Restaurant in Sauris, Italy
Bib Gourmand value, serious Alpine cooking.
Alla Pace is a Michelin Bib Gourmand-recognised Friulian restaurant in Sauris di Sotto, a small Alpine village in the Carnic Alps of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. At a single-€ price point, it delivers serious regional cooking — cured meats, frico with polenta, and Alpine meat preparations — in a room that is exactly as traditional as the food. Easy to book, hard to get to, worth the drive if you are already in the area.
Sauris di Sotto sits at roughly 1,200 metres in the Carnic Alps of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and the village's isolation is precisely the point. Alla Pace has earned back-to-back Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition in 2024 and 2025, confirming that the drive to get here pays off in the bowl and on the plate. At a single-€ price point, this is one of the most direct value decisions in the Italian mountain dining calendar: serious Friulian cooking, a room that looks and feels like the Alps, and a bill that will not hurt. Book it.
The Alpine interior is the first thing you notice: timber, low ceilings, and a visual register that belongs entirely to this corner of Friuli rather than to any broader Italian dining trope. Sauris di Sotto is a small enough village that Alla Pace carries real local weight, and the room reflects that. This is not a restaurant performing rusticity for visitors — it is a place where the architecture and the menu arrive from the same geography.
The menu works from the territory outward. Sauris is famous across Italy for its cured meats, particularly its smoked speck, which benefits from the mountain air and the valley's Germanic food traditions (this part of Friuli has an old Austro-Bavarian lineage that still shapes what ends up on the table). The cured meats here are a natural anchor for a first course, and the frico — a crisp of melted cheese and potato served with polenta , is the Friulian dish you should order if you order nothing else. Meat runs through the rest of the menu in the way that makes sense for a high-altitude, historically pastoral community. Expect slow-cooked preparations, local cheeses, and portions scaled to the mountain context.
For food and travel enthusiasts who want depth, the regional specificity here is genuine. Friulian cuisine does not get the same international attention as Piedmontese or Tuscan cooking, but in terms of distinct ingredients and technique, it rewards attention. If you are already in the Carnic Alps, Alla Pace is the kind of place that justifies the detour. If you are not already in the area, the honest answer is that building a trip around it requires planning , but pairing it with the broader Sauris experience (smoked products, the alpine lake, the local brewery) makes the logistics sensible.
Given the Bib Gourmand price tier and the breadth of the Friulian pantry, Alla Pace rewards repeat visits more than most mountain restaurants in this category. On a first visit, anchor on the cured meats as an opener and the frico with polenta as your main reference point for how the kitchen handles local dairy and starch. These two courses together give you the clearest read on what makes the Sauris kitchen distinct.
A second visit is the time to move deeper into the meat programme. The territory's pastoral tradition produces preparations that vary with season and supply, and a return visit when the menu has shifted gives a different picture of the kitchen's range. Mountain restaurants at this price point often carry underrated vegetable and dairy work in autumn and winter, when local producers are at full production, so timing a second visit for the cooler months can yield a meaningfully different table.
If you get to a third visit, use it to test the kitchen's less obvious offerings. Friulian cuisine has a tradition of soups, bean dishes, and grain preparations that rarely make it onto the headline menu at tourist-facing restaurants but tend to appear when the kitchen trusts the room. At Alla Pace, where the clientele skews local and returning, those dishes are more likely to surface. Ask what is being made that day beyond the printed options.
Across all visits, the cured meats remain the non-negotiable anchor. The Sauris smoked products are a Friulian credential in their own right, and ordering them here, at source, is a different experience from encountering them on a charcuterie board in Venice or Trieste.
Booking is easy relative to the recognition the restaurant carries. The Bib Gourmand status brings visitors, but the location acts as its own filter , you will not be competing with the same pool of reservations as you would at a city-based Bib. Phone contact details are not listed, so approach booking via direct contact with the restaurant or through accommodation in Sauris who can assist. The address is Via Sauris di Sotto, 38, 33020 Sauris di Sotto UD. Driving is the practical option; public transport to Sauris di Sotto is limited. Google reviewers rate Alla Pace at 4.6 across 499 reviews, a consistently strong signal for a restaurant of this type and location.
Price range is single-€, placing this firmly in the budget-friendly tier for the quality of cooking and the recognition it carries. Groups and solo diners are both well-served by a room of this character and price point.
For more on eating and drinking in the area, see our full Sauris restaurants guide, our Sauris hotels guide, and our Sauris bars guide. If you want to explore the wider region further, our Sauris wineries guide and our Sauris experiences guide cover the area in depth.
Quick reference: Michelin Bib Gourmand 2024 and 2025 | Price: € | Address: Via Sauris di Sotto, 38 | Booking: Easy | Google: 4.6 (499 reviews)
Within the Friulian mountain restaurant category, Oro Nero in Sauris is the nearest direct comparison for Italian Contemporary cooking in the same village. Alla Pace sits at the more traditional end: the cooking is rooted in local Friulian and Carnic Alpine traditions rather than in a contemporary reinterpretation of them, and the price reflects that positioning. If you want a more modern reading of the same ingredients, Oro Nero is the move. If you want the territory cooked straight, without the modernising layer, Alla Pace is the better choice. For Friulian cooking outside the mountains, Al Piave in Mariano del Friuli and Il Favri in San Giorgio della Richinvelda offer regional Friulian cooking in lower-altitude contexts.
Stacking Alla Pace against Italy's celebrated destination restaