Where to Eat in Matera: Best Restaurants, Cafés and Local Food
Most people come to Matera for the view. The cave dwellings, the stone city carved into the ravine, the silence at dusk when the day-trippers leave. What they don’t always expect is how good the food is.
Matera sits in Basilicata, a region that until recently most Italians associated with poverty and isolation rather than cuisine. That history, it turns out, produced some of the most honest and deeply flavored food in the country. The cooking here is built around what the land offers: legumes, lamb, wild herbs, aged cheeses and handmade pasta. Nothing is wasted and nothing is rushed.
We spent several days eating our way through the Sassi and the surrounding streets. This is what we found.
What Is Lucanian Food?
You will see the word Lucanian on menus throughout Matera. Basilicata was known as Lucania in ancient times and the name stuck in the kitchen. When a menu says Lucanian sausage or Lucanian lamb, it means food rooted in this specific region: heavily spiced with chili and wild fennel, slow-cooked rather than fast, and built on ingredients that have been grown or raised nearby for centuries.
This is not refined food by tradition. It is peasant food done with real skill, and eating it in Matera, in a cave or on a stone terrace above the ravine, feels like the most natural thing in the world.
What to Eat in Matera
Before the restaurant list, a quick guide to what to order when you see it.
Pane di Matera is the city’s iconic bread: made from durum wheat, naturally leavened, with a thick crust and a dense chewy interior. It holds IGP protected status and appears on almost every table. Order it and eat all of it.
Pasta con Peperoni Cruschi is the dish that will surprise you most. Cruschi are sun-dried sweet peppers from the nearby town of Senise, fried until they become impossibly light and crispy. Tossed through handmade pasta with breadcrumbs, they have a flavor unlike anything else. You will not find this at home.
Fave e Cicoria is pureed fava beans served alongside bitter chicory greens, drizzled with local olive oil. Simple, earthy and better than it sounds.
Crapiata is a thick soup of legumes and grains, chickpeas, lentils, fava beans, barley and potatoes slow-cooked together. Traditionally made in early August but found year-round in Matera’s restaurants.
Lamb cooked in clay pots appears on menus across the city. The slow cooking in terracotta concentrates the flavor in a way that other methods don’t. Order it when you see it.
Spaghetti all’Assassina is not technically Lucanian. It originated in Bari, just across the regional border in Puglia. But you will find it in Matera and if you do, order it. The pasta is cooked directly in the pan with tomato sauce and a serious amount of chili until parts of the spaghetti char and crisp. It is spicy in a way that builds slowly and does not let go. We have eaten it several times since and nothing has come close to the version we had in Matera.
Gianduiotto and local cheeses round out the table. Look for fresh ricotta and aged pecorino lucano. Both appear in antipasti and pasta dishes and both are worth trying on their own.
Where to Eat in Matera
Casual and Local
1. La Lopa
📍 Via Fiorentini (near the main stairways of the Sassi)
Tucked inside a cozy cave just off one of Matera’s main stairways, La Lopa is the kind of place where dinner turns into an entire evening. Stone walls, candlelight, a relaxed atmosphere and staff who actually want you to stay. There is even a small cinema downstairs if you want to keep the night going.
The menu covers local favorites well: fave e cicoria, handmade pasta with cruschi peppers, lamb slow-cooked in clay pots. But the dish we still talk about years later is the Spaghetti all’Assassina. We watched the chef making it in the kitchen, pouring what looked like an impossible amount of chili oil and peppers into the pan. Our table ended up covered in empty water bottles. Nobody could stop eating. Dylan has tried ordering it from a pop-up in Rotterdam since and immediately declared it wasn’t the same. He was right. We have sent each other photos of it on menus ever since and nothing has been close.
The staff are happy to recommend a local wine and the whole experience feels authentic rather than staged. Book ahead if you can.
2. 5 Lire
📍 Via Domenico Ridola
On Via Domenico Ridola, one of Matera’s few flat and walkable main streets, 5 Lire is an excellent and completely unpretentious pizza restaurant. No reservations. A handful of tables inside and one or two on a terrace with views over the city. You can also take the pizza to go, which several sensible people around us did.
We cannot recommend it enough. The pizza is seriously good at a price that makes you want to order another one immediately, which we did. We all went back for seconds. In a city where it is easy to overpay for average food near the viewpoints, 5 Lire is the honest alternative. Go early or expect to wait.
3. Uacciardidd
📍 Matera city center
Part butcher shop, part restaurant, and unlike most places around the Sassi, it exists for locals first. There are a handful of tables inside and out but the real action is at the counter, where trays of prepared dishes line the display case and you point at whatever looks good.
That is exactly what we did. The staff spoke very little English and our Italian wasn’t much help, so we spent most of the meal pointing and saying “that one too.” Every time we thought we were finished, something else appeared in the case that looked too good to pass up. We ordered way too much food. We regret nothing.
