Restaurant in Ferrara, Italy
Ferrara's regional cooking, taken seriously.
Cucina Bacilieri holds a 2025 Michelin Plate and a 4.7 Google rating across 757 reviews, making it Ferrara's most credentialed small-room dining option. At €€€, it earns the premium through chef-driven modern cuisine built on regional signatures like eel and pasticcio ferrarese. Booking is easy relative to its quality tier — a few days' notice usually suffices.
Cucina Bacilieri earns its 2025 Michelin Plate in a way that matters: by cooking the region's own ingredients — eel from the Po Delta, the baroque pastry-and-pasta construction that is pasticcio ferrarese — with the kind of precision that makes you rethink what a provincial Italian kitchen is capable of. The room holds just a few tables. The name belongs to the chef-owner. That combination of small scale and personal accountability is either a reassurance or a warning, depending on what you want from dinner. For a reader who has already visited once and is wondering whether to return, the answer is yes, with purpose: come back for the tasting menu if your first visit was à la carte, or request a seat that puts you as close to the kitchen as possible.
Visually, Cucina Bacilieri reads as intimate before anything else. Few tables means you are rarely far from other diners, and the physical closeness to the kitchen , whether by a counter arrangement or simply by the compact proportions of the room , means the meal has a transparency that larger restaurants cannot replicate. You see plates leave the pass. You notice the rhythm of service. That visibility is part of the value here, and it is one reason proximity to the kitchen counts as a practical argument for booking rather than just an aesthetic preference.
The editorial angle at Cucina Bacilieri is that this is a chef who is also an owner, cooking food shaped by a specific geography. Ferrara sits within a food culture that produced some of Italy's most distinctive preparations: the pasticcio ferrarese alone , a sweet pastry shell encasing braised meat and pasta , is a dish with no clean analogue elsewhere in Italian cuisine. The restaurant engages with that tradition directly, updating the technique without erasing the reference point. If your first visit leaned toward the à la carte options, a return with the tasting menu will give you a more complete picture of how that regional intelligence is sequenced.
The Michelin Plate recognition in 2025 is a useful calibration point. It does not carry the weight of a star, but Michelin's Plate designation signals a kitchen producing food of consistent quality and clear intent. For a small, owner-operated restaurant in a city like Ferrara , which sits in the shadow of Modena's outsized dining reputation , that recognition in 2025 marks the restaurant as one worth tracking. Ferrara's dining scene is smaller and quieter than the broader Emilia-Romagna circuit, which means Cucina Bacilieri's Michelin acknowledgment carries proportionally more signal here than it would in Bologna or Parma. If you dined here before 2025, the kitchen has now been formally validated.
At the €€€ price tier, Cucina Bacilieri is among Ferrara's more expensive dinner options. The question is whether the cooking justifies the premium over the city's more affordable alternatives. The answer, based on the Michelin Plate and the 4.7 Google rating across 757 reviews, is yes for diners who want a kitchen with a defined culinary perspective rather than a broad trattoria menu. The high volume of reviews at that score is meaningful: a 4.7 from 757 people is more reliable than a 4.9 from 40. The restaurant has earned consistent approval at scale, not just from a small pool of enthusiastic early visitors.
For context within the wider Italian modern cuisine category, Cucina Bacilieri is operating at a considerably more accessible price and booking difficulty than starred destinations elsewhere in the region. [Osteria Francescana in Modena](https://www.joinpearl.co/restaurants/osteria-francescana) and [Dal Pescatore in Runate](https://www.joinpearl.co/restaurants/dal-pescatore-runate-restaurant) represent a different tier of commitment and spend. Cucina Bacilieri offers something closer to a considered, chef-driven dinner without requiring months of advance planning or a three-figure per-head commitment before wine. If you are building a broader Italian itinerary, venues like [Uliassi in Senigallia](https://www.joinpearl.co/restaurants/uliassi-senigallia-restaurant), [Reale in Castel di Sangro](https://www.joinpearl.co/restaurants/reale-castel-di-sangro-restaurant), or [Atelier Moessmer Norbert Niederkofler in Brunico](https://www.joinpearl.co/restaurants/atelier-moessmer-norbert-niederkofler-brunico-restaurant) occupy a starred tier above; Cucina Bacilieri is the right call if Ferrara is already on your route.
Booking difficulty is rated easy. That is a relative advantage worth using: the small table count means the room fills, but it does not require the weeks-out planning that a starred kitchen in a larger city demands. Book a few days ahead for a weekday; for weekend dinners, a week's notice is a reasonable precaution given the limited covers. The address is Via Terranuova, 60, in central Ferrara, placing it within the historic centre and accessible on foot from most of the city's accommodation. Phone and website details are not currently listed in Pearl's data, so search by name directly or use a booking aggregator to confirm availability.
For more on dining in the city, see [our full Ferrara restaurants guide](https://www.joinpearl.co/restaurants/ferrara). If you are planning accommodation or broader itinerary logistics, [our full Ferrara hotels guide](https://www.joinpearl.co/hotels/ferrara), [bars guide](https://www.joinpearl.co/bars/ferrara), [wineries guide](https://www.joinpearl.co/wineries/ferrara), and [experiences guide](https://www.joinpearl.co/experiences/ferrara) cover the full picture.
