Pizza al taglio, market food, aperitivo buffets, and the €5 meals that are better than €30 tourist restaurants.
Plan your Italy trip →Pizza al taglio: Pizza by weight, sold from counter shops everywhere. Point at what you want, they cut it, weigh it, hand it over. A filling slice: €2-4. Two slices + a drink: €5-7. Quality ranges from decent to extraordinary — the best pizza al taglio in Rome (Bonci, Gabriele) rivals sit-down pizzerias.
Suppli and arancini: Fried rice balls (supplì in Rome, arancini in Sicily). €1.50-3 each. Two make a lunch. Every friggitoria and pizza al taglio shop has them.
Porchetta sandwich: Central Italy's gift to cheap eating. Slow-roasted pork in a crusty roll. €3-5 at street stalls in Rome, Lazio, and Umbria.
Piadina: Emilia-Romagna's flatbread wrap filled with prosciutto, squacquerone cheese, and arugula. €4-6 at a piadineria. A complete meal.
Neapolitan street food: Pizza a portafoglio (folded pizza, €1-2 at Di Matteo and similar), cuoppo (fried seafood cone, €3-5), frittatina di pasta (fried pasta ball, €2). Naples feeds you better for €5 than most cities do for €20.
Trattoria "menù del giorno": Many trattorias offer a fixed lunch menu (primo + secondo + water) for €10-15. Not on the tourist menu — ask "Avete il menù del giorno?" Workers eat this daily.
One primo piatto: Order just a pasta dish (€8-14) and bread. That's a complete dinner. Nobody will judge you for ordering one course. Add a glass of house wine (€3-4) and you're golden.
Order a cocktail (€7-10) at a bar with a buffet aperitivo and eat your fill. Milan, Bologna, Turin, and Rome's Pigneto and Ostiense neighborhoods are the best for this. Technically you're buying a drink; practically you're getting a free dinner. See our aperitivo guide.