RFK Cuisine · Italian · Miami
Best Italian Restaurants in Miami 2026
Italian · Miami · 7 rooms ranked · Updated June 2026
Compiled by the Restaurants for Kings editorial team · Published June 20, 2026 · Updated June 20, 2026
A plate of spicy rigatoni vodka costs twenty-nine dollars and a month-long wait at Carbone, and it is the most Miami thing you can order: red-sauce Italian as nightlife, served by waiters in burgundy tuxedos to a room of people who came to be seen. But the city's Italian map runs wider than the scene. Scott Conant built a career here on four ingredients in a bowl of spaghetti. A Brooklyn pizzaiolo rolls dough nightly in Sunset Harbour with no reservations and no shortcuts. A two-story villa in the Design District grills a forty-ounce fiorentina under a chandelier. Ranked on the cooking, the room, and what the bill buys, with the dish to order at each.
1.Carbone
Major Food Group's red-sauce theater and the city's hardest table; book it thirty days out for a night meant to feel like an event.
Carbone sits at 49 Collins Avenue in South of Fifth, and since Major Food Group brought the New York original south it has been the most-wanted reservation in Miami. The cooking is Italian-American raised to performance: the spicy rigatoni vodka in the high twenties, the tableside Caesar, the veal parmesan built for the whole table, the Dover sole carved at your shoulder. Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi cook nostalgia with real technique, and the burgundy-jacketed service is part of the show. Reservations drop on Resy thirty days out and vanish in seconds, worse in season and during Art Basel and the Miami Open. This is the room to book when the dinner is the occasion. Aim for a weeknight or work the bar for walk-ins.
Resy, thirty days out; spicy rigatoni vodka, the veal parm, the Caesar tableside.
2.Scarpetta
Scott Conant's four-ingredient spaghetti is still the benchmark; book the Fontainebleau room for a polished anniversary dinner.
Scott Conant opened the first Scarpetta in 2008, and the Miami room inside the Fontainebleau on Collins Avenue carries the brand's AAA Four Diamond polish. The dish to order has not changed in fifteen years: spaghetti with tomato and basil, four ingredients emulsified into something far larger than the sum of them, the plate that made Conant's name. Around it sits a creamy polenta with fricassee of truffled mushrooms, house-rolled pasta, and a wine list built for the hotel's clientele. Where Carbone is spectacle, Scarpetta is composure — the better call for a quiet celebration or a dinner that has to impress without shouting. Book through the restaurant or the Fontainebleau and start with the spaghetti.
Reserve direct; spaghetti tomato and basil, then the truffled polenta.
3.Contessa
A two-story villa with a forty-ounce fiorentina and a film-set staircase; book it for a Design District occasion that photographs.
Contessa is Major Food Group's love letter to northern Italy, a two-story room in the Design District modeled on the villas of the Veneto and Emilia-Romagna, opened at the end of 2022. The kitchen reaches past red sauce into the north: a Chianina beef carpaccio, fusilli Genovese, octopus agrodolce, and a 40-ounce dry-aged bistecca alla fiorentina carved for the table under the chandelier. The staircase, the pastel room and the bar scene make it the Design District's most photographed dinner, the second-hardest MFG ticket after Carbone. Book it when the night is a celebration and you want the setting to do half the work. Reserve well ahead, especially in season.
Resy, weeks ahead; the fiorentina for the table, the Chianina carpaccio to start.
4.Macchialina
The chef's choice for handmade pasta in Miami; book the Alton Road trattoria for a serious Italian dinner without the scene.
Michael Pirolo opened Macchialina at 820 Alton Road in South Beach in 2012, and it remains the room Miami cooks point to when they want pasta rather than a party. Everything is rolled in-house — the cacio e pepe, the rigatoni, the daily specials chalked on the board — and the wine list runs deep into small Italian growers, which earned the room a national following and a turn as The Daily Meal's pick for the best Italian restaurant in Florida. The brick-walled trattoria is loud, warm and unpretentious, the antidote to the velvet-rope rooms further up the beach. Book a few days out and let the kitchen send pasta. This is the value play near the top of the list.
Reserve online; the cacio e pepe, a daily pasta, a bottle off the Italian list.
5.Il Gabbiano
Downtown's bayfront grande dame; book the terrace at 335 South Biscayne for a sunset dinner over the water.
Il Gabbiano sits at 335 South Biscayne Boulevard on the edge of Biscayne Bay, a white-tablecloth Italian room from the family behind Il Mulino, and the reason to come is the view as much as the kitchen. Tables on the bayfront terrace look across the water to the cruise port and the causeways, and the meal opens with a generous spread of complimentary antipasti before a long menu of veal, fresh pasta and whole fish. It is old-school, jacket-friendly and built for a business dinner or a sunset celebration downtown. Book the terrace at golden hour and pace yourself through the antipasti. The cooking is dependable rather than daring — you come for the room and the water.
Reserve the terrace; arrive before sunset, graze the antipasti, then the veal.
6.Forte dei Marmi
Coastal Tuscan cooking and a crudo bar in South of Fifth; book it for a lighter, beach-side Italian dinner.