Quick reference: Via Terranuova 60, Ferrara | €€€ | Michelin Plate 2025 | Google 4.7 (757 reviews) | Booking difficulty: Easy
Focus on dishes rooted in Ferrara's regional identity. The Michelin documentation specifically calls out eel and pasticcio ferrarese as signatures of the kitchen's approach , a sweet-pastry baked pasta dish that has almost no equivalent elsewhere in Italian cooking. If you have been once and ordered à la carte, a return visit with the tasting menu will give you a more coherent picture of how the chef sequences these regional references. Avoid treating this as a generic Italian restaurant menu: the value here is in the local specificity.
A few days is usually sufficient for weekday dinners; aim for a week ahead for weekends. The small table count keeps demand consistent, but this is not a restaurant requiring the two-to-four week advance window that starred venues in Modena or Bologna demand. At the €€€ price tier, it draws a considered crowd rather than casual walk-ins, which keeps last-minute availability tighter than the ease rating might suggest. Book through a search aggregator or by contacting the restaurant directly, as no online booking link is currently listed in Pearl's data.
Yes, and arguably more so than at a larger restaurant. The few-table format and proximity to the kitchen , whether at a counter or in a compact room , mean solo diners are not left isolated at an oversized table. The intimacy of the space works in your favour. At €€€, solo dining here is a deliberate spend rather than a casual drop-in, but for a solo traveller who wants a proper meal in Ferrara rather than a trattoria, this is the right choice. For a cheaper solo option, [Da Noemi](https://www.joinpearl.co/restaurants/da-noemi-ferrara-restaurant) at the € tier is the alternative to consider.
The few-table format makes large group bookings complicated. If you are travelling with more than four people, contact the restaurant directly and ask whether a private arrangement is possible , but be prepared for the answer to be no, or for the room to feel genuinely crowded. For groups of two to four, the intimate scale is an asset rather than a constraint. If you need to seat six or more in Ferrara at a comparable price tier, [Makorè](https://www.joinpearl.co/restaurants/makor-ferrara-restaurant) at €€€ is the peer worth checking for availability alongside Bacilieri.
Three things: first, this is modern cuisine with a specific regional identity, not a general Italian menu , if you want a broad pasta selection, go elsewhere. Second, the Michelin Plate and 4.7 Google score (757 reviews) mean the quality is consistent, not just occasionally good. Third, at €€€ in a city where most restaurants sit at € or €€, you are paying a premium that the kitchen justifies through precision and ingredient sourcing rather than room grandeur. Come in knowing what Ferrara's cuisine is: the eel, the pasticcio, the Po Delta geography. It will make the meal land harder. For broader context before your visit, [our full Ferrara restaurants guide](https://www.joinpearl.co/restaurants/ferrara) covers the city's dining tiers in full.
| Venue | Price | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Cucina Bacilieri | €€€ | — |
| Ca' d'Frara | €€ | — |
| Da Noemi | € | — |
| Quel Fantastico Giovedì | €€ | — |
| Makorè | €€€ | — |
Side-by-side comparison to help you decide where to book.
The kitchen's identity is built around Ferrara's own ingredients, so lean into the regional dishes: eel from the Po Delta and pasticcio ferrarese, a baked pasta preparation specific to this area, are the clearest expressions of what makes this restaurant distinct from generic modern Italian. The Michelin Plate recognition in 2025 signals the cooking is precise enough to handle both traditional and occasionally creative interpretations, so don't default to the safest option on the menu.
Booking difficulty is rated easy relative to comparable €€€ Michelin-recognised restaurants, but the small table count means the room does fill. Booking a week to ten days out is a reasonable baseline for weekends; midweek has more give. Don't use the easy rating as a reason to leave it until the day before — a few tables means any full night closes off fast.
The intimate scale works in a solo diner's favour: fewer tables means more attentive service and less of the anonymity that larger rooms produce. At €€€, a solo meal is a real spend, but if you want a single serious dinner in Ferrara that covers both regional cooking and Michelin-level execution, this is the clearest case for it.
The small table count makes large groups a difficult fit — this is not a venue designed for parties of six or more. Groups of two to four are the format that works here. If your party is larger, check the venue's official channels to check capacity, but go in knowing the room's scale is a constraint, not a feature that can be worked around.
This is a 2025 Michelin Plate restaurant operating at the €€€ tier, which means the cooking has been independently assessed as worth the price — but don't arrive expecting a flashy or theatrical experience. The room is small, the cooking is regionally grounded, and the value case rests on dishes like eel and pasticcio ferrarese that you won't find executed at this level at a lower price point in Ferrara. Book ahead, arrive curious about the local ingredients, and treat it as a focused dinner rather than a long celebratory event.
Keep this venue in your Pearl passport, rate it after you visit, and track it alongside every other place you collect.
