7 Best Restaurants in The Italian Riviera, Italy

This enoteca and antipasto bar is popular with locals and tourists looking for typical regional dishes, fresh fish, and a lengthy wine list. The owner designed the entire place, right down to the tables and chairs made from anchors and old boats. They also offer terrific sandwiches to go.

There's usually a crowd of locals congregated at this lively bar and restaurant, often accompanied by their dogs and children. In the morning, tasty brioches start off the festivities and segue neatly into lunch. Alongside the usual range of beers and wines, the bar serves panini made to order and some toothsome pastries, while the restaurant menu has meat and seafood options as well as salads and pizzas.

If the staggering prices at virtually all of Portofino's cafés and restaurants are enough to ruin your appetite, join the long line outside this family-run bakery where you will find affordable and delicious eats worth waiting for. At this takeaway spot, the focaccia is baked on-site and served fresh, along with all kinds of sandwiches and other refreshments.

Just a few steps from Porta Soprana and the Childhood Home of Christopher Columbus, this place makes a handy stop for a snack and a sightseeing pause. On street-level is a straightforward café (with some seating upstairs, too) offering sandwiches, pastries, and ice creams, while in the basement (accessed by a separate door) you'll find a cavernous hall where succulent hamburgers and other hot snacks are the main draw. Only the best local beef is used in the burgers, and there's a great selection of craft beers, too. It's always busy, and you may have to wait to put your order in, but the results make it time well spent. There's a second branch at Piazza della Vittoria 36r.

Considered an institution, this white-walled, simply decorated farinateria and pizzeria dates back to 1887. It gets quite busy at lunchtime, with locals inside or, in summer, on the patio munching happily on farinata (a chickpea pancake and a Ligurian delicacy) and thick-crust pizza served hot out of the wood-burning oven.

You'll know this focacceria and pasticceria by the line out the door, as you walk along the beach before entering the archway to the old port. This tiny spot—where you can see focaccia being baked through a window into its kitchen—specializes in Liguria’s favorite bread, farinata or chickpea flatbread (baked late afternoons from October to March) and several flavors of camogliesi (rum-filled is the original), a sweet that the shop's owner, Giacomo, invented in 1970.