Named for the Versilia beach town on the Tuscan coast, Forte dei Marmi at 150 Ocean Drive brings that lighter, sea-facing style of Italian cooking to South of Fifth: crudo and carpaccio, focaccina, a clean cacio e pepe, and a pistachio gelato regulars order on sight. The Oppenheim-designed room is calm and pale, a deliberate counterpoint to the heavier red-sauce houses, and the crowd is moneyed and quiet rather than loud. It is the room for a diner who wants Italian without a four-course commitment or a velvet rope. Book a weekend table ahead and lead with the crudo. A reliable, grown-up choice a block from the ocean.
Reserve direct; the crudo selection, the cacio e pepe, the pistachio gelato.
7.Lucali
Mark Iacono's Brooklyn pizza, rolled nightly with a wine bottle in Sunset Harbour; queue early for the best thin crust in Miami.
Mark Iacono brought his Carroll Gardens pizzeria to Sunset Harbour, and the Miami Lucali works exactly as the Brooklyn original does: a single small room, an open kitchen, a wine bottle used to roll the dough thin, and a short menu of pizza and a few calzones. There are no reservations for dinner — it is walk-in only, and the line forms before the doors open — but the thin, charred, restrained pie is the best in the city and worth the wait. Skip it if you need a table on a schedule; come if you want the one pizza in Miami that travels well from New York. Put your name down early and bring patience and a bottle.
Walk in early, dinner only, no reservations; the plain pie and a calzone to share.
How Miami eats Italian
Italian in Miami splits cleanly into two cities. There is the scene — Carbone, Contessa, the velvet-rope rooms where the rigatoni is real but the reservation is the point — and there is the cooking, the trattorias and chef rooms where the pasta does the talking. Both are legitimate, and a good week in Miami uses both: one night for the spectacle, one for Macchialina's chalkboard. The season matters more than anywhere else on this list. From December through April the city fills with Art Basel, the boat show, the Miami Open and a wave of New York transplants, and the top tables tighten to the point of impossibility; from June through October you can often walk into rooms that turned you away in February.
Geography sorts the rest. South of Fifth holds Carbone and Forte dei Marmi within a few blocks; Mid-Beach is Scarpetta's Fontainebleau territory; Sunset Harbour is the neighborhood-trattoria pocket, with Macchialina and Lucali a short walk apart; the Design District is Contessa's turf; and Il Gabbiano sits alone on the downtown bayfront. Tipping runs the American 18 to 20 percent, and many of the marquee rooms add an automatic service charge in season — check the bill. For everything beyond pasta, the Miami dining guide maps the city by neighborhood and occasion.
Where not to look for it
Skip these for real Italian cooking
The Ocean Drive photo-menu strips. The terraces along the southern end of Ocean Drive trade on the beach view and the hawker out front, not the kitchen — laminated menus, frozen pasta, and a service charge to match the address. Walk two streets inland to any room on this list instead.
Carbone or Contessa for a quiet, low-key dinner. These are loud, expensive, scene-first rooms that run late and feel like an event by design. For a relaxed plate of pasta with conversation across the table, point yourself at Macchialina or Forte dei Marmi.
Frequently asked
What is the best Italian restaurant in Miami?
Carbone, Major Food Group's red-sauce theater at 49 Collins Avenue in South of Fifth, is the room everyone wants, built around the spicy rigatoni vodka and a dining-room performance no one else in Miami matches. For refined regional cooking rather than spectacle, Scott Conant's Scarpetta at the Fontainebleau and Michael Pirolo's Macchialina in South Beach are the benchmarks. Choose by whether you want the scene or the pasta.
Which Miami Italian restaurant is hardest to book?
Carbone is the hardest table in the city. Reservations open on Resy thirty days out and disappear in seconds, especially in season from December through April and during events like Art Basel and the Miami Open. Your best odds are a weeknight, a late seating, or the bar, which takes walk-ins. Contessa in the Design District is the next-toughest Major Food Group ticket.
Where do you eat the best pasta in Miami?
For handmade pasta, Macchialina on Alton Road is the chef's pick, with Michael Pirolo rolling everything in-house and a wine list deep in Italian growers. Scarpetta's spaghetti with tomato and basil is the famous one, a four-ingredient dish that defined Scott Conant's career. Carbone's spicy rigatoni vodka is the most photographed plate in town. All three need a reservation days ahead.
How much does dinner at Carbone Miami cost?
Plan on roughly $150 to $250 per person before wine at Carbone, and more once you add the veal parmesan for the table and a bottle. The spicy rigatoni vodka runs in the high twenties, primal cuts and the Dover sole carve out the top of the bill. It is a special-occasion price for a special-occasion room; book it when you want the night to feel like an event.
What is the best Italian restaurant for a special occasion in Miami?
Contessa, Major Food Group's two-story northern-Italian villa in the Design District, is built for an occasion, with a sweeping staircase, a 40-ounce bistecca alla fiorentina and a room that photographs like a film set. Scarpetta at the Fontainebleau is the polished hotel alternative for an anniversary. For waterfront drama, Il Gabbiano's Biscayne Bay terrace downtown is the move at sunset.
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