Restaurant in Fondi, Italy
Family-run seasonal cooking worth the detour.
Da Fausto is a family-run Michelin Plate (2025) restaurant in Fondi serving weekly-changing Piedmontese menus anchored in fresh pasta, meat, and house-produced Pinot Nero. At the €€ price point, it delivers more wine programme depth and kitchen care than most rooms at this tier. Book for a special occasion or a proper weekend lunch.
If you are planning a celebratory dinner in the Fondi area and want genuine regional cooking over spectacle, Da Fausto is the right call. This is a family-run trattoria operating at the €€ price point with a Michelin Plate (2025) to its name and a 4.6 Google rating across 246 reviews — a combination that signals consistent quality without the formality or cost of a starred room. It suits couples marking an anniversary, families wanting a proper Sunday lunch, or anyone who considers a well-stocked wine cellar and handmade pasta reason enough to make a reservation. If you are after a quick weeknight meal with minimal commitment, it also works , but you would be underusing what the kitchen here is genuinely good at.
Da Fausto has built its identity around Piedmontese cuisine served in the Lazio coastal town of Fondi , an unusual pairing that gives the menu a distinctly northern Italian character in a southern setting. The menu changes weekly, which means the kitchen is pulling from whatever is fresh and available rather than running the same dishes year-round. Meat is the anchor of the menu, supplemented by fresh pasta dishes. The agnolotti , the stuffed pasta format that is one of Piedmont's most recognisable contributions to Italian cooking , appears as a signature, which tells you where the kitchen's loyalties lie technically. Desserts are handled in-house by Gaia, and the fiordilatte ice cream is specifically called out as worth ordering.
The kitchen is run by Rosella, with Fausto working front of house and Gaia contributing both service and the dessert programme. A restaurant where three generations of one family divide the labour across dining room, kitchen, and pastry tends to produce a different kind of meal than a chef-driven operation , the experience has a domestic coherence to it that is difficult to engineer in a more professional context. For a special occasion, that quality of care registers.
The wine list at Da Fausto is more serious than the price point suggests, and it is worth factoring into your decision. The cellar is well stocked, but what separates this from a standard trattoria wine list is that Da Fausto produces its own Pinot Nero , available in both dry and sparkling versions. This is not a restaurant that has simply placed a few bottles on a shelf. Running a production label alongside a dining room requires a level of commitment to wine that shapes how the cellar is curated overall.
Pinot Nero from an Italian producer in a Piedmontese cooking context is a coherent pairing choice. The grape has a long history in northern Italy, particularly in Oltrepò Pavese and Alto Adige, so a kitchen rooted in Piedmontese tradition using Pinot Nero as its house wine makes sense both historically and at the table. If wine is central to how you think about a meal, Da Fausto offers more depth here than most restaurants operating at the €€ tier. For comparison, [Riso Amaro (Modern Cuisine)](https://www.joinpearl.co/restaurants/riso-amaro-fondi-restaurant) in Fondi takes a different approach to the local offer , worth checking if you want a modern cuisine angle rather than the traditional register Da Fausto occupies.
Anyone wanting to extend the visit can book one of the guestrooms at Borgo del Gallo, which turns a dinner into an overnight stay , a practical option for a milestone anniversary or a longer celebration that benefits from not having to drive back the same evening. For more on where to stay locally, see [our full Fondi hotels guide](https://www.joinpearl.co/hotels/fondi).
Da Fausto is not the only serious cooking option in this part of Italy, but it occupies a specific and useful niche. Fondi sits in the Lazio coast corridor, and the local restaurant offer skews heavily toward seafood. A kitchen anchored in Piedmontese tradition , meat-forward, pasta-centred, with a wine programme built around northern Italian varietals , is genuinely different from what surrounds it. That is not a marketing claim; it is a practical observation about what you are choosing between when you eat in this area.
For broader context on the Fondi dining scene, [our full Fondi restaurants guide](https://www.joinpearl.co/restaurants/fondi) maps the full range of options. If you are exploring what else the area offers beyond the table, [our full Fondi experiences guide](https://www.joinpearl.co/experiences/fondi), [bars guide](https://www.joinpearl.co/bars/fondi), and [wineries guide](https://www.joinpearl.co/wineries/fondi) cover the surrounding offer.
