Best Pastry Shops in Italy 2024: The Gambero Rosso Guide for dessert lovers and gourmands

Igino Massari remains the absolute King. There are 31 excellent pastry shops in Italy out of six hundred and fifty establishments included in the Guide which represents the sweet planet of the country. The list of award-winning pastry shops and pastry chefs

Six hundred and fifty signs: it is the firmament of sweetness of Italy: He describes it in great detail2024 edition of the Guide to Italian Pastry Chefs and Pastry Shops created by Gambero Rosso in collaboration with Club Kavè – The Italian Espresso Club. Sixty new features, distributed throughout the national territory, with some regions that stand out more than others, such as Piedmont, Lombardy and Veneto to the north, Campania and Sicily to the south. Historic, refined and elegant venues mix with new proposals, more modern, but equally welcoming and well-kept.

The crown remains at Iginio Massari, undisputed genius and reference of Italian pastry making throughout the world, always current and capable of dictating fashions and trends, with the Pasticceria Veneto, in Brescia sanctuary of croissants and brioches that border on perfection, the cakes and chocolate specialities, as well as the Maritozzi, real clouds, without forgetting biscuits and mignons, the impeccable single portions,

31 excellences have obtained the maximum recognition of the Three Cakes in the Guide, with a score above 90, with two new entries: the Dolciarte bell of Avellino, kingdom of the great dessert artisan Carmen Vecchione who creates extraordinary leavened products and chocolate creations; Piccola Pasticceria of Casale Monferrato (AL), led by the solid Japanese-Piedmontese female alliance between Angelina Cerullo and Yumiko Saimura, two stars with chocolate. At the top of the ranking is another Piedmontese establishment, the Dalmasso pastry shop, in Avigliana (TO), which stands out for its obsessive attention to detail and the extraordinary quality of the materials that the award-winning Alessandro Dalmasso seeks for his products, small masterpieces of 'high Piedmontese pastry.

Piedmont once again proves to be a region famous for its important sweet tradition capable of exciting young pastry lovers who choose to grow up in this world: the Special Emerging Pastry Chef Award goes to Corinne Tammaro and Stefano Lo Jacono from Costè in Borgo San Dalmazzo (CN), opened in autumn 2022 where they offer a very interesting pastry shop, which looks at the great classics of the French, southern and Piedmontese tradition with a modern eye. Also the News of the Year in the Savoy kingdom – Clabo Group Fb Special Award, which goes to Tisti – Pastry & Tea Room in Domodossola (VB), a place opened in January 2022 by the young Fabio Tisti which reflects the style of his pastry shop, contemporary and refined. For the Best Savory Pastry – ICETEAM Special Award 1927 we go down south with White Art in Parabita (LE) e Cesare Gialdi – Délices à importer in Catania. Staying in Sicily, Champagne in Palermo Wins Special Award for Best Chocolate Dessert for the cocoa bean-shaped creation with 80% dark chocolate mousse, sponge cake, siphoned chocolate, fruit pulp with Chinese mandarin cocoa mucilage and citrus fruits.

Gruè in Rome stands out for the Best Digital Communication: Felice Venanzi and Marta Boccanera, the golden couple of pastry making, are very active on social media and every day "lead into temptation" their followers with their highly refined creations.

The Guide also dedicates a chapter to pastry chefs, those who have the delicate task of finishing a restaurant meal in style, with delicious, tasty proposals that are in balance with the rest of the menu, without weighing it down with excess fats and sugars. There are 16 of the best who operate in some of the great Italian restaurants.

Well-decorated desserts and spectacular recipes that travel on Instagram and TikTok, accompanied by the right hashtag, can contribute to the success of a product or venue; but, as Laura Mantovano, Editorial Director of the Guide, underlines, “today being social is not enough: the shapes, colours, aesthetics, design must go hand in hand with the concreteness and solidity of the proposal. It is the technique, the quality of the raw materials, the ability to intelligently mix the ingredients, the increasingly careful dosage of sugars and fats that make a good pastry chef. And, in Italy, we have many excellences: the list of the right addresses grows from year to year".