RFK Cuisine · Italian · São Paulo
Best Italian Restaurants in São Paulo 2026
Italian · São Paulo · 7 rooms ranked · Updated June 2026
Compiled by the Restaurants for Kings editorial team · Published June 20, 2026 · Updated June 20, 2026
São Paulo has more residents of Italian descent than any city on earth outside Italy, and in April 2026 it finally got the trophy to match: Evvai became the first restaurant in Latin America to hold three Michelin stars, and it cooks Italian. That is the whole arc of this city's food in one award. The cantina and the trattoria are as native to São Paulo as the churrascaria — brought by immigrants who filled the Bixiga district in the 1890s and never left — and today the range runs from a 13-course tasting menu down to a Bixiga platter passed across a communal table. Ranked on the cooking, the room, and what the bill buys, with the dish to order at each.
1.Evvai
Latin America's first three-star, and it cooks Italian; book the single tasting menu and plan a trip around it.
Luiz Filipe Souza opened Evvai in Jardins in 2017 after training at Fasano and at Reale in Italy, and in April 2026 he became the first chef in Latin America to win three Michelin stars. His cooking is what he calls Oriundi — the food of the Italian diaspora, Italian technique run through Brazilian ingredients across a single 13-course tasting menu. The scallops sautéed in duck fat have been on the menu since opening; the rest changes constantly. Before the stars it already sat among Latin America's 50 Best. This is the city's apex table and one of the hardest reservations in Brazil. Book the moment a date opens.
Reserve online weeks ahead; the single 13-course tasting with the pairing.
2.Fame Osteria
A Roman chef's 16-seat tasting counter; book for the most precise Italian cooking in the city after Evvai.
Fame Osteria holds one Michelin star in the 2026 guide, and Roman-born chef Marco Renzetti cooks for just sixteen guests a seating — a single nine-course tasting menu that reinterprets the Italian canon with real discipline. The house-made agnolotti mantovani and the arroz de polvo com tutano, octopus rice with bone marrow, are the high points, a clean line between Renzetti's Rome and his adopted São Paulo. It is intimate, technical and far easier on the wallet than Evvai while playing a similar game. Book ahead for one of the few seats and take the full tasting.
Reserve direct; the nine-course tasting, agnolotti mantovani included.
3.Fasano
The city's standard-bearer for classic Italian since 1982; book for a formal Jardins dinner and a serious cellar.
The Fasano family has set São Paulo's standard for high Italian gastronomy since 1982, and the flagship on Rua Vittorio Fasano in Jardins — designed by Isay Weinfeld and Marcio Kogan — is the most polished dining room in the city. Restaurateur Gero Fasano works the floor; chef Luca Gozzani runs a kitchen of classic, unhurried Italian cooking; and sommelier Manoel Beato's cellar runs deep with Barolo, Brunello and Bordeaux. There is no tasting-menu theater here, just impeccable risotto, handmade pasta and service that anticipates. It is the table for a formal night out. Book ahead and dress accordingly.
Reserve direct; the risotto or a classic pasta, and let Beato choose the wine.
4.Famiglia Mancini
The Bixiga cantina locals vote best Italian again and again; book for southern-Italian platters and a riotous room.
Famiglia Mancini has packed out a pedestrian stretch of Rua Avanhandava, in the old Italian quarter of Bixiga, since 1980, and Datafolha readers have voted it the city's best Italian thirteen times. This is the loud, generous, communal end of São Paulo Italian: southern-Italian dishes served on platters meant to be shared, a famous antipasto table, hanging hams and a room that never quiets down. It is not refined and does not try to be — it is the most atmospheric traditional Italian dinner in the city. Reserve a few days ahead, go with a group, and graze the antipasti before the pasta.
Book ahead for a group; work the antipasto table, then a shared pasta platter.
5.Modern Mamma Osteria
The crowd-pleasing modern osteria for handmade pasta; book for ricotta raviolini with truffle without a four-figure bill.
Modern Mamma Osteria runs two busy rooms, in Itaim Bibi and Pinheiros, where chefs Paulo Barros and Salvatore Loi cook contemporary Italian for a young, full-house crowd. The kitchen's signature is the ricotta raviolini — spinach, egg yolk and a truffle sauce — alongside a roster of handmade pastas and classic Italian desserts, plated with more polish than the price suggests. It is the easy mid-range answer when Evvai and Fasano are booked or beyond the budget: lively, modern and reliably good. Reserve ahead for prime times, take the Pinheiros room for the quieter option, and order across the pastas.
Book on the day for off-peak, ahead for weekends; the ricotta raviolini with truffle.
6.Terraço Itália
Classic Italian under a 360-degree city view from the Edifício Itália; book a window for the skyline, not just the plate.
Terraço Itália sits on the 41st floor of the Edifício Itália on Avenida Ipiranga, and its four rooms frame the only true 360-degree view of São Paulo's endless skyline. Tuscan chef Pasquale Mancini cooks a classic, old-school Italian menu — risotti, osso buco, handmade pasta — backed by a cellar of more than 220 labels, in a candlelit room that has traded on that panorama since the 1960s. It is more about the occasion than cutting-edge cooking, and on that score it delivers like nowhere else in the city. Book a window table at sunset and treat it as the view dinner it is.
Reserve a window at dusk; the risotto or osso buco, and a Tuscan red.
7.Gero
The Fasano group's polished trattoria; book for classic Italian a notch more relaxed than the flagship.
Gero opened in Jardins in 1994 as the Fasano group's bistrô à côté — a more informal companion to the formal flagship a short walk away — and it has been a São Paulo landmark ever since. The menu is classic Italian under Gero Fasano's eye: clean risotti, well-made pastas, grilled fish and meats in a warm, brick-walled room that draws a steady Jardins crowd. It is the move when you want Fasano-group cooking and service without the jacket-and-tie formality of the flagship, at a slightly gentler price. Reserve a few days ahead, especially for weekends, and order a pasta and a secondo.
Book ahead; a handmade pasta to start, then the grilled fish.
How São Paulo eats Italian
Italian is not a foreign cuisine in São Paulo — it is a hometown one. Waves of immigration from the 1880s onward, heaviest from the south of Italy, settled the Bixiga district (officially Bela Vista) and seeded the cantinas that still define casual dining here. The result is a city fluent in two registers: the boisterous family cantina, all shared platters and house wine, and a fine-dining scene serious enough to have produced Latin America's first three-Michelin-star restaurant. Pasta is taken as seriously as anywhere outside Italy, and the best kitchens still roll their own.
Geography sorts the list. Jardins is the upscale heart — Evvai, Fasano and Gero all cluster there; Itaim Bibi and Pinheiros hold the buzzier modern rooms like Modern Mamma; Bixiga remains the traditional-cantina core around Famiglia Mancini; and Terraço Itália sits apart, up the Edifício Itália in the old centre. Paulistanos dine late and book ahead for the weekend rooms. For the rest of the city beyond pasta, the São Paulo dining guide maps every neighborhood by occasion.
Where not to look for it
Skip these for a real Italian dinner
The shopping-mall pasta chains. Every Paulistano mall has a glossy "Italian" chain selling cream-sauce pasta at a markup. Walk past them — even the casual rooms on this list, from Famiglia Mancini to Modern Mamma, roll real pasta for similar money.
Evvai for a casual weeknight. A three-star, single-tasting-menu room is a planned, multi-hour, four-figure event, not a drop-in dinner. For a relaxed plate of pasta on short notice, point yourself at Gero or Modern Mamma instead.
Frequently asked
What is the best Italian restaurant in São Paulo?
Evvai is the city's apex Italian restaurant — chef Luiz Filipe Souza earned three Michelin stars in the 2026 Rio de Janeiro & São Paulo guide, the first three-star in Latin America, for an Italian-Brazilian tasting menu he calls Oriundi cuisine. For classic high Italian rather than a tasting menu, Fasano in Jardins has set the standard since 1982. Choose by whether you want a 13-course event or a plate of handmade pasta.
Which São Paulo Italian restaurants have Michelin stars?
In the 2026 Michelin Guide Rio de Janeiro & São Paulo, Evvai holds three stars — one of the first two three-star restaurants in Latin America and the only Italian one — and Fame Osteria, chef Marco Renzetti's 16-seat tasting room, holds one. São Paulo's wider 2026 selection runs to 17 starred restaurants across all cuisines. For both Italian rooms, book well ahead; the seatings are small.
Where do you eat traditional Italian in São Paulo?
Famiglia Mancini on Rua Avanhandava, in the old Italian quarter of Bixiga, has served southern-Italian platters since 1980 and was voted the city's best Italian by Datafolha thirteen times. It is the most atmospheric traditional room in town — communal, loud and generous. Gero in Jardins is the more polished trattoria option from the Fasano group. Both take reservations and fill on weekends; book a few days ahead.
What is Oriundi cuisine at Evvai?
Oriundi is the term Luiz Filipe Souza coined at Evvai for the cooking of Italians who emigrated — the descendants of Italy scattered across Brazil and the world. In practice it means a 13-course tasting menu that runs Italian technique through Brazilian ingredients: scallops sautéed in duck fat, pasta built on Amazonian and Atlantic produce. It earned Evvai three Michelin stars in 2026. Book the single tasting menu well ahead.
Why does São Paulo have so many Italian restaurants?
São Paulo has more residents of Italian descent than any city outside Italy — the result of mass immigration from the 1880s onward, concentrated in neighborhoods like Bixiga. That heritage shaped the city's food: the cantina and the trattoria are as native to São Paulo as the churrascaria. It is why the city's first three-Michelin-star restaurant, Evvai, cooks Italian, and why a Bixiga institution like Famiglia Mancini still packs out nightly.
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Browse the full São Paulo dining guide, compare the global picks in the best Italian restaurants worldwide, see the source in Rome's best Italian restaurants, plan a client dinner at Fasano, line up a celebration table at Evvai, or open the full RFK cuisine index.
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