10 Best Restaurants
Florence’s Renaissance galleries, Siena’s striped cathedral and the hill towns of the Val d’Orcia give Tuscany much of its familiar beauty. Beyond them lie Chianti vineyards, Lucca’s broad city walls and the quieter landscapes of the Maremma. The region also reaches the sea at Argentario and across to Elba, where Portoferraio preserves traces of Napoleon’s exile. Distances matter here: a countryside base near Montalcino serves a different trip from a stay on the coast.
Enoteca Pinchiorri
Florence, Italy
Enoteca Pinchiorri makes dinner in Florence a fully developed occasion. Within a historic palazzo, refined Italian cooking, accomplished pastry and a remarkable wine culture work together to create an experience with unusual depth. The room’s decorative richness and carefully coordinated service reinforce the sense of continuity without reducing the meal to nostalgia. Choose it when wine and food deserve equal attention, and allow the evening to unfold at the restaurant’s pace rather than fitting it around other plans.
A major Florentine dining institution
Arnolfo
Colle di Val d’Elsa, Italy
Arnolfo gives Gaetano Trovato’s cooking a striking contemporary home in Colle di Val d’Elsa. The purpose-built setting allows the kitchen’s attention to balance, detail and Tuscan ingredients to come into focus without relying on rustic decoration. Dishes reflect a deeply developed culinary identity rather than a fixed catalogue of regional classics. Choose it for a destination meal that combines architectural interest with technical assurance, and make the journey part of a carefully paced day.
Architectural clarity and precise contemporary cooking
Caino
Montemerano, Italy
Caino makes Montemerano a culinary destination through Valeria Piccini’s deeply personal interpretation of Maremma. Traditional rural flavours become the basis for contemporary dishes that explore contrast, texture and intensity, while the intimate dining room keeps the experience focused. The cellar adds another reason to take the meal slowly. Choose it for cooking that feels connected to a particular landscape and history, with ambition emerging from that relationship rather than obscuring it.
Maremma tradition through Valeria Piccini’s perspective
Campo del Drago
Montalcino, Italy
Campo del Drago brings the landscape around Castiglion del Bosco into an ambitious dining experience. Matteo Temperini’s cooking draws on Tuscan producers and the estate’s kitchen garden, combining regional identity with precise contemporary technique. The intimate setting and outlook over the surrounding hills reinforce the connection without replacing substance on the plate. Choose it for an evening that explores the culinary possibilities of the countryside, whether you are staying on the estate or arriving for dinner.
A refined expression of the Montalcino estate
Il Piccolo Principe
Viareggio, Italy
Il Piccolo Principe gives Viareggio a compelling fine-dining destination within Grand Hotel Principe di Piemonte. Giuseppe Mancino’s cooking moves between the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Tuscan countryside, using refined technique and wider influences to create dishes with a clear individual character. Attentive service and a substantial wine offering complete the experience. Choose it for a coastal visit where dinner deserves as much attention as the beach, and let the menu provide the evening’s focus.
Coastal ingredients with contemporary precision
Saporium Chiusdino
Palazzetto, Chiusdino, Italy
Saporium Chiusdino gives Borgo Santo Pietro’s gardens and farm a refined culinary expression. Ariel Hagen works with a wider estate team to build dishes in which vegetables, herbs and carefully developed preparations play a central role, even though the experience is not exclusively vegetarian. The result is closely connected to the surrounding land without settling into predictable rustic cooking. Choose it for a tasting menu that rewards curiosity about ingredients and the work that precedes the kitchen.
Botanical imagination grounded in the estate
Bracali
Ghirlanda, Massa Marittima, Italy
Bracali turns the modest setting of Ghirlanda into the starting point for an ambitious meal. Francesco Bracali’s cooking reinterprets Italian traditions through carefully developed combinations, while Luca’s role in the dining room and wine service gives the experience a strong family identity. The elegant surroundings add a sense of occasion without explaining the restaurant’s appeal on their own. Choose it for a destination dinner that reveals another side of Maremma beyond its familiar rural simplicity.
Imaginative dining in a small Maremma village
Silene
Pescina, Seggiano, Italy
Silene reflects Roberto Rossi’s close relationship with the landscape around Pescina, near Seggiano. Seasonal ingredients, the kitchen garden and the estate’s olive oil shape cooking that values clarity and depth over unnecessary complication. The elegant, relaxed setting makes the experience feel personal, while carefully developed technique gives familiar Tuscan references renewed interest. Choose it for a journey into the quieter countryside around Monte Amiata, with a meal that feels inseparable from its surroundings.
Tuscan ingredients with a deeply personal voice
La Pineta
Marina di Bibbona, Italy
La Pineta gives the Tuscan coast a particularly clear culinary expression. In Marina di Bibbona, the Zazzeri family’s restaurant keeps attention on fish and seafood, with cooking that values the character of the ingredients and a close relationship to the sea. The setting is part of the appeal, but the kitchen’s established reputation gives the journey substance. Choose it for a coastal meal that feels rooted in place rather than an interchangeable luxury dining room.
Seafood with a direct coastal identity
Poggio Rosso
San Felice, Castelnuovo Berardenga, Italy
Poggio Rosso gives the village of San Felice a distinctive contemporary dining identity. Stelios Sakalis connects Tuscan ingredients with his Greek heritage, using seasonal produce and careful technique to create dishes that feel personal rather than conventionally regional. The estate’s social farming project adds substance to the relationship between garden and kitchen. Choose it for a meal that explores Chianti through a different cultural perspective while remaining firmly connected to the landscape around the restaurant.
Chianti ingredients through a Greek-Tuscan perspective