20 Absolute Best Restaurants In Turin

Although any Italian city can claim high marks in terms of foodie power, Turin — known as the Paris on the Po for its Haussman-like wide boulevards flanked by impressive buildings — is especially well placed for the honor. For one, it is the birthplace of Eataly, a venture started in 2002 by Italian businessman Oscar Farinetti with the aim of bringing together some of Italy's disparate cuisines and ingredients all in one place, all while focusing on sustainability and biodiversity. This was fitting, since Turin had also developed as an important center for the Slow Food Movement, a backlash that took shape as a direct response to the opening of the first McDonald's in Italy in 1986, saving us all from culinary perdition. You can't throw a stone in Turin without hitting a restaurant that serves good, sustainably sourced food at affordable prices. Let's have a look at the best ones.

When a pizza restaurant uses such good ingredients as Lo Staglio, you'll want to get the simplest pie possible. That way you can truly taste the quality of the source material, which is just San Marzano tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and a dash of good olive oil on top of a light and fluffy pizza crust. Order the Margherita, and you won't be disappointed.

That is not to say that Lo Staglio is short on inventive pizza toppings. "La Gialla" comes with a yellow datterini tomato sauce topped with Agerola provala cheese and speck, while the "Lo Staglio" comes with a light dusting of fresh tomato sauce topped with fresh cherry tomatoes, burrata, and prosciutto. Whichever option you go for, you will learn that it's possible to have guilty-pleasure pizza without the grease of American-style pies.

If you're looking for down-home, Italian cooking that tastes like it was made by someone's kindly grandmother, this is the place for that. Dishes are unpretentious but invariably made with fresh ingredients, and it shows. For example, when you order the organic Tajarin with veal ragu, you can almost taste the field where the veal lived its happy life.

To elevate your meal, start with the "stuzzico e bolle," which is a small antipasto of Tomino cheese served with a glass of bubbly. Then just ask for a good wine recommendation or peruse the wine selection. The Piemonte region around Turin is rife with heavyweight Italian reds, such as Barolo and Barbaresco, which are made with nebbiolo grapes, and Contesto Alimentare has a good many of them. You can choose from affordable wines, organic vintages, and rare bottles prepared at small, sustainable vineyards.

The burgers and beers at this slightly off-the-beaten-track brewery are worth the trek. The burgers are big, juicy American-style feasts made with local beef. There are also plenty of other elevated pub fare options, including steak tartare. But what shines brightest is the beer menu, which reads like the carefully curated wine lists you've been seeing in restaurants all over Turin.

EDIT, housed in an old electrical cable manufacturing plant, is Turin's version of post-industrial chic. Ceilings are high, floors are concrete, and decorative steel features abound. It is the largest artisanal brewery in Turin, and it exports many of its craft brews abroad. The Mia Lager also comes in a gluten-free version, while you can sample the elusive alcohol-free craft brew in the form of the Friend or Faux.

This small but diligent Japanese joint takes the restaurant business seriously, and it shows in the service and food and drink selection. The tasting menu at Miyabi gives you pretty much everything there is to sample in the a la carte section, which is plenty even for the heartiest of eaters. The sashimi plates are firm yet buttery, and the grilled sea bream with koji sauce, which is a milder form of soy sauce, is salty and fresh at the same time. Sake is the ideal drink to pair with these dishes, and the menu here is extensive. If you're not familiar with sake varieties and don't know what to order, simply ask the sake sommelier for some advice. You won't be disappointed. 

This delightful little eatery is named after a play on words of the Italian word "vitello" meaning veal, and "etonne'" which is French for "stunned," recalling the restaurant's specialty dish, vitello tonnato, which is a thin cut of veal with a tuna-mayo blend. The Vitel Etonne' also makes its own pasta in-house every day, and you can tell. The Bra sausage is taken to new heights when paired with their tajarin, while their spelt tagliatelle with fresh zucchini is like a gust of spring. You know a restaurant is good when it makes vegetables well, and the zucchini in this dish are cooked al dente, which is how everyone should eat their zucchini. Sit out on the street and watch mopeds negotiate the narrow street, or grab a seat indoors, where you can see straight into the kitchen and watch chef Max and his team hard at work.

This one Michelin-starred restaurant is headed up by Antonio Cannavacciuolo, an Italian celebrity chef known for Italian Master Chef and "Cucine da Incubo," or "nightmare kitchens," modeled after the famous Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. It is tucked away in a largely residential neighborhood behind the Grand Madre, an imposing ossuary that looms over the Po River.

Despite the chef's southern roots, the tasting and a la carte menus lean towards the Piedmontese, with iterations of the ubiquitous "vitello tonnato" and a spattering of hazelnuts on a variety of dishes. Turin is, of course, known for its hazelnuts: when Napoleonic decrees created a cocoa shortage in Europe in the early 19th century, Turin decided to substitute it with hazelnuts, thus creating the famous gianduja chocolate.

This casual trattoria is located smack in the middle of the center, behind Piazza Castello. You will find ingredients here that you didn't even know could be considered food. Cardoons, which are a type of thistle and taste vaguely like artichokes when prepared well, pair spectacularly with fresh grapefruit. This is also the restaurant where you can try your first smoked chestnut cream ravioles, which are not ravioli, but a type of Piedmontese gnocchi. 

Despite the unusual choice of ingredients and the elegant wine list, the restaurant remains unpretentious. The decor is that of a typical Italian family restaurant, with white floors and ceilings and red and white tablecloths, though if you look closely, you will see that the design is well thought out and includes hints of sophistication when needed. 

Turin offers plenty of fine dining options even in residential areas. One such restaurant is La Limonaia, in the Pozzo Strada neighborhood. The name of this restaurant means lemon house, and it really does feel like you've just walked into one. The decor has a plant nursery feel to it, especially once you step outside into the garden, which is unexpectedly lush for a place surrounded by apartment blocks. In fact, looks are important to La Limonaia: The presentation of its dishes is among the most eye-catching and beautiful in the city. Sustainability is also an important pillar of this restaurant's ethos. It advertises as being "plastic free certified," which means that they avoid single-use plastic food containers and packaging such as plastic containers or cling film.

Unforgettable highlights vegetables so well that it might initially be mistaken for a vegetarian restaurant. It is definitely not that. The "Vegetable at the Center" menu takes the counterintuitive approach of using a vegetable as the main event, relegating the protein to the role of side dish. If this makes you feel a bit like you're in a bizarro version of Earth, consider the Paradigma menu, where conversely, the meat is the protagonist, but you'll be eating a variety of parts of the same animal. Both approaches are meant to show diners that it's possible to produce good food, even fine dining, while using ingredients that have a minimal impact on the environment (vegetables) or by avoiding the wasteful practice of throwing away perfectly good parts of an animal just because they are not as popular as a rump or a shank.

Condividere, meaning "to share," has taken the most innovative ideas used at other dining spots in Turin and combined them in one place in a highly successful mingling of high-class design, sustainable sourcing, and haute cuisine. That is not to say that the result is derivative. In fact, Condividere is unapologetically avant-garde. For one, it is located on the industrial-chic grounds of the Centrale di Nuova Lavazza (like the coffee), which is housed in a former power plant. Next, a wide range of ingredients are sourced locally, even though the menu has a heavy Spanish influence, courtesy of Spanish chef Federico Zanasi. Lastly, they take you to a whole new room just to have dessert! After you finish your tasting menu in the main dining room, you will be escorted to the terrace for a more intimate experience, where you can savor your dessert and digestif in a comfortable armchair surrounded by greenery.