The best part was trying dishes we never would have ordered from a traditional menu: local vegetables, roasted meats, regional specialties and a few things we couldn’t identify until they arrived. Everything felt homemade. The portions were generous. We heard far more Italian than English while we were there, which in a city as visited as Matera tells you something.
It is also one of the best values we found. We left completely stuffed having tried a huge variety of local food and spent far less than expected. If you like finding places that feel real rather than polished, don’t miss this one.
4. Baccanti
📍 Via Sant’Angelo, 58 (Sassi)
One of the best meals we had in Matera, and the best combination of setting and food we found in the city.
Baccanti is built into a series of caves in the heart of the Sassi, vaulted ceilings and exposed rock walls. The setting is genuinely beautiful without being overdone. Plenty of restaurants in Matera have cave dining rooms. Not all of them deliver when the food arrives.
We started with handmade ravioli filled with rich local ragù and topped with baked ricotta. The kind of pasta that reminds you why Southern Italy does comfort food so well. Simple ingredients and real flavor, no fuss. The octopus that followed was the highlight of the meal: perfectly tender, served with a tomato and olive sauce and sweet potato alongside that balanced everything.
The service was excellent and the whole thing felt special without feeling formal. If you are planning one sit-down dinner in Matera that goes beyond a trattoria, this is where to go.
5. Area 8
📍 Sassi district, Matera
For aperitivo or a drink after dinner, we ended up at Area 8 more than once. Tucked into the Sassi, it feels modern without losing the character that makes Matera special: stone walls, industrial touches and outdoor seating that fills up quickly once the sun starts to drop.
We were expecting the standard spritz menu. Area 8 puts considerably more effort into its cocktails than most bars in Southern Italy. Their Acqua Fresca combines gin, sea salt cordial and local Venturo liqueur for something that feels distinctly of this place. Even if cocktails aren’t your thing, it’s worth trying one of the house specialties.
The food is better than bar food has any right to be. Instead of chips, creative bruschette topped with stracciatella, pesto and seasonal vegetables. We stopped for one drink and ordered a second round and a few snacks.
One of our favorite things about Matera was how different it felt after dark. During the day the viewpoints are packed. By evening the crowds thin, the stone buildings light up and the city gets very quiet. Sitting outside at Area 8 with a drink and looking out over the Sassi was one of our favorite parts of the whole trip.
6. Cremes Bureau
📍 Matera city center (near the Sassi)
We lived in Italy for six years and set a fairly high bar for gelato. Cremes Bureau clears it.
The shop is small and easy to walk past. The line outside tells you not to. If you are getting one flavor, make it the pistachio. Unlike most pistachio gelato, which tips toward sweet, theirs uses salted pistachios. Rich, nutty, slightly salty and impossibly well-balanced. After one bite we understood immediately why people rave about it.
The texture is what stood out most: creamy without being heavy, and every flavor tastes like the ingredient it’s supposed to be. No gimmicks, no bright artificial coloring, no reinventing gelato. Just high-quality ingredients and people who know what they’re doing. We tried several flavors and they were all excellent. The pistachio is the one we still talk about.
If you are exploring Matera on a hot afternoon, this is the perfect excuse to sit down, cool off and not rush back into the Sassi.
For a More Special Meal
7. Vitantonio Lombardo
📍 Via Madonna delle Virtù, 13 (Sassi)
Matera’s only Michelin-starred restaurant, and one of the more interesting fine dining experiences in Southern Italy. Chef Vitantonio Lombardo, who earned his first star in Caggiano before moving to Matera in 2018, built his restaurant inside a cave overlooking the Murgia natural park. The setting alone is worth the reservation.
The food is rooted in Lucanian tradition but interpreted with real creativity. Tasting menus of 5, 7, 10 or 12 courses, a serious wine list and service that is attentive without being stiff. This is where you go if you want to understand what the region’s ingredients can do in the hands of a serious chef. Book well in advance.
8. Da Mó
📍 Sassi district, Matera
A Michelin-selected family-run restaurant in the upper part of the Sassi. Father in the kitchen, mother and daughter front of house, all of them moved to Matera from Venosa to open this place. The menu leans contemporary but stays rooted in Lucanian tradition, with flexible tasting options and an excellent wine list curated by an in-house sommelier.
It is polished without feeling formal. The kind of dinner that feels special without requiring you to dress for it. The set menu represents excellent value. Reviewers consistently call it the best meal they had in Matera and it is not hard to see why.
A Few Final Thoughts
Matera’s food does not shout. It is not a city that puts itself forward the way Naples does with pizza or Bologna does with ragu. The cooking here is quieter and more patient, built on ingredients that come from the land around it and traditions that go back centuries.
The best meals we had were not necessarily the most expensive or the most memorable for their settings. They were the ones where the food was clearly made by someone who cared about it: the pasta at La Lopa, the pizza at 5 Lire, the pistachio gelato at Cremes Bureau and the ravioli at Baccanti.
Come hungry. Order the cruschi pasta. And find the Spaghetti all’Assassina.
