Lunch in Arezzo: Where to Eat and What to Order

What lunch in Arezzo looks like

A Tuscan lunch is usually structured as a primo, a pasta or soup course, followed by a secondo of meat or fish with a contorno of vegetables. Ordering both makes a full midday meal; ordering just a primo keeps lunch short and leaves room for a later stop at one of the pastry shops in Arezzo. At lunch the pace is unhurried but the kitchen is not trying to turn the room, so a single secondo with bread is perfectly acceptable.

Trattorias and osterie for a traditional lunch

For a traditional Aretine lunch, the local restaurant listings include L'Agania under 'tradizione toscana e aretina' and Ciao Dal Chiodo as a trattoria-osteria specialising in Aretine dishes. Osteria I Bottega appears under traditional Tuscan cooking with fish available on booking, which suits anyone who wants something other than the meat-heavy menu. These are the kind of places where the menu follows the local repertoire, with L'Agania a natural first stop for the classic dishes.

Restaurants around Piazza Grande and Piazza San Francesco

Essenza Dario e Anna, on Piazza Grande, has been family-run since 1964, and the dining room carries the smell of truffle shaved fresh over many plates; the house specialities include venison with cashews, juniper, beetroot and Campari, and gnocchi with chamomile, orange, cuttlefish, black truffle and cocoa beans. Le Chiavi d'Oro on Piazza San Francesco is described as one of the best restaurants in the city, an intimate room serving reworked classics such as tagliatelle with white duck ragù and rabbit with sun-dried tomatoes, olives and puntarelle. Logge Vasari on Piazza Grande has been in the city since 1980 and cooks the territory on the plate, with fagioli zolfini, Celtic potatoes and Chianina beef, and its pasta, bread and desserts made in house.

The restaurants clustered around Piazza Grande and Piazza San Francesco also make a natural lunch stop before an Aperitivo in Arezzo in the same quarter, so you can eat at one and walk to the other without crossing town.

Dishes to order at lunch

Fagioli zolfini, the small pale beans from the Valdichiana, are a signature Aretine dish and appear on the menu at Logge Vasari alongside Celtic potatoes and Chianina beef. Chianina is the large white cattle breed of the Valdichiana, and its beef is the region's most prized meat. Pici, the hand-rolled thick spaghetti of southern Tuscany, is the pasta to look for on a lunch menu, although specific preparations vary between kitchens. Truffle cooking is a house speciality at Essenza, where it is grated fresh over dishes, and the local listings carry a broad spread of trattorias beyond the centre.

How to order and pay at lunch

The coperto is the per-head cover charge added to the bill, and it appears as a line on the conto, the bill. Ask for the conto when you are ready to pay. On a first visit it is worth checking how each place takes payment, and carrying some cash is sensible for smaller osterie and for the market stalls at the Fiera Antiquaria.

Timing lunch around an Arezzo day

On the first weekend of each month, the Fiera Antiquaria, founded by the Aretine antiquarian and collector Ivan Bruschi in the 1960s, fills the streets with antiques and collectors' stalls, and lunch plans in the centre shift accordingly with the crowds. The Giostra del Saracino, the medieval joust in Piazza Grande that pitches the city's four quarters, Porta Crucifera, Porta del Foro, Porta Sant'Andrea and Porta Santo Spirito, against one another, is a fixture of the Arezzo calendar and can make the piazzas busier around the event. On those weekends, plan lunch as the anchor of the day rather than something squeezed between sights.

A countryside lunch in the Valdichiana and Casentino

If you are driving between towns, the countryside around Arezzo is divided into four valleys: the Valdarno, the Valtiberina, the Casentino and the Valdichiana. A lunch stop in the Valdichiana suits anyone heading south towards Cortona, while the Casentino is the valley to the north towards the Apennines. The local restaurant listings organise their entries by zone, including Cortona and Castiglion Fiorentino, so you can choose a table before you set off.

Which Arezzo lunch suits your day

For the Aretine repertoire in a relaxed room, the osterie and trattorias around the centre are the simplest choice, with L'Agania and Ciao Dal Chiodo the names to look for. For a longer sit-down with truffle cooking, Essenza on Piazza Grande or Le Chiavi d'Oro on Piazza San Francesco suit a slower afternoon. Families and anyone wanting a familiar, regional menu will find Logge Vasari the easiest fit, with its fagioli zolfini, Chianina and house-made bread and desserts.