Restaurant in San Vincenzo, Italy
Serious Tuscan cooking at beach-town prices.
Il Sale holds consecutive Michelin Plates for 2024 and 2025 and a 4.6 Google rating across 400+ reviews — making it the most credentialled dining option in San Vincenzo at the €€ price tier. Book it as your anchor meal on the Etruscan Coast, plan a return visit to work through the wine list, and reserve two to three weeks ahead if visiting in summer.
Il Sale earns two consecutive Michelin Plates (2024 and 2025) in a coastal Tuscan town where serious food is easy to overlook, and its Google rating of 4.6 across more than 400 reviews suggests the recognition is deserved. At the €€ price point, it is one of the more accessible Michelin-recognised dining options anywhere on the Etruscan Coast. Book it as your anchor meal in San Vincenzo, plan more than one visit if you are staying for several days, and consider it a sound choice for a special occasion that does not require a €€€€ commitment. Booking is easy by Italian fine-dining standards, but summer demand in this beach-destination town means you should not assume a table is always waiting.
Il Sale sits along the coastal road outside San Vincenzo at Strada di S. Bartolo 100, a working-class Livornese beach town on the Etruscan Coast of Tuscany. The town is not primarily a food destination — most visitors come for the Rimigliano nature reserve and the sea — which makes a Michelin-recognised Tuscan kitchen here worth paying attention to. For the food-focused traveller passing through this stretch of coastline, Il Sale is the dining appointment worth anchoring a visit around.
The cuisine is Tuscan, rooted in the produce and seafood traditions of the Livorno province. The Etruscan Coast sits at the point where the land's olive oil and legume culture meets the Tyrrhenian Sea's fish supply, and Tuscan coastal cooking reflects that intersection directly. Without verified menu specifics from the database, the precise dishes cannot be described here, but the Michelin Plate designation across two consecutive years signals a kitchen operating with consistent technical competence and clear culinary identity , not a one-season performance.
At the €€ price tier, Il Sale positions itself as genuinely accessible. This is not a tasting-menu-only format at three figures per head. It is a place where a properly cooked Tuscan meal with regional wine can be had without the financial exposure of a full fine-dining evening. For the price-conscious explorer who still wants culinary credibility behind their meal, that combination is difficult to find along this coastline.
If you are based in San Vincenzo for more than two nights, Il Sale rewards repeat visits. On a first visit, use it to establish the kitchen's range: order across the menu rather than defaulting to the obvious seafood and get a sense of how the kitchen handles both land and sea. The Tuscan coast produces both, and a kitchen worth returning to will handle both with equal confidence.
A second visit is the right moment to go deeper into the wine list. Tuscany's DOC and IGT classifications run from the well-known Bolgheri corridor , just a few kilometres up the coast, home to Sassicaia and Ornellaia , down through lesser-documented coastal producers. A restaurant holding a Michelin Plate on this stretch of coastline almost certainly carries some access to Bolgheri-area producers that a visitor would not encounter by the glass elsewhere in town. Use the second visit to ask what is open and local rather than defaulting to the standard pours.
A third visit, if your stay allows it, is where you test the kitchen against a specific constraint: a dietary restriction, a request for off-menu simplicity, or a deliberate focus on a single course category. How a kitchen handles these requests at the €€ tier reveals more about its actual competence than any single meal can.
For a San Vincenzo stay with multiple evenings to fill, cross-reference Il Sale with La Perla del Mare for a contrasting seafood-focused evening. The two together give you a reasonable read of what the local dining scene can offer. See our full San Vincenzo restaurants guide for a complete picture of options across price tiers.
Il Sale is at Strada di S. Bartolo 100, 57027 San Vincenzo LI, Italy. Booking is rated easy, which is unusual for a twice-designated Michelin Plate restaurant, but San Vincenzo is a seasonal coastal destination rather than a year-round city dining market. That said, July and August bring significant summer traffic to this coastline, and assuming a table is available on arrival in peak season is a risk. Book two to three weeks ahead for summer visits and a few days ahead for shoulder season. No booking method is listed in the available data, so check the venue directly for reservation options.
Price range is €€. No hours, dress code, or seat count data is available in the current record. Confirm opening days before travelling, particularly in shoulder season when coastal restaurants in Tuscany sometimes close mid-week.
Quick reference: €€ price tier | Michelin Plate 2024 and 2025 | 4.6/5 on Google (408 reviews) | Easy booking difficulty | Book 2–3 weeks ahead in summer.
For more on the area, see our guides to San Vincenzo hotels, San Vincenzo bars, San Vincenzo wineries, and San Vincenzo experiences.
| Venue | Awards | Price | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Il Sale | Michelin Plate (2025); Michelin Plate (2024) | €€ | — |
| Atelier Moessmer Norbert Niederkofler | Michelin 3 Star, World's 50 Best | €€€€ | — |
| Dal Pescatore | Michelin 3 Star, World's 50 Best | €€€€ | — |
| Enoteca Pinchiorri | Michelin 3 Star, World's 50 Best | €€€€ | — |
| Enrico Bartolini | Michelin 3 Star, World's 50 Best | €€€€ | — |
| Le Calandre | Michelin 3 Star, World's 50 Best | €€€€ | — |
A quick look at how Il Sale measures up.
check the venue's official channels before booking to confirm. At the €€ price point with a Michelin Plate designation two years running, the kitchen operates at a level where dietary requests are typically manageable, but Tuscan cuisine relies heavily on meat and seafood and may have limited vegetarian depth. Confirm specifics in advance rather than assuming flexibility on the night.
Yes, particularly if you want a genuinely credentialed meal without a big-city price tag. Two consecutive Michelin Plates (2024 and 2025) give it a verifiable claim to quality that most restaurants in a beach town like San Vincenzo cannot match. The €€ pricing means you can mark an occasion here without the spend you would face at a comparable Michelin-recognised address in Florence or Milan.
San Vincenzo is a small coastal town and serious dining options are limited. For Michelin-starred Tuscan cooking with more formal credentials, Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence is the obvious escalation. Closer to the Etruscan Coast, the area around Bolgheri has wine-focused restaurants worth considering. Il Sale is the strongest Michelin-recognised option in the immediate area based on available data.
No group-booking data is available for Il Sale, but at a coastal Tuscan restaurant at the €€ level, large groups typically require advance notice and may face constraints on space or menu flexibility. check the venue's official channels for parties of six or more. For smaller groups of two to four, booking in the normal way should be sufficient.
Booking is rated easy relative to its Michelin Plate status, which is unusual. That said, San Vincenzo draws significant summer coastal traffic, so booking at least a week ahead in peak season (July and August) is sensible. Off-season, a few days' notice is likely sufficient, but calling ahead remains advisable given limited contact information is publicly listed.
At €€, Il Sale delivers Michelin Plate-level Tuscan cooking at a price well below comparable credentialed restaurants in Tuscany's major cities. Two consecutive Plates in 2024 and 2025 confirm the kitchen is consistent, not a one-year anomaly. For the coastal location and the price bracket, the value-to-credential ratio is hard to argue against.
Tasting menu availability and pricing are not confirmed in available data, so the specific format cannot be assessed. What is confirmed is that Il Sale operates at a Michelin Plate standard within the €€ price range, which suggests structured menus, if offered, would represent good value relative to the quality tier. Check directly with the restaurant for current menu formats before booking.
Keep this venue in your Pearl passport, rate it after you visit, and track it alongside every other place you collect.
