TheFork Awards names 48 finalists for Italy's best new opening
Public voting runs until 20 September, with 74 chefs behind the shortlist and a gala set for 27 October at Milan's Teatro Lirico.
TheFork Awards has named 48 finalist restaurants for its eighth edition, all new openings or relaunches across Italy competing for the title of best restaurant of the year.
A jury of 74 Italian chefs, including Antonia Klugmann, Niko Romito and Moreno Cedroni, scouted the finalists over the past year, weighing new openings against revitalised older addresses. Public voting opened on 8 September and runs until 20 September on TheFork's own site, feeding into a People's Choice Award that sits alongside the jury's picks. Last year's public vote drew more than 50,000 entries. TheFork, an online reservation platform owned by Groupon before its spin-off, uses the awards to promote restaurants that might otherwise take years to build a reputation beyond their own postcode.
Lombardy leads, but not by much
New stories and different ways of reading a kitchen keep turning up every year.
Lombardy has the strongest showing this year with 10 of the 48 addresses, Milan chief among them: Langosteria Montenapoleone, led by chefs Domenico Magistri and Tommaso Garofalo, sits alongside Thelema, Denis Lovatel, 142 Restaurant and Nino – Osteria con Cucina. The rest of the list runs from Trentino-Alto Adige down to Sicily and Calabria, including a Puglian bistrot from chef Francesca De Santis.
Carlo Cracco, one of the judges, said picking finalists gets harder each year: "new stories and different ways of reading a kitchen keep turning up." The jury flagged a rising share of restaurants led by chefs under 35, alongside more zero-kilometre menus and informal formats built around natural wine lists.
What a new-openings award actually tracks
An award built entirely around first-year restaurants works as an early signal for where Italian cooking is heading, months or years before guides like Michelin or Gambero Rosso catch up with their own annual cycles. The white truffle fair in Alba, which runs into December, and the regional cooking behind a Piedmont classic like tajarin al tartufo both point to the same pattern this list captures: Italian dining built as much on regional ingredients as on technique.
The winners are announced on 27 October at Teatro Lirico Giorgio Gaber in Milan.
