Best Puglia Restaurant

Traditional Apulian cuisine is essentially a simple cuisine, like in the rest of Italy where before the economic boom there was not a great variety of products in the market. But the few ingredients available in Puglia were genuine (result of work in the fields, pastoralism and fishing), tasty and combined with simple but delicious recipes.

The economic boom of the 60s brought more well-being and wealth and then the arrival of international tourism in the last twenty years has brought some innovation, new formats and trendy products. The history of haute cuisine in Puglia goes hand in hand with that of tourist flows, of the local economy and of the change in people’s tastes. Many restaurants now in Puglia try to have a cuisine that combines tradition and innovation.

In this article you can find:
– a list of the best Puglia restaurants, with a brief description of the cuisine they offer, the price range and the contact number
– a presentation of cave restaurants in Puglia and Matera
– all Michelin star restaurants in Puglia with information on their characteristics and contacts.

If you are looking for a more exclusive experience, you can always consider a private Apulian chef who can cook for you directly in your villa (only available to our Guests).

Best restaurants in ALBEROBELLO

• Terra Madre
  A nice restaurant with an internal garden where you can eat Km0 products. Many vegetarian dishes available.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0804324326

• Evo
  Gourmet restaurant with a small and welcoming outdoor garden.
  Price: €€€
  Phone: +39 3208481230

• L’Aratro
  Very attentive service and suggestive location. Antipasti, homemade pasta and a long list of local wines.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0804322789
  

• La Cantina
  Family-run restaurant located in a small room used in the past as a cellar in a 19th-century building. Simple and genuine cuisine.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0804323473
  

• Pizzeria Rosso Basilico
  Pizzeria Gourmet on the outskirts of Alberobello
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0806454366

Best restaurants in OSTUNI

• Porta Nova
  Refined Apulian fish dishes and regional wines in an elegant restaurant overlooking the town and the valley.
  Price: €€€
  Phone: +39 0831338983

• Osteria Casa Ciaccia
  Elegant restaurant in a villa offering regional Italian dishes, a garden terrace and a bar.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0831368512

• Osteria del tempo perso
  Apulian appetizers, first and second courses, as well as regional wines, in an ancient cave or in a former granary.
  Price: €€€
  Phone: +39 0831304819

• Taverna della Gelosia
  A revisited Apulian cuisine, in a room with stone walls or on an enchanting terrace with sea view.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0831334736

• La Risacca
  Nice restaurant in the center of Ostuni with an attached fishmonger from which to choose fresh fish.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0831332987

• Osteria Monacelle
  Very intimate restaurant in a typical building near the cathedral of Ostuni.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0831334212

• Pizzeria Impasto Napoletano
  Classic Neapolitan thin-crust wood-fired pizzas served in a large pizzeria with outdoor seating.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0831336774

• Il Fienile
  Mediterranean flavors in a location with a rustic-chic note, with stone walls and vaults, carpets and a cellar.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 08311982382

Best restaurants NEAR OSTUNI

• Masseria il Frantoio
  Traditional dishes in a beautiful Masseria from the 1500s.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0831330276

• Al Pescatore (Villanova di Ostuni)
  Fish specialties in a well-kept restaurant with beamed ceilings, stone walls and an intimate outdoor area.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 3388968349

• Bosco Verde (Pilone)
  Restaurant in symbiosis with surrounding nature with fresh fish and classic and revisited dishes.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 3715304764

Best restaurants in MONOPOLI

• Lido Bianco
  Refined fish dishes in an elegant room with floor-to-ceiling windows, sea views and a garden.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0805127433

• Il Guazzetto
  Seafood first courses, tuna tartare and fish soups, as well as crabs and lobsters, served in a cozy rustic-style restaurant.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0804107175

• Locanda Don Ferrante
  The restaurant overlooking the sea offers a genuine and typical cuisine made of recipes from the Apulian gastronomic tradition accompanied by a wide choice of wines.
  Price: €€€
  Phone: +39 080742521

• Piazza Palmieri
  Fish from the Adriatic and original reinterpretations of traditional regional dishes in an elegant restaurant.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 080743265
  

• La Posteria
  Restaurant with American bar in a location with a refined aesthetic, an elegant and modern architecture and with an innovative and traditional cuisine.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0804044307

• Almarea
  Rustic-chic restaurant specializing in seafood pasta dishes, soups and desserts.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0803217373

Best restaurants NEAR MONOPOLI

• La Lampara sui colli
  Creative Apulian fish dishes served between stone arches and candles in a trullo with veranda and garden.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0804204044

