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Best Restaurants in Florence

From Michelin-starred fine dining to authentic local cuisine, discover Florence's most distinguished restaurants. Curated, tested, and approved by our expert editors.

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Restaurants
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Michelin Starred
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Fine Dining
By Mes Prestiges Editorial Team

Casual Dining

Delicious food in relaxed settings

Where to Eat in Florence?

Florence eats like a city that long ago decided what it wanted to be on the plate and never apologised for it: Chianina beef on the bone, white beans, lampredotto and tripe, unsalted bread, and a litre of young Tuscan red. The reference points here are trattorie and osterie, not the tasting-menu circuit — places like Trattoria Sostanza, going since 1869 and famous for its butter-braised chicken breast, or Trattoria Cammillo in the Oltrarno, where the room has barely changed in decades. The modern fine-dining count is small and the city is comfortable with that.

Geography is the whole map here. The Oltrarno — the left bank around Santo Spirito and San Frediano — is the workshop district and holds the deepest trattoria bench: Trattoria La Casalinga and 4 Leoni off the square, and Osteria Tripperia Il Magazzino, the place that takes Florentine offal seriously. Sant'Ambrogio, around its covered market, is Cibrèo country, where Fabio Picchi's no-pasta Tuscan kitchen ran the Ristorante and the cheaper Cibrèino side by side; the same square has Semel for panini. San Niccolò under the hills carries the quieter end, from the tiny counter at Zeb to La Bottega del Buon Caffè; San Lorenzo and San Marco keep the market-lunch trattorie like Sergio Gozzi.

A Trattoria City, Not a Tasting-Menu One

Florence's identity is the trattoria and the osteria — family rooms, paper tablecloths, a handwritten menu that reads the season more than the chef. A serious bistecca alla fiorentina, the thick Chianina porterhouse grilled rare over wood, is the one dish worth budgeting for; expect it priced by weight, usually for two. Il Santo Bevitore in Santo Spirito is the cleanest example of the modern-Tuscan register that has grown up alongside the old guard. Wine lists run deep into Chianti, Brunello and the Tuscan coast, and most rooms pour a perfectly good house red.

Reservation Tips

The famous trattorie — Sostanza, Cammillo, the Cibrèo rooms — want booking several days to a week ahead, more on summer weekends when Florence is at its most crowded. The honest advice is to avoid July and August midday heat and the Easter peak; late autumn and winter are when the city eats best, with the wood grills lit and game and beans on the menu. Many of the smallest rooms still take only phone bookings, and a few, like Zeb's counter, are walk-in by nature — go early.

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