What to Eat in Italy: Typical Italian Food and Specialties

Italian cooking is probably the best loved cuisine in the world - since December 2025 it has been on the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage, the first time a whole country's food culture has made it. For me Italy is the country I keep going back to for the food more than any other: I've eaten gnocchi in Sorrento, focaccia in Bari, zeppole in Matera, arancini in Palermo and culurgiones in Sardinia. And I still have plenty left to discover - Italy is really twenty regional cuisines that agree mainly on one thing: it all starts with the ingredients.

Typical Italian food rests on a handful of good ingredients - tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, basil, mozzarella and Parmesan. Italians care about freshness, seasonality and local produce; the recipes tend to be simple, which makes them all the more unforgiving of anything second-rate. In the north Italian cooking meets French, Swiss and Austrian cooking, in the south it smells of the Mediterranean, and in Sicily you can still see the Arab influence to this day.

Typical Italian Food

First place goes to pasta. There are hundreds of shapes and even more sauces: Rome is all about carbonara and cacio e pepe, Bologna about lasagne and tortellini, Bari with hand-shaped "little ears", orecchiette. The second great export is pizza - Neapolitan with a tall, airy rim, Roman thin and crisp, or pizza al taglio sold by weight in rectangles. Rice lovers get creamy risotto; in Milan they color it with saffron and serve it alongside osso buco, veal shank with the marrow bone braised until it falls apart.

Italy also means minestrone, the vegetable soup whose contents change with the season and the region. On the coast fish and seafood take over - shrimp, octopus and above all shellfish. Mussels cooked with garlic, parsley and a heavy hand of black pepper (impepata di cozze) are a Campanian specialty.

Italy is a sweet-toothed superpower too: gelato, tiramisu, panna cotta and Sicilian cannoli. Italian baking is just as good - ciabatta, cornetto (Italy's answer to the croissant) and my own favorite, focaccia barese (in Bari I go to the Magda bakery for it).

The Italian National Dish

Italy has no one official national dish - the regional cuisines are far too self-confident for that. If it came to a vote, though, pizza would probably win, Neapolitan pizza Margherita above all. Which, by the way, was not invented for Queen Margherita, whatever the story says: the combination of tomatoes, mozzarella and basil in the colors of the flag was around earlier, and in 1889 the Neapolitan pizzaiolo Raffaele Esposito at most gave it the queen's name. The thank-you letter from the palace has survived all the same, and the art of the Neapolitan pizzaiuolo has been on the UNESCO list since 2017.

Pizza shares the title of national dish with pasta in all its forms, creamy risotto and the Italian take on ice cream, gelato - denser, less aerated and more intense than the ordinary kind.