Best restaurants in POLIGNANO A MARE

• Terrazza Monachile
  Refined restaurant with one of the most beautiful views of Polignano.
  Price: €€€
  Phone: +39 0804265565

• Da Tuccino
  Creative fish dishes, tasting menus and fine wines in an elegant restaurant with a terrace overlooking the sea.
  Price: €€€
  Phone: +39 0804241560

• Bella ‘Mbriana
  Pizza and pasta, as well as grilled meat and fish, in a room with high ceilings and stone and tile elements.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39  0804248840

• MINT Cucina Fresca
  Innovative dishes, desserts and cocktails in a rustic-chic venue with an arched stone ceiling.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0804241373

• Trattoria Il Pescato
  Cozy family-run restaurant with a covered terrace, specializing in seafood and grilled fish.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 3383985939

• Grotta Ardito
  Mussels, squid and catch of the day, as well as Apulian wines, served on a terrace overlooking the sea.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0804247210

• Pescaria
  The first fish fast food place in Italy offers fish, both raw and fried, in a bright and informal room with a vaulted ceiling.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0804247600

Best restaurants in CASTELLANA GROTTE

• Osteria del Caroseno
  Creative Apulian dishes in a former 18th century oil mill with rustic furnishings and vaulted stone walls and ceilings.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0804961381

• Trattoria Il Casalicchio
  Typical Apulian home cooking. Fresh homemade pasta and daily appetizers.
  Price: €
  Phone: +39 0804965868

• Al Pozzo
  Historic restaurant and pizzeria. Traditional Apulian dishes in a typically family environment.
  Price: €
  Phone: +39 0804967672

Best restaurants in LOCOROTONDO

• U’Curdunn
  Traditional local cuisine, served in elegant vaulted stone rooms or at outdoor tables in the alley.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0807961318

• Bina
  Creative Apulian dishes and an extensive wine list in an elegant vaulted room with outdoor tables.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0804311784

• Osteria il Rosone
  Traditional cuisine in a timeless atmosphere, where it is possible to taste km0 products.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 080431 1433
  

• Pizzeria Casa Pinto
  Excellent pizza, appetizers and quality meat in a quiet alley in the centre.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0804317510

• Pizzeria Quanto Basta
  Pizzas cooked in a beech wood oven in a room with soft lighting, white stone walls and a terrace.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0804312855

Best restaurants in CISTERNINO

• Osteria Sant’Anna
  Elegantly welcoming Osteria outside the centre; warm and relaxing atmosphere. The food is tasty, genuine and with surprising flavours.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 080444 7036

• Enoteca Il Cucco
  Cuisine that takes care of the quality of the products and their seasonality; vast assortment of regional and national wines, with particular attention to the excellence of the territory.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 080444 9064

• Taverna della Torre
  Creative Apulian cuisine in a restaurant with an informal atmosphere with arched stone vaults and wooden furnishings.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0804449264

• Osteria Bella Italia
  Grilled fish and fusion sushi served in a quiet internal room or in an alleyway with floral decorations.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0804449036

• Braceria Zio Pietro
  Meat dishes and regional wines, served in ancient rooms with vaulted ceilings or at outdoor tables located in an alleyway.
  Price: €
  Phone: +39 0804448300

• Trattoria Bere Vecchie
  Simple Trattoria specializing in grilled meats and appetizers in the heart of the historic centre.
  Price: €
  Phone: +39 0804446638

Best restaurants in CAROVIGNO

• Casale Ferrovia
  Housed in what was once the 20th-century home of an old oil mill, this out-of-town restaurant boasts elegant decor, including some family antiques and Art Deco.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0831990025

• Braceria Pomodoro
  Excellent quality meat in the center.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0831211734

Best restaurants in FASANO

• Pentole e Provette
  The chef enjoys breaking the mold, playing with textures, contrasts and techniques to offer customers culinary experiences that are out of the ordinary.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 3486554811

Best restaurants NEAR FASANO

• Luna Rossa (Savelletri)
  Revisited Mediterranean menu and homemade desserts in an elegant vaulted place dominated by white, with dehors.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 3396280950

• Fronte Mare (Savelletri)
  Restaurant with panoramic terrace on the roof of an ancient villa where you can enjoy the sea view. Fish dishes, seafood, gluten-free cuisine and vegetarian and vegan options.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0804334212

• Mòmò (Savelletri)
  Very small restaurant that strictly cooks the catch of the day.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 3206162661

• Il Cortiletto (Speziale)
  Typical Apulian cuisine revisited in a gourmet key and served in a typical courtyard.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0804810758

