Best Restaurants in Province of Arezzo: Fine Dining, Local Gems & Where to Eat

Come to the Province of Arezzo in autumn and you will understand, very quickly, why food writers run out of adjectives here. The hillsides have turned amber and rust, woodsmoke hangs in the cold morning air above medieval villages, and somewhere nearby – you can almost guarantee it – someone is shaving a truffle over fresh pasta with the focused reverence of a surgeon. This is Tuscany at its most itself: unhurried, deeply flavoured, and entirely unbothered by whatever is fashionable elsewhere. The harvest is in, the wild boar has been hung, and the Sangiovese in the cantina has had another year to think things over. There is no better time to eat well in this corner of Italy. Though in fairness, there is never a bad one.

The Province of Arezzo sits in the eastern reaches of Tuscany, an area that receives considerably fewer visitors than Florence or Siena and is, as a result, considerably more itself. The restaurants here are not performing Tuscan-ness for the benefit of tourists. They are simply doing what they have always done, cooking what grows nearby, pouring what is made locally, and reserving their warmest tables for people who show up with an appetite and a little patience. For travellers who care seriously about food – and if you are reading a luxury travel guide, we suspect you do – this province deserves your full attention.

The Fine Dining Scene: Elegance in the Hill Towns

Fine dining in the Province of Arezzo does not announce itself with the kind of theatrical fanfare you might encounter in larger cities. There are no vast modernist dining rooms with seventeen-course tasting menus and a sommelier who explains each wine for slightly longer than is strictly necessary. What you find instead is something arguably more satisfying: restaurants of genuine historical and culinary weight, housed in buildings that were old when most countries were still working out their borders, serving food that has been refined over generations rather than invented last Tuesday.

In Cortona – one of Tuscany’s most beautifully preserved hilltop towns – Ristorante La Loggetta represents the province’s most distinguished dining address. Housed in the cellars of a 13th-century building, the space alone would justify the visit: wooden-beamed ceilings, terracotta floors worn smooth by centuries of feet, brick arches framing candlelit tables, and frescoes on the walls that predate almost everything you have ever eaten in. It appears in the Michelin guide, the Gambero Rosso guide, Rick Steves and Lonely Planet – a rare combination that suggests it has managed to be both genuinely excellent and genuinely accessible, which is harder than it sounds.

The cooking at La Loggetta is rooted in the Tuscan tradition but executed with the kind of precision that earns international recognition. The bistecca with shaved truffles is the dish people talk about, in the way that people who have had a genuinely formative meal talk about it – quietly, with slightly faraway eyes. The service is impeccable without being stiff. Book well ahead, especially in summer and during the truffle season in autumn. This is not a restaurant you want to arrive at hoping for a walk-in table.

Local Trattorias and Tavernas: Where the Real Eating Happens

For all its charms, fine dining is only part of the story in Arezzo province. A considerable portion of the most memorable eating happens in places with paper tablecloths, menus that haven’t changed since 2003, and an owner who will tell you what you should order before you have quite finished reading the menu. This is not a criticism. It is, in fact, the highest possible praise.

In the city of Arezzo itself, Antica Osteria l’Agania is as close to a textbook perfect Tuscan osteria as you are likely to find. The atmosphere is warm and unpretentious, the room fills early with locals and knowledgeable visitors, and the menu reads like a love letter to everything that is right about this region’s cooking. The pici al ragù di cinghiale – thick hand-rolled pasta with wild boar ragù – is the dish to order, though the ribollita, that great peasant soup of bread and cavolo nero that Tuscany has had the good sense to never abandon, runs it extremely close. Portions are generous. Prices are fair. The whole experience is what people think they are going to get from every trattoria in Tuscany and rarely do.

Trattoria Il Saraceno, also in the centre of Arezzo, offers a slightly different register – more polished in its presentation, with a room that manages to feel both elegantly rustic and genuinely historic. The seats by the windows look directly onto one of the medieval streets that climb through the city, and it is the sort of view that makes even a simple plate of pasta feel like an occasion. The menu is traditional Aretine cooking done carefully and well. The décor evokes, as one reviewer rather nicely put it, a sentimental journey through time. Go for dinner when the street outside is quieter and the light through the windows has turned golden.

Ristorante La Lancia d’Oro, positioned close to Arezzo’s main piazza, has been feeding the city for long enough to have earned the particular authority of the long-established. The truffle tagliolini here is the kind of dish that prompts people to use phrases they would normally be embarrassed by. Incredibly rich, deeply fragrant, the sort of thing you think about on the flight home. The desserts are varied and excellent. Its location makes it ideal for an extended lunch after a morning exploring the Piero della Francesca frescoes in the nearby Basilica of San Francesco – which, if you have not done it, you should.

Historic Cellar Restaurants: Arezzo’s Underground Dining

One of the quiet pleasures of eating in a medieval city like Arezzo is the discovery that some of its best restaurants are, quite literally, underground. Buca di San Francesco, located near the Church of San Francesco, is one of Arezzo’s most long-established dining institutions – the kind of place that appears on every serious list of where to eat in the province and has been doing so for decades without showing any sign of resting on its reputation. The deeply vaulted cellars give it an atmosphere that no interior designer could manufacture, and the cooking is quintessentially Tuscan: slow-braised meats, hand-made pasta, the sort of food that rewards patience and punishes haste.

These cellar restaurants are a particular feature of central Arezzo and the hill towns of the province. If you find yourself descending a stone staircase in pursuit of dinner, you are probably on the right track.

What to Order: The Dishes That Define This Province

The Province of Arezzo has its own culinary identity within Tuscany, shaped by the Val di Chiana, the Casentino valley, the Valtiberina and the fertile agricultural land that connects them. Understanding what to order here means understanding the landscape – and the livestock that roams it.

Pici is the pasta of this region: thick, hand-rolled spaghetti with a satisfying chew, best served with wild boar ragù (cinghiale) or a simple cacio e pepe. Wild boar appears throughout the menu in autumn and winter – grilled, braised, cured, turned into salumi – and is one of those flavours that tastes entirely right in the place it comes from. The Chianina beef, raised in the Val di Chiana, is the source of the great Florentine-style T-bone steak (bistecca alla Fiorentina) and is among the finest beef in Italy. Order it rare, with nothing on it. The restaurant will respect you for it.

Truffles – both black and white, depending on the season – feature heavily across the province’s finer restaurants, particularly in autumn. Ribollita and acquacotta are the honest, ancient soups of the region, made from stale bread, vegetables, legumes and whatever the garden had to offer. They are not glamorous. They are, however, extraordinarily good. Do not make the mistake of ordering something more elaborate when you see them on the menu.

Wine and Local Drinks: Drinking Well in Arezzo Province

The province sits on the edge of several important Tuscan wine territories. The Cortona DOC produces some excellent Syrah – one of Italy’s more surprising and rewarding Syrah-producing zones, as it happens – alongside Sangiovese and the local white grape Grechetto. Just to the north and west, the wider Tuscan wine landscape of Chianti and its cousins is never far away.

In any good restaurant in the province, ask for the house wine before reaching for the wine list. In places that have been here for generations, the house wine is invariably sourced with care from nearby producers and represents extraordinary value. This is not cutting corners. It is a form of localism that deserves encouragement.

Vin Santo, the amber-coloured dessert wine of Tuscany, should be ordered with cantucci biscuits for dunking at the end of a meal. This is not optional. Grappa from the region is also worth investigating, particularly the aged varieties that have shed the petrol notes of their younger siblings and settled into something warm and contemplative. The local craft aperitivo culture is developing, but in truth, a glass of good Sangiovese before dinner serves the same purpose with considerably less ceremony.

Food Markets and Culinary Shopping

Arezzo city holds a regular food market that is worth getting up early for – not unreasonably early, this is Italy, but early enough to beat the rush for the better produce stalls. The weekly markets in smaller towns like Cortona, Sansepolcro and Montevarchi are genuinely local affairs where farmers bring produce from the surrounding valleys: wild mushrooms in autumn, extraordinary tomatoes in summer, legumes and truffles as the season dictates.

The famous Arezzo Antique Market, held on the first Sunday of every month and the preceding Saturday in the Piazza Grande, is primarily about furniture and objects but always has artisan food producers on the fringes. If you are self-catering from a villa – and in a province this rich in ingredients, you absolutely should be at some point – this is where you fill the kitchen for the week. Local charcuterie, aged Pecorino from the Val di Chiana, handmade pasta, honey, conserves: the shopping alone is half the pleasure.

Casual Dining and Hidden Gems Beyond the Main Towns

The Province of Arezzo rewards those who drive the secondary roads and stop when something looks interesting. The small family-run agriturismi scattered across the hillsides often serve lunch to non-guests by reservation, and these are among the most quietly satisfying meals in Tuscany – not because they are cheap (some are, some are not) but because they connect you directly to the land the food came from in a way that no restaurant in a city centre quite manages.

In the Casentino valley to the north, a wilder and less-visited stretch of the province, look for small village restaurants serving forest-inflected menus: chestnut pasta, mushroom soups, cured meats from local pigs. The food here has a rougher, more elemental quality than the refined hill town restaurants, and is all the better for it. Nobody is performing. Everyone is just eating.

The Valtiberina, the upper Tiber valley in the province’s east, is similarly under-visited and similarly rewarding. Sansepolcro – birthplace of Piero della Francesca and a town that deserves far more attention than it receives – has a small but serious local dining scene built around genuinely good ingredients and minimal fuss.

Reservation Tips and Practical Advice

The province’s better restaurants fill up quickly, particularly at weekends, during the August holiday season, and throughout October when the truffle and harvest pilgrimages are in full swing. Book La Loggetta in Cortona and the more established Arezzo restaurants at least a week ahead in high season – two weeks is safer. Many of the smaller trattorias and osterie do not take online bookings; a phone call is required, and a phrase or two of Italian, however rusty, will be warmly received.

Lunch in Italy is still, blessedly, taken seriously. A long midday meal at a trattoria, with a carafe of local wine and no particular agenda for the afternoon, is one of the great pleasures of this province. Try to arrange your itinerary accordingly. It would be a shame to rush.

Dress codes are relaxed by the standards of formal fine dining elsewhere in Europe, but a degree of effort is noticed and appreciated. Turning up to a place like La Lancia d’Oro or Buca di San Francesco in the kind of outfit you’d wear to a supermarket is technically fine. It just might explain the slightly slower service.

Staying in the Province: Villa Life and Private Chef Dining

The most indulgent way to eat in the Province of Arezzo is, in the end, not in a restaurant at all – or not only in one. Staying in a luxury villa in Province of Arezzo with access to a private chef transforms the entire experience of the region’s cuisine. You source the ingredients from the local markets and the surrounding farm estates, hand them to someone who knows exactly what to do with them, and eat on a terrace with the Tuscan hills rolling out in every direction and a glass of Cortona Syrah in hand. It is, to put it plainly, rather good. Many villas offer private chef services as part of their booking package – a detail worth investigating when you plan your stay.

For a broader picture of what the province has to offer beyond the table – and there is a great deal – the Province of Arezzo Travel Guide covers art, architecture, landscapes and experiences across this endlessly rewarding corner of Tuscany.