Piazza Duomo

Piazza Duomo is the Ceretto family's flagship restaurant, installed on the first floor of a building opposite Alba's cathedral. Enrico Crippa took the kitchen in 2005, the first Michelin star arrived the following year, the second in 2010, the third in 2012. It has been on the World's 50 Best list every year since 2015 and is widely considered one of the two or three most important restaurants in Italy.

The room is famous on its own terms — a luminous, soft pink dining space painted floor-to-ceiling with Francesco Clemente's murals. The tables are widely spaced, a polished oak floor runs beneath, the lighting is candle-warm. It seats barely thirty, which is part of the reason reservations run three months out during truffle season.

Crippa's cooking is vegetal and exact. The thirty-one-ingredient Insalata 21, 31, 41… is the signature — a composed study of garden produce from Ceretto's own estate, each element picked that morning and plated at room temperature. The tasting menu moves through langoustine, agnolotti, fassona beef tartare, and — from October — repeated, reverent encounters with the white truffle.

Tasting menus run €250–320 per guest before the premium for truffle supplements; wine pairings start at €180 and move quickly upward. The restaurant also runs La Piola, a casual sibling on the ground floor, for diners who want Crippa's sourcing at a fraction of the commitment.

Piazza Duomo is the Italian client-dinner. A visiting chair, investor or board member will know what it means to have a seat here; the booking alone communicates respect. The pacing is generous, the staff fluent in English, the sommelier trained to read a table that wants to talk rather than taste for three hours. For a deal dinner in Italy, this is the table that most closes it.