• Agrobistrot (Speziale)
  Outdoor location with lawn. Apulian vegetarian cuisine.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 3888140350

• Tony Bar (Speziale)
  Panzerotti, salads and ice creams.
  Price: €
  Phone: +39 0804810099

• L’Agrumeto (Speziale)
  Restaurant for everyday. Traditional cuisine in an excellent location and large open spaces. External veranda.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 3383453175

Best restaurants in CEGLIE MESSAPICA

• Cibus
  Traditional Ceglie dishes with a modern twist served in a vaulted building from the 15th century with stone walls.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0831388980

Best restaurants in MARTINA FRANCA

• Gaonas
  Creative reinterpretations of regional dishes in an intimate venue with vaulted stone halls.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 3293093665

• Nausikaa
  Imaginative dishes and delicate flavors in an intimate little and charming place in the historic center.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0804858275

• Torre di Angelucco
  Small, cozy restaurant with attention to the smallest details. Cuisine with simple but quality ingredients.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 3427622966

Cave Restaurant

Cave restaurant is definitely a unique and unforgettable experience, at least for the location where you will have the opportunity to dine or have lunch.
Below you can find a list of cave restaurants in Puglia and in the nearby city of the Sassi, Matera.

• Grotta Palazzese (Polignano a Mare)
  Grotta Palazzese Restaurant takes its name from the homonymous cave and from the place that was once also called “Grotta di Palazzo”. It is an exclusive place full of atmosphere, used for parties and banquets since the 1700s.
  The blue of the sea and the sky contrasts with the mysterious atmosphere of the natural cavities.
  The cuisine is for palates in search of exclusivity and refinement.
  The dishes are treated in detail, with the utmost attention to the quality of the ingredients and the harmony of the ‘Visual Food’.
  Price: €€€
  Phone: +39 0804240677

• La Grotta nei Sassi (Matera)
  Refined starters and pasta and meat dishes in a whitewashed medieval cave or on a panoramic terrace.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0835334891

• La Grotta del Gusto (Matera)
  Foods of the Lucan tradition, served inside a typical cave of the Sassi.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 3494025300

• Osteria Pico (Matera)
  Classic southern Italian dishes and regional wines served in modernized and well-decorated cave dining rooms.
  Price: €€
  Phone: +39 0835240424

• Baccanti (Matera)
  Fine pasta dishes, meat and fish, served in an underground cave or stone outdoor area.
  Price: €€€
  Phone: +39 0835333704

• Trattoria del Caveoso (Matera)
  Grilled meat, pasta and regional cheeses in an elegant room carved into the rock.
  Price: €
  Phone: +39 0835312374

Michelin Star Restaurant

Puglia in 2022 confirmed all 11 restaurants with a Michelin Star. An important milestone for the Apulian restaurant industry, which is among the most awarded in the prestigious event.
This confirms the solidity of the Apulian gastronomic offer, so much so that the starred restaurants were awarded for their skill in using and enhancing local products and productions. The Michelin Guide inspectors have been particularly fascinated by chefs who know how to take advantage of what the territory offers. And therefore, Puglia can aspire to greater consideration by the guides if its chefs are aware of the potential of local raw materials.

Here is the complete list of Michelin Star Restaurants in Puglia.

1. Angelo Sabatelli (Putignano)

Angelo Sabatelli offers creative cuisine, with local products but not necessarily from the Apulian tradition. In fact, the chef leaves room for digressions wherever his incredible inspiration wants to go.
His career started from Monopoli to discover the whole world, before returning to his homeland and opening this elegant restaurant.
Phone: +39 0804052733
www.angelosabatelliristorante.com
Closed on Mondays

2. Bros’ Restaurant (Lecce)

The restaurant, which in 2018 won the first Michelin star in Salento, is pure avant-garde. The two chefs express all their creative flair with the aim of surprising the guests, fearlessly and using often extreme and sharp combinations, to open up new horizons of taste.
Here everything is deliberately “different”: you can only choose between two tasting menus of 20 or 25 steps that bring a large number of innovative and surprising tastings to the table, many of which are prepared with theatricality directly in the dining room. A journey, also accompanied by ad hoc background music, which leads the diners into the personal and gastronomic world of the two chefs.
The gastronomic proposal is based on the rhythm of the seasons of the year. That’s why the menu changes every six months with a spring/summer and an autumn/winter version.
Phone: +39 0832092601
www.brosrestaurant.it
Closed on Mondays and Tuesdays

