These are the best Italian restaurants in Haarlem
There are plenty of them: Italian restaurants in Haarlem. But where can you really get a plate of pasta like you could never make at home? At these six Italian spots in Haarlem, you can eat authentically or enjoy something surprisingly modern, but everywhere the food is guaranteed to be good. We even slipped in a takeaway pizzeria that is so good we readily forgive it for not accepting reservations at all.
We’ve already written about our favorite Italian restaurants in Amsterdam, and we’ve also tipped you off about our favorite Italian restaurants in Maastricht. Now it’s Haarlem’s turn.
Piccolo Forno Vinz
Okay, you can’t sit here, but you can still perch on the edge of the sidewalk. After spending a long time at weekly markets in Haarlem and Amsterdam, it was finally time for pizzaiolo Vincenzo to open his own place. And about time, because someone who makes the best pizzas in Haarlem and beyond deserves their own pizzeria. He learned the craft from his nonna and bakes them Neapolitan-style, using dough fermented for at least 48 hours that spends less than two minutes in a blazing-hot oven. This allows the quality ingredients – sauce made from San Marzano tomatoes, handmade mozzarella – to shine at their very best.
Piccolo Forno Vinz – Kruisstraat 4, Haarlem
Bar Leoni
Haarlem has gained a modern Italian restaurant where you can drop by the bar for a quick pasta, but also linger over dinner for hours and stay for a drink afterward. No complicated dishes, just what you want at an Italian restaurant: carpaccio, ravioli with spinach, and a good glass of wine. Also nice for people like me: you can order a smaller portion of pasta. Not because you’re not hungry, but so you can eat as much pasta as your heart desires. From linguine tartufo to an ordinary penne with cherry tomatoes or spaghetti alle vongole. The owners of Bar Leoni are seasoned hospitality professionals who know not only their way around good food, but also Italian wines. There are almost forty bottles on the menu, with something for every budget. Even the most exclusive wines are available here.
Bar Leoni – Lange Veerstraat 11, Haarlem
Restaurant & Bar DIGA
DIGA proves that you can do both: cook Italian food at a high level and pay attention to your interior. No Italian classics here, but risottos, pastas and other familiar dishes featuring ingredients or preparations you wouldn’t normally encounter in an everyday trattoria. The risotto, for example, comes with black garlic, scallop, pine nut and mushroom, while fiore di zucca is elevated to a main course with ricotta, fregola, bergamot and pistachio and Parmesan foam. Ask for a table near the glass wine room and let the chef’s menu make the decisions for you.
Diga – Damstraat 10, Haarlem
Nolita
Nolita’s wood-fired oven also turns out excellent pizzas, which you can enjoy in the pizzeria itself – although there is now also a little takeaway spot. Here, it’s the thin Roman-style ones, as many people know them, in fifteen different varieties. And since you’re sitting down anyway, order a selection of antipasti and dessert too. Add a cocktail or glass of wine. You’ll be set for the whole evening.
Nolita – Lange Veerstraat 17, Haarlem
Dodici
A molto Italian name with a handful of Italian dishes on the menu, but more of a delicious mishmash of all sorts of things under the Italian motto of celebrating la dolce vita. Here, just around the corner from the Grote Markt, arancini go hand in hand with gyoza, and you can eat risotto as well as dahl. Plenty of wines by the glass and an extensive menu full of small bites make it ideal for a pre-night-out meal. It’s always packed here for a reason.
Dodici – Smedestraat 47, Haarlem
Ristorante Napoli
In the Netherlands, a restaurant where the interior clearly wasn’t the focus is a kind of Russian roulette in which you have a good chance of losing. In Italy, it’s often the opposite. At restaurant Napoli in Haarlem, time seems to have stood still, but it’s a case of a perfect Italian bull’s eye. For more than half a century, chef Gerardo Cannavacciuolo has put tradition on the menu at his Neapolitan family restaurant, with everything prepared di Gerardo and preferably right in front of you. He has been arriving at tables armed with Parmigiano and a blowtorch for thirty years, preparing his famous whisky-flambéed pasta inside the cheese.
Ristorante Napoli – Houtplein 1, Haarlem
Read also:
- Eating in the same places as the locals: a reassuring thought
- On vacation in Italy: can you drink the tap water there?
- Drain cleaner in your olive?! Keuringsdienst van Waarde shows you how it’s done
Source: Italiamo, image: Facebook
