, Lucca (Tuscany)
• Miramonti l’altro in Concesio, Brescia (Lombardy)
• Romano in Viareggio (Tuscany)
• San Domenico in Imola, Bologna (Emilia-Romagna)
  
  

Much awaited every year is the single prizes category;

Lunch of the year: Osteria Francescana (which this year won first place in the 50 Best World’s
Restaurants guide), Modena. Owner / Chef Massimo Bottura tells us, “our kitchen is not a list of
ingredients or a demonstration of technical abilities. It is a narration of the Italian landscape and our passions.
Cooking is a collision of ideas, techniques and cultures. It is not mathematical. It is emotional.”

Best host service: Palagio at Four Seasons in Florence.

Best new restaurant of the year: there are two in the 2019 guide;

• Gorini in San Piero in Bagno (Forlì-Cesena, Emilia-Romagna) helmed by the young chef Gianluca Gorini.
• Dina in Gussago (Brescia, Lombardy), run by self-taught chef Alberto Gipponi.
  
  

Best Young Chef of the Year: Fabrizio Mellino, Quattro Passi in Nerano (Naples).

Patisserie of the year: the three Michelin-starred St. Hubertus in San Cassiano (Bolzano, South Tyrol), with pastry chef Andrea Tortora.

Female chef of the year: Chiara Pavan, from one Michelin-starred restaurant Venissa in Mazzorbo (Venice). Mazzorbo is an island connected to the island of Burano by a foot bridge. This restaurant and chef are a 5-minute boat ride from our villa on the nearby island of Torcello where our guests stay during our Venezia – La Serenissima tour.

Chef Chiara Pavan, from one Michelin-starred restaurant Venissa in Mazzorbo

So, whether or not you travel with us, use this guide to try the best restaurants in Italy, and let us know what you think . . . we'll add it to our notes.

                                                                                           Buon appetito!