TurinBuonissimaOctober 21–25, 2026

Five Days at the Table in Turin

Turin’s food festival is back, and most of the meals aren’t in restaurants. They’re in the city’s palaces and museums.

Cristina Lugo5 min read

Turin doesn’t make much noise about itself, and that’s one of the things I love about it. Most people pass through on the way to the Langhe, and only later find out it has some of the best museums and private collections in Italy. For five days this month it’s also the best place in the country to eat. Buonissima, the city’s food festival, is back for its sixth edition from October 21 to 25. There are more than 150 chefs and over 200 lunches, dinners and talks.

What makes it different from other food festivals is where the meals happen. Most of them aren’t in restaurants. They’re in Turin’s palaces and museums.

The people behind it

Buonissima was started by two Turin food journalists, Stefano Cavallito and Luca Iaccarino, together with the chef Matteo Baronetto. Baronetto runs the kitchen at Del Cambio, which opened in 1757 and is probably the most beautiful dining room in the city. Cavour, the statesman who unified Italy, used to have lunch there. Today the rooms hold mirror works by Michelangelo Pistoletto and paintings by Carol Rama. So it makes sense that his festival puts chefs inside museums. In Turin, art and food have always shared the same rooms.

The big tables

It opens on Wednesday the 21st at Palazzo Madama, the old royal palace in the middle of Piazza Castello. Ten chefs with thirteen Michelin stars between them cook a standing dinner, among them Antonia Klugmann, Moreno Cedroni and Federico Zanasi of Condividere, here in Turin. Seats are €150, or €110 for the first ones sold.

On Thursday the GAM, Turin’s modern art museum, opens its Sala del Riposo for lunch, the first time since 1959. Niko Romito, who has three stars at Reale in Abruzzo, cooks with Jeremy Chan of Ikoyi in London.

On Friday evening it moves to the Gallerie d’Italia on Piazza San Carlo. There’s a talk, a walk through the collection, an aperitivo, and then dinner by Jessica Rosval of Al Gatto Verde in Modena. Each dish is created as a response to a work hanging on the walls.

On Sunday it closes at Castello di Rivoli, the contemporary art museum inside a Savoy castle just outside the city, with a long family-style lunch of Piedmontese home cooking. It’s a Sunday lunch under the same roof as Maurizio Cattelan’s horse hanging from the ceiling.

Maurizio Cattelan’s horse hanging by ropes beneath the dome of a gallery at Castello di Rivoli — Castello di Rivoli, where the festival ends with Sunday lunch.

The small rooms

The big dinners get the attention, but I’d look at the small ones first. Andrea Aprea, who has two stars in Milan, is cooking for seventeen people inside the Libreria Luxemburg, Turin’s old international bookshop. There are also chef’s table dinners at Galleria Mazzoleni and Villa Sanquirico. On Friday, Lavazza hosts a full day at its coffee factory outside the city. Lunch is by Federico Zanasi and Yannick Alléno, with bread by Franco Pepe, whose Pepe in Grani is one of the most celebrated pizzerias in Italy.

Saturday is the longest day. It starts with Ultrabrunch, a morning about bread and pastry with Fulvio Marino from Alba and Cesare Battisti of Ratanà in Milan. From there it runs into Bistromania at the Nuvola Lavazza: bistros from Turin and Barcelona cooking side by side from noon until four in the morning. Barcelona is a partner city this year, so there’s a lot of Catalan cooking around, including Eduard Xatruch of Disfrutar, which was named the best restaurant in the world in 2024.

The piole

My favorite part is the simplest. A piola is Turin’s neighborhood osteria: paper on the tables, house wine by the carafe, the same dishes for fifty years. During the festival, the city’s piole serve special menus for around €30. This year they start early, on Sunday the 18th, with four of them cooking at Juventus’s stadium during the Juventus–Lazio match. Picture the agnolotti and vitello tonnato you’d get at any piola, with live music, karaoke and card games at the tables, while the match is on below.

Diners at outdoor tables beneath the green neon sign of Ristorante Vittoria in Turin at night — Dinner outside on a Turin evening.

Why late October

Turin is at its best right now. The hills around the city are turning, the museums are quiet in the mornings, and white truffle season has just opened in the Langhe, about an hour south. Then, a few days after Buonissima ends, Artissima, Italy’s contemporary art fair, opens from October 30 to November 1. That’s the week I build my Piedmont journeys around, and Buonissima gives anyone with a few extra days a very good reason to come early.

In Turin, art and food have always shared the same rooms.