What to Eat in Italy

• Pizza. Leavened dough, tomatoes, mozzarella and an oven fired to the limit. The most famous one is Neapolitan, with a tall soft rim.
• Pasta. Hundreds of pasta shapes and iron rules about which sauce belongs to which. Italians eat 23 kg of it per person a year - a world record.
• Gelato. Italian ice cream with a creamy texture - less fat and less air than the industrial kind, which is why it tastes more intense. My favorite is churned at Gentile in Bari.
• Risotto. Creamy rice cooked in stock, with saffron, mushrooms or seafood. The north is risotto country.
• Tiramisu. Sponge fingers soaked in coffee and mascarpone cream. The dessert appeared around 1970 in Treviso and its name means "pick me up".
• Espresso. The basic unit of Italian life - you order it with a plain "un caffè", no need to add the word espresso.
• Cappuccino. Espresso with milk foam. Italians drink it in the morning only, ideally with a cornetto.
• Lasagne. Baked sheets of pasta with meat ragù, béchamel and cheese. A classic from Emilia-Romagna.
• Parmigiano-Reggiano. The king of Italian cheeses from around Parma, aged for at least a year and easily for more than 40 months. Grated over pasta and risotto.
• Prosciutto di Parma. Dry-cured ham from Parma, a gentler cousin of Spanish jamón. Great with melon, or just with bread.
• Mozzarella di bufala. Fresh buffalo milk cheese with DOP protection, at home in Campania. With tomatoes and basil it makes caprese in the colors of the Italian flag.
• Focaccia barese. Soft focaccia from Bari with potato in the dough, baked tomatoes and olives. My favorite Italian bread.
• Panzerotti. Fried pockets of leavened dough filled with tomato and mozzarella. A street classic of Apulia.
• Orecchiette. Pasta "little ears" from Apulia, typically with cime di rapa greens. In a lane in old Bari the women still shape them by hand right outside their doors.
• Burrata. A pouch of mozzarella filled with creamy stracciatella. It was created in the 1930s in Andria, Apulia.
• Bruschetta. Toasted bread rubbed with garlic, drizzled with olive oil and topped with tomatoes.
• Gnocchi. Little dumplings of potato dough. In Sorrento they bake them with tomatoes and mozzarella as gnocchi alla sorrentina.
• Panna cotta. A Piedmontese dessert of cooked cream with vanilla, usually under a fruit or caramel topping.
• Cannoli. Sicilian fried tubes filled with sweetened ricotta. The symbol of the island's pastry making.
• Arancini. Fried rice balls filled with ragù, cheese or peas. Sicily's number one street food.
• Pasta alla Norma. Pasta with tomatoes, fried eggplant and salted ricotta, named after the opera by Bellini, a native of Catania.
• Carbonara. A Roman classic of guanciale, egg yolks and pecorino - no cream. Traditionally with spaghetti or rigatoni.
• Vitello tonnato. Thin slices of veal with a cold tuna sauce. A Piedmontese specialty, these days on menus all over the country.
• Saltimbocca. Veal slices with Parma ham and sage, seared quickly in butter. A Roman classic whose name means "jump in the mouth".
• Osso buco. Veal shank with the marrow bone braised until tender, served in Milan with saffron risotto and gremolata.
• Minestrone. A thick vegetable soup with beans and pasta or rice. It looks different in every region.
• Pane di Altamura. Semolina bread with the DOP stamp from Altamura in Apulia. A thick crisp crust and a yellow, moist crumb.
• Pane di Matera. Bread with the IGP mark from Matera, the city carved into the rock. The sourdough tang only arrives at the end of the bite.
• Cornetto. The Italian version of the croissant, sweeter and softer. With a cappuccino it makes the classic Italian breakfast.
• Crostata. A homemade lattice tart of shortcrust pastry with jam or ricotta.
• Delizia al limone. A lemon cake with cream and glaze from Sorrento and Amalfi.
• Affogato. A scoop of vanilla ice cream "drowned" in hot espresso. Dessert and coffee in one.
• Truffles. White ones from Alba in Piedmont, black ones from Norcia in Umbria. Shaved over pasta, risotto and eggs.
• Limoncello. A liqueur made from the lemon peel of Sorrento and Amalfi, served ice-cold as a digestif.
• Aperol Spritz. Italy's most famous aperitif: 3 parts prosecco, 2 parts Aperol, 1 part soda. Aperol was born in 1919 in Padua.
• Prosecco. Sparkling wine from the Glera grape, from Veneto and Friuli. The base of the spritz and of the Bellini cocktail.
• Chianti. Tuscan red from Sangiovese, ideal with pasta and with meat.
• Primitivo. A full-bodied red from southern Apulia with notes of ripe fruit and spice.

Typical Italian Drinks

Italy is a coffee country - and "caffè" here automatically means espresso. Italians treat themselves to a cappuccino or a caffè latte in the morning only, at breakfast; ordering a cappuccino after lunch isn't banned, but it will reliably give you away as a tourist.

The early evening belongs to the aperitivo. The most famous of them all is the Aperol Spritz - bittersweet, orange and everywhere. In summer you'll also be glad of an ice-cold limoncello, the liqueur made from lemon peel.

The non-alcoholic aperitifs are worth a try too, and back home in Czechia hardly anyone knows them. Bittersweet chinotto, made from small citrus fruit, is unbeatable as far as I'm concerned, above all the one from Lurisia; its orange cousin is Crodino.

And of course Italian wines - Italy is one of the biggest wine producers in the world. The best known are Tuscan Chianti and Brunello di Montalcino, Piedmontese Barolo and Barbaresco from the Nebbiolo grape, southern Primitivo and Montepulciano d'Abruzzo; if you want bubbles, prosecco has you covered. Sardinia and Sicily have wine worlds of their own - and on top of that I can never resist sweet dessert wines like Passito di Pantelleria, made from dried grapes.

When it's too hot for wine, I reach for Italian beer - alongside big names like Moretti and Peroni there's a lively small-brewery scene.

How to Enjoy Italian Food to the Fullest

If you want to really appreciate Italian food, here are a few tips:

• Taste regional specialties where they come from. Neapolitan pizza, Sicilian arancini, Venetian cicchetti or Bolognese tortellini - every region plays in its own league, and each tastes best on its home ground.
• Order the way Italians do. The menu may run to five courses (antipasto, primo, secondo, contorno, dolce), but working through all of them is a special-occasion affair - most people pick one or two. Nobody will bat an eyelid if you have just a primo.
• Expect the coperto. The flat cover charge for the table setting and the bread is normal and legal in Italy, it only has to be stated on the menu. Tipping, by contrast, is entirely voluntary - leave some change on top for exceptional service.
• Ask for the bill yourself. An Italian waiter won't bring it, out of hospitality - he'll let you sit as long as you like. Just say "il conto, per favore".
• Have local wine with your meal. A glass of Chianti or Montepulciano with pasta, a light white with fish, passito with dessert. The house wine (vino della casa) is usually decent and cheap.
• Enjoy your food with friends. For Italians a meal is a social event that brings family and friends together. Treat yourself to a long dinner full of food, drink and conversation - don't rush it.
• Bring Italian ingredients home with you. Good pasta, olive oil, Parmesan, sun-dried tomatoes.