Within the country cooking format specifically, Da Fausto sits alongside places like [21.9 in Piobesi d'Alba](https://www.joinpearl.co/restaurants/219-piobesi-dalba-restaurant) and [Andrea Monesi - Locanda di Orta in Orta San Giulio](https://www.joinpearl.co/restaurants/andrea-monesi-locanda-di-orta-orta-san-giulio-restaurant) as Italian restaurants where the format is traditional but the execution is careful enough to earn recognition. The comparison is useful if you are travelling through northern Italy and want to benchmark what this style of cooking can achieve at its better end.
Reservations: Recommended, particularly for weekend evenings and special occasions , this is a small family operation and walk-in availability is not guaranteed. Booking difficulty: Easy. Budget: €€ , accessible for the quality on offer, and notably good value given the Michelin Plate recognition and in-house wine production. Dress: No formal dress code indicated; smart casual is a safe read for a Michelin-recognised room. Address: Piazza Cesare Beccaria, 6, 04022 Fondi LT, Italy.
| Venue | Cuisine | Price | Booking Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Da Fausto | Country cooking | €€ | Easy |
| Atelier Moessmer Norbert Niederkofler | Italian, Creative | €€€€ | Unknown |
| Dal Pescatore | Italian, Italian Contemporary | €€€€ | Unknown |
| Enoteca Pinchiorri | Italian - French, Italian Contemporary | €€€€ | Unknown |
| Enrico Bartolini | Creative | €€€€ | Unknown |
| Le Calandre | Progressive Italian, Creative | €€€€ | Unknown |
How Da Fausto stacks up against the competition.
Yes, provided you want something intimate rather than grand. Da Fausto is a Michelin Plate family operation where Fausto runs the room, his wife Rosella cooks, and daughter Gaia handles desserts — that level of personal involvement suits a birthday or anniversary over a corporate dinner. The €€ price range means a celebratory meal won't break the bank, and the weekly-changing menu keeps the occasion feeling considered.
Da Fausto occupies a specific niche — Piedmontese cuisine in a Lazio coastal town at a €€ price point — and direct Fondi-based alternatives at the same quality level are not well-documented. If you're willing to travel further along the Lazio coast, the region has seafood-focused trattorie, but none with Da Fausto's Michelin recognition or its combination of in-house wine production and guestrooms.
It can work for solo diners, but this is fundamentally a family-run dining room geared toward table bookings rather than counter or bar seating. The relaxed, personal atmosphere should feel welcoming rather than awkward for a solo visit, and the €€ pricing keeps the commitment low. Call ahead to flag your solo reservation — as a small operation, they'll appreciate it.
The agnolotti are specifically flagged as a house standout, so lead with those if they're on the week's menu. Meat dishes take centre stage across the menu, and the fiordilatte ice cream is noted as a dessert highlight from Gaia's pastry side of the kitchen. Because the menu changes weekly, it's worth asking what's in season when you book.
The database doesn't document a formal dietary restriction policy, and given that this is a small family kitchen running a weekly-changing meat-forward menu, pescatarians and vegetarians may find options limited. check the venue's official channels before booking if you have specific requirements — the personal nature of the operation means they're likely to be communicative, but flexibility isn't guaranteed.
No specific tasting menu format is documented for Da Fausto. The kitchen runs a weekly-changing à la carte-style menu built around seasonal Piedmontese dishes. At a €€ price range, the value question is less about a set tasting format and more about whether the seasonal menu on your visit appeals — checking what's on before you go is practical advice here.
At €€, Da Fausto is a strong proposition for what you get: a Michelin Plate-recognised family restaurant with in-house wine production (including Pinot Nero), weekly-changing seasonal menus, and a multi-generational kitchen team. You're not paying for spectacle or prestige; you're paying for competent, personal, regionally-rooted cooking. For that format, it delivers well above its price band.
Keep this venue in your Pearl passport, rate it after you visit, and track it alongside every other place you collect.
