Best Restaurants in Cinque Terre

The Cinque Terre is not a single town. It is five fishing villages — Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore — strung along a six-kilometre stretch of Ligurian coast between La Spezia and Genoa, connected by a footpath, a single-track rail line, and ferry boats in summer. All five are car-free, UNESCO-listed, and built into near-vertical cliffs that were terraced for vineyards by the Romans and are still being worked. The dining scene follows the geography: each village has its own kitchens, each with its own character.

Monterosso is the largest and most restaurant-dense — it is the only one of the five with a proper sand beach, and the Fegina seafront is where the serious rooms sit, most prominently Ristorante Miky (in the Michelin Guide since 1990) and the newer Causa Persa. Vernazza, considered the prettiest of the five, holds the single most dramatic dining room on the coast: Ristorante Belforte, inside the 11th-century Doria Castle on the cliff above the harbour. Manarola has Trattoria Dal Billy, the village's view restaurant with its postcard terrace over the sea. Corniglia is the smallest and most rustic; Riomaggiore the southernmost and the newest to attract chef-driven kitchens.

Reservations are essential in summer (June–September) — 10 days for Belforte's terrace, a week for Miky, 3–5 days for the rest. Off-season (November–March) many restaurants close entirely; February can find you with three working kitchens across five villages. The dress is resort-beach — linen, sandals, no shorts-and-vests at dinner but nothing formal. Tipping is 5–10 per cent and rounded; the service charge (servizio) may already be on the bill, check before adding.

The wine to drink is Cinque Terre DOC (Bosco, Albarola, and Vermentino grapes grown on the terraces you ate above) and Sciacchetrà, the sweet passito dessert wine that takes four kilos of grapes to produce a litre and is the region's luxury bottle. The olive oil to taste is Riviera Ligure DOP, pressed from Taggiasca olives, and is the single most distinctive ingredient on every menu — if a restaurant is pouring cheap southern-Italian oil, walk out. The anchovies of Monterosso are the other regional marker: salted, preserved whole, and eaten as an antipasto from every serious kitchen.

For a deeper editorial read, see our ongoing Editorial coverage — including pieces on the Best Restaurants for Every Occasion, and our Impress Clients and First Date occasion guides.