Before you travel you can also watch a few films and series about Italian food. My favorite, the Netflix series "Chef's Table", devotes several episodes to Italian chefs such as Massimo Bottura (season 1, episode 1) and Dario Cecchini (season 6, episode 2). Anyone with a sweet tooth shouldn't miss the episode with the Sicilian pastry chef Corrado Assenza (season 4, episode 2).

The Best Italian Food

If I had to pick three personal favorites, the best Italian food for me is:

1. Sfincione. A thick Palermo flatbread with onion sauce, anchovies and breadcrumbs - it looks like pizza, but it isn't. It's beautifully airy and that combination of ingredients is just my kind of thing; the best I've had was at a stall by the Capo market in Palermo.
2. Focaccia barese. Soft potato dough with baked tomatoes and olives. For me the best one comes from the Magda bakery just up the road from the main station in Bari - I never skip it on a visit to the city.
3. Gelato from Antica Gelateria Gentile. Dense, slow-melting ice cream from a family gelateria in Bari. I've been to the city four times - and to the gelateria eight - and I intend to keep that ratio.

How to Say Thank You for Italian Food

Anyone can manage the basics: "Grazie" (GRAHT-see-eh) - thank you, or the warmer "Grazie mille" (GRAHT-see-eh MEEL-leh) - thanks a lot. It works when you pay and when you leave.

When you want to praise the cooking, say "Era tutto squisito!" (EH-rah TOOT-toh skwee-ZEE-toh) - everything was delicious. And if the food deserves a compliment sent straight to the kitchen: "Complimenti al cuoco!" (kom-plee-MEN-tee al KWOH-koh) - my compliments to the chef! In family trattorias, where the cook often comes out to the tables in person, that line works wonders. When we praised the pizza at the da Michele pizzeria in Sorrento, the staff were genuinely delighted - and we had one more reason to come back.

At the table with friends, a spontaneous "Che buono!" (keh BWOH-noh) - now that's good! is enough. You say it over your plate, not towards the waiter - and honestly, with good Italian food it just slips out.

Regional Italian Cuisine and Specialties

Northern Italy
The north is a paradise of risotto, truffles and butter. Lombardy (Milan) serves risotto alla milanese with saffron and osso buco, Piedmont (Turin) is famous for white truffles from Alba, for cold vitello tonnato and for grissini breadsticks. Liguria (Genoa) is the home of pesto - the consortium's official recipe prescribes exactly seven ingredients, Genoese DOP basil among them. Veneto tempts you with seafood, prosecco and cicchetti: small bites served in the taverns known as bacari, from topped crostini to fried morsels and baccalà mantecato, a whipped cod cream.

Central Italy
Tuscany (Florence) is all about simple country cooking: the thick bread soup ribollita with beans and black kale, the mighty bistecca alla fiorentina and Chianti wine. Umbria, like Piedmont, is truffle country, this time black ones from around Norcia. Lazio (Rome) is a kingdom of pasta - cacio e pepe with tonnarelli, carbonara with spaghetti or rigatoni and amatriciana with bucatini. Among the meat dishes, saltimbocca is the Roman classic.

Southern Italy
Campania (Naples) is the home of pizza, the fried montanara included, and of mozzarella di bufala; Sorrento and Amalfi gave us gnocchi alla sorrentina, the lemon cake delizia al limone and limoncello. Apulia (Bari) adds orecchiette from the famous lane where the women still shape them by hand, fried panzerotti, burrata cheese from Andria and pane di Altamura bread. Basilicata (Matera) bakes semolina pane di Matera and dries crisp peperoni cruschi peppers, while Calabria stands up for nduja, the spicy spreadable sausage from Spilinga.

The Italian Islands
Sicily (Palermo, Catania) is a cuisine in its own right - Arab traces, arancini, pasta alla Norma, cannoli and the liveliest street food in the country. Sardinia, meanwhile, smells of thin pane carasau bread, of the stuffed pasta culurgiones and of the myrtle liqueur mirto.

Famous Italian Chefs

There are some very specific names behind the worldwide reputation of Italian food:

• Gualtiero Marchesi (1930-2017). The father of modern Italian cooking and the first Italian with three Michelin stars (1985). His saffron risotto with a sheet of edible gold, "Riso, oro e zafferano" from 1981, stayed on the menu of his Milan restaurant right to the end.
• Massimo Bottura (1962). The chef of Osteria Francescana in Modena, twice named the best restaurant in the world. He takes traditional flavors apart and puts them back together - as in "Five Ages of Parmesan", a single cheese in five textures and temperatures. With his wife Lara he also runs the non-profit Food for Soul: a network of canteens that cook for people in need from surplus ingredients.
• Nadia Santini. The first Italian woman with three Michelin stars - the family restaurant Dal Pescatore near Mantua has held them without a break since 1996, and Santini is still the only Italian woman chef with that award. Her cooking grows out of Lombard traditions and seasonal ingredients.
• Carlo Cracco (1965). The most visible media face of Italian gastronomy and a judge on the Italian MasterChef from 2011 to 2017. His flagship restaurant Cracco in Milan's Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II holds a Michelin star.
• Gennaro Esposito (1970). A master of seafood and of the local ingredients of the Bay of Naples. His two-star La Torre del Saracino stood in Vico Equense for more than thirty years; since the autumn of 2026 he has been cooking at the Bellevue Syrene hotel in Sorrento.

And alongside them are countless nameless cooks, bakers and pastry chefs who keep the fame of Italian cooking alive day after day - plenty of my best Italian meals have come from places no guidebook writes about.

Italian Michelin Restaurants

By the number of Michelin restaurants Italy is second in the world: 15 restaurants with three stars, 38 with two and 341 with one (Guida Michelin Italia 2026, as of September 2026). My own favorite category, Bib Gourmand - exceptional value for money - covers 255 places. The only new three-star of the year is La Rei Natura in Piedmont, run by chef Michelangelo Mammoliti.

The most famous Italian Michelin restaurant is Osteria Francescana in Modena, Massimo Bottura's place: it has held three stars since 2012 and in 2016 and 2018 it was named the best restaurant in the world, the first Italian venue ever to manage it. Eating there is high on my gastronomic wish list.

Three stars also go to La Pergola in Rome, in the Rome Cavalieri hotel, where chef Heinz Beck turns out first-class Mediterranean cooking with the accent on fish and seafood - he has held the stars for twenty years in a row now. The third of the best known is Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence, co-founded by the French chef Annie Féolde: Italian cooking with French influences, one of the most famous wine cellars in the world and three stars without a break since 2004.

Interesting Facts About Italian Food

• Italian food is on the UNESCO list three times over. First the Mediterranean diet (2010), then the art of the Neapolitan pizzaiuolo (2017), and in December 2025 the whole of Italian cuisine - the first time UNESCO has recognized the food culture of an entire country as a single thing.
• Italy is the biggest pasta producer in the world. Roughly one plate of pasta in four on the planet comes from Italy. And Italians are the biggest eaters of it too: 23 kg per person a year (2025), with Tunisia a distant second.
• The oldest pizzeria in the world is reckoned to be Antica Pizzeria Port'Alba in Naples. It started out as a stall in 1738 and moved into proper premises in 1830. It became famous for the "pizza a otto" system - a customer could pay up to eight days after the meal.
• Espresso was born in Turin. Angelo Moriondo patented his steam coffee machine in 1884 but never made commercial use of the patent - espresso was made famous by Bezzera and Pavoni in the early twentieth century.
• Italy's oldest cafe has been running since 1720. Caffè Florian on St. Mark's Square in Venice served Goldoni, Casanova and Hemingway.
• A legend about the stained glass of Milan Cathedral explains the yellow color of risotto alla milanese. A glazier's assistant nicknamed Zafferano is said to have stirred saffron from his paints into the wedding rice in 1574. Documented recipes, though, only go back to the nineteenth century.
• Tiramisu means "pick me up". The dessert appeared around 1970 at the restaurant Le Beccherie in Treviso; since 2010 the original recipe has been lodged with a notary at the Italian Academy of Cuisine.
• You won't find fettuccine Alfredo in an Italian restaurant. The dish was created in Rome in 1908, but Hollywood made its name - and while in the US it stands for Italian cooking, in Italy it never caught on.
• Artisan gelato has 6-8% fat and only 30-50% of its volume in whipped-in air. Industrial ice cream can have up to 13% fat and far more air - which is why gelato is denser and tastes more intense.
• Italy has more protected food and wine designations than any other country in the EU. 897 geographical indications in total, 331 of them DOP/IGP foods (November 2025) - ahead of France and Spain.

Enjoy Italy and the best Italian food!

Dan Špaňhel

I'm Dan. I only write about what I've tasted myself - from street food stalls to Michelin stars. I've travelled half the world for food and tried everything possible - even the impossible.

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