Top restaurants in big three !

As a rule we generally avoid canal side places to eat in Venice. They are usually overpriced and under quality. Especially in the Rialto Bridge area. But there are some exceptions on many canals.

There is one on a side canal side near San Marcol you might want to try . Trattoria Da Giorgia ai Greci. As is the case with most places in Venice it can be a bit pricey but the food is really great.

Consider Trattoria Da Marco Valla Fava on Calle StagnerIn the Rialto Bridge area (but not on a canal). You might want to do lunch rather than dinner as it is definitely pricy. Some of the best sea food ever!! The place has been around at least 50 years so they must be doing it right. Try to eat inside rather than outside.

Also in the Rialto area (on the other side of the Grand Canal on the walk toward Piazzale Roma) is an out of the way place named Pane Vino e San Daniele on Calle Dei Boteri. Definitely a local place, good food, good house wine, and not expensive at all.

Rome- Armando al Pantheon, reservations a must. Check their website. Also we found the following Apps for Rome very helpful : Katie Parla’s Rome and Elizabeth Mininchelli’s EAT ROME.

Dishes indigenous to the city, or even the area of the city:

In Rome, Emma Pizzeria (near Campo de' Fiori) not for pizza but for spaghetti alla Carbonara, and also for puntarelle salad, which is made from the stems and leaves of the chicory plant, washed and scored and served with a little anchovy oil and cracked black pepper. Outside of that neighborhood in Rome you'd be hard-pressed to find puntarelle.

There are thousands of restaurants in each of those cities, and people on this forum are mostly North Americans who, even the most frequent travelers, have tried just a handful in each of those locations. Also their personal tastes will be subjective and may not match yours, so no matter what suggestion you get, it will be the subjective choice of one person who has tried a subset of less than 1% of the restaurants available in that city.

In the old days I used to trust the advice of construction workers and other laborers in Italy. They always knew the best value restaurants at reasonable prices. Nowadays, since 100% of construction workers and laborers are Eastern European immigrants, not necessarily knowledgeable of Italian cuisine, I rely on websites.

I don’t like TripAdvisor, especially for famous cities like the ones you mention, because it is heavily used by non Italian tourists, who may not have a clear idea of what good Italian food should taste like. If I want a good Japanese restaurant in Tokyo I ask a Japanese, not an Argentinian tourist.

For Italian restaurants, in cities I don’t know, I use www.ilmangione.it. (Il Mangione means The Big Eater, which describes me a lot). It’s in Italian only (I think still is) so the people voting their preference in that site are likely Italians. For Florence I trust the advice of friends and relatives there. But I noticed that most of the restaurants I, my family and my friends like to go to in Florence are listed in Il Mangione website, and that reassures me that it is indeed a good website. Filter by ranking, but also take note of the average price in Euro. Some are cheaper than others.

Good luck.

The top address in Florence is Pinchiorri where a dinner could be in the hundreds of euros per person bracket. But if you go fancy on wines and want to spend thousands of euros they will accomodate you.
A good compromise of quality and price is Osteria di Giovanni.

This has been covered so many times, I suggest searching above for "Restaurants in _____" as a starting point. Narrow your search to the Forum and the past year and you'll get more info than you can digest.

Roberto, thanks for the link. I like that it posts prices of an average meal.

When we return to Florence we will not be heading to the restaurant where a fortune could be spent. At the top of our list is Il Sostanza for the wonderful butter chicken. Desserts and sides are great as well. Located between the Arno and St Maria Novella station on a tiny street--Porcellana I think. Reservations essential. Run by the same family for two generations. Someone on this forum recommended Nino in Rome and we ate there recently twice. It is located near the Spanish steps on Borgonono (or similar name).

I can’t recommend enough that you consider “The Golden View” in Florence for either lunch or dinner. The view of the Ponte Vecchio is amazing especially at sunset. The food is very good and the prices are very reasonable. Reservations are require for dinner unless you eat early like we did at 6:30 and we got a table right next to the window as long as we promised to leave by 8:30 pm. If you google it, you will see lots of great reviews and pictures on numerous sites. They also have a website where you can make reservations. http://www.goldenviewopenbar.com/en/home-en/

The Golden View is aptly named. They certainly make you pay for that view in 24k gold. Food is not bad, but not the cheapest in town for sure.