3. Primo Restaurant (Lecce)

Small is beautiful! This is the image perceived as soon as you enter Primo Restaurant: very few tables in a small room with a characteristic star-shaped ceiling in Lecce stone, with candlelit outdoor service. Queen of this place, and new star of Apulian cuisine, is Solaika Marrocco, born in nearby Gallipoli. The young chef expresses her personality as a modern cook in dishes that are pleasing to the eye and exquisite for the palate.
Phone +39 0832243802
www.ristoranteduecamini.it
Closed on Tuesdays

4. Due Camini (Savelletri)

Michelin star confirmed for the Borgo Egnazia restaurant, rebuilt and transformed into a luxury structure, loved by international VIPs such as Madonna and David and Victoria Beckham.
Many local products (as expected by those who stay in a village that wants to recall the tradition of these lands) in a kitchen where the chef aims to celebrate the Apulian heritage.
Phone +39 0802255000
www.ristoranteduecamini.it
Closed on Mondays and Tuesdays

5. Pashà (Conversano)

A restaurant with a fashionable name, but with great rigor: from the place that hosts it (the Episcopal Seminary of Conversano) to the Apulian chef who has the precise objective of working on tradition by trying to bring it towards an avant-garde vision .
The restaurant has a well-stocked cellar and has the structure of a house, with a dining room, living room, kitchen and an ultra-romantic space reserved for just two people.
Phone: +39 031560055
www.ristorantepascia.it
Closed on Tuesdays

6. Cielo (Ostuni)

A five-star relais, in an elegant and authentic atmosphere, houses this restaurant, where chef Andrea Cannalire enjoys combining Apulian cuisine and products with recipes and flavors from all over the world, satisfying the expectations of an international clientele.
You can eat inside between stone vaults or, in summer, outside, in a Spanish garden full of orange and olive trees.
Phone: +39 0831305925
www.lasommita.it

7. Già sotto l’arco (Carovigno)

This historic restaurant, created by Teodosio Buongiorno and Teresa Galeone, is located in a beautiful building in the central square of Carovigno. In the kitchen, she intelligently and elegantly proposes a traditional, local, strictly seasonal, no-frills menu.
In the dining room he has put together a very large cellar, with over five hundred wines.
Phone: +39 0831996286
www.giasottolarco.it

8. Quintessenza (Trani)

This very elegant restaurant is located a few steps from the sea and the historic center of Trani. It is a place where respect for tradition and the study of raw materials meet innovation.
Chef Stefano Di Gennaro opened the doors of his restaurant in 2011 and is supported by his brothers Saverio, Alessandro and Domenico: a brigade that manages dining room and kitchen and knows how to give its guests a unique experience.
Completely renovated in 2020, the Quintessence Restaurant is housed in a 19th-century building with exposed white stone.
Phone: +39 0883880948
www.quintessenzaristorante.it/it
Closed on Mondays and Tuesdays

9. Casa Sgarra (Trani)

Overlooking the seafront of Trani, in this beautiful restaurant you will be welcomed by a warm family made up of three brothers: two in the dining room, the third in the kitchen. In modern and refined environment, the cuisine is a declaration of love for Puglia. Although there are plenty of extra-regional excursions (in particular from Piemonte), the menu is a plethora of broad beans, Toritto almonds, burrata and ricotta forte, truffles and black chickpeas from the Murgia, burnt wheat flour and of course the excellent EVO of the region.
Phone: +39 3491867499
www.casasgarra.it/
Closed on Tuesdays

10. Casamatta (Manduria)

A few kilometers outside Manduria, the capital of primitivo wine, the restaurant is located inside the Vinilia Wine Resort, opened in an imposing early 20th century castle, surrounded by a splendid garden with centuries-old olive trees. After significant experiences outside Puglia, chef Pietro Penna has returned to his homeland paying homage to it, with a cuisine that draws on local products, sometimes in the truest sense of the word since fruit and vegetables often come from his own garden, with a modern and imaginative taste.
There are three tasting menus available, one of which is entirely vegetarian.
Phone: +39 3518303537
www.viniliaresort.com/it/ristorante-stellato-casamatta-taranto

11. Porta di Basso (Peschici)

Considered for some years now the best restaurant in the Gargano, Porta di Basso continues to demonstrate how a serious and determined approach leads to constant progress. The owner-chef Domenico Cilenti offers the choice between two tasting menus: one dedicated to classic dishes that tell the story of the restaurant and the other a surprise menu that changes daily according to the ingredients available on the market.
Whatever the choice, the cuisine is deliberately simple and precise, letting the full flavors of the lively Apulian products shine through. Each dish consists of a few ingredients arranged in a colorful presentation.
Phone: +39 0884355167
www.portadibasso.com/
Closed on Tuesdays