From Naples pizza to Alpine herbs, Italy leads the global table in 2025-26
Italian cuisine back on top and the world is taking notes. From Naples pizza to Alpine herbs, Italy leads the global table in 2025-26.
ROME — For a country that measures time in courses rather than minutes, the news felt almost inevitable. This month TasteAtlas, the crowdsourced global food guide, named Italy the world’s best cuisine for 2025/2026 with a score of 4.64, pushing Greece (4.60) into second place and leaving Peru, Spain and France trailing behind.
The ranking is not a PR stunt. TasteAtlas bases its table on hundreds of thousands of user ratings for dishes, ingredients and regional traditions, and Italy’s lead rests on the same pillars that have fed it for centuries: simple preparations, high-quality raw materials, and a stubborn attachment to place. That is why italian cuisine back on top is not hype — it is data.
Naples was crowned the world’s best food city, with Milan, Bologna and Florence also in the global top ten — six Italian cities in total, more than any other nation. No other country has ever placed six cities in the TasteAtlas top ten.
Italian Cuisine Back on Top: UNESCO Heritage and TasteAtlas 4.64 Score
The timing is symbolic. UNESCO recently inscribed “Italian cuisine” as Intangible Cultural Heritage, joining Neapolitan pizza-making, which was already listed. The citation praises not a single recipe but a system — the Mediterranean triad of wheat, olive oil and wine, the seasonal market, the family table.
TasteAtlas voters did the same. They didn’t vote for one dish. They voted for Parmigiano Reggiano, San Marzano tomatoes, extra-virgin olive oil from Liguria, Bagòss di Bagolino and Alba white truffle among the world’s top ingredients. They are not novelties; they are benchmarks against which new Nordic or Nikkei experiments are judged.
Italian food wins rankings not because it is fashionable, but because it is legible. A visitor can land in Naples, order a marinara, and understand the whole cuisine in two bites: wheat, tomato, oregano, fire. That clarity — plus a supply chain that still rewards small producers — gives Italy an advantage in an era of climate anxiety and authenticity fatigue.
Italian Cuisine Back on Top at Home Game in Turin – World’s 50 Best 2025
If the world needed proof that Italy is not only loved but studied, it came on 19 June 2025, when the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards were staged in Turin — the first time the ceremony left London or New York for a non-Anglophone host.
Italy placed six restaurants inside the top 50, despite Massimo Bottura’s Osteria Francescana sitting out in the permanent “Best of the Best” hall of fame:
- No.12 Lido 84 (Gardone Riviera) — Riccardo Camanini’s cacio e pepe cooked inside a pig’s bladder has become a pilgrimage dish.
- No.18 Reale (Castel di Sangro) — Niko Romito’s pursuit of “purity” in Abruzzo mountain ingredients.
- No.20 Atelier Moessmer (Brunico) — Norbert Niederkofler’s “Cook the Mountain” philosophy, built on forgotten Alpine vegetables.
- No.31 Le Calandre (Padua) — Max Alajmo’s saffron risotto with liquorice powder.
- No.32 Piazza Duomo (Alba) — Enrico Crippa’s garden-driven tasting menus.
- No.43 Uliassi (Senigallia) — Mauro Uliassi’s Adriatic storytelling.
The message from the Lingotto stage was clear: italian cuisine back on top is no longer centered on a single superstar, but on a network of regional laboratories. From Gardone Riviera to Castel di Sangro, the map is wider than ever.
What’s New on the Plate – Why Italian Cuisine Back on Top Travels Well
Three trends are defining the current Italian moment, and they travel well:
1. Mountain minimalism. Niederkofler’s decade-long project has inspired a generation to forage fir tips, fermented turnips and heirloom rye. Menus shrink to five ingredients, waste drops to near zero. At Atelier Moessmer, the tasting menu is 100% Alpine, no citrus, no chocolate.
2. Pasta as technique, not comfort. At Lido 84 the cacio e pepe is not tossed but inflated; at Reale it becomes an aerated cream. Chefs are treating durum wheat like Japanese soba — a canvas for texture. This is why italian cuisine back on top feels modern, not nostalgic.
3. Social kitchens. In Modena, Canadian-Italian chef Jessica Rosval — No.92 with Al Gatto Verde — trains migrant women through her Roots project, turning the Emilian kitchen into a classroom. It’s a model now copied in Palermo and Bari. Fine dining with a social visa.
Behind every trend is a DOP label that travels better than any chef. That is the real export.
Why the World Keeps Coming Back
As one Turin voter put it after the awards: “France invented haute cuisine. Italy taught the world how to eat every day.”
With the 2026 tourist season already breaking records and Italian cooking schools reporting a 30% jump in foreign enrolments, the crown from TasteAtlas may be symbolic. The appetite behind it is very real.
Italian cuisine back on top because it answers 2026’s two biggest food questions: where does it come from, and who made it? In Naples, Bologna, Turin, the answer is still on the plate.
**Sources & Verification:**
- TasteAtlas – World’s Best Cuisine 2025/2026 Italy 4.64 score, Naples best food city, 6 Italian cities top 10 – tasteatlas.com/best/cuisines- UNESCO – Italian cuisine Intangible Cultural Heritage inscription – ich.unesco.org- World’s 50 Best Restaurants – Awards 19 June 2025 Turin Lingotto, Lido 84 No12 Reale No18 Atelier Moessmer No20 Le Calandre No31 Piazza Duomo No32 Uliassi No43 – theworlds50best.com- Roots Project – Jessica Rosval Al Gatto Verde No92 Modena social kitchen – roots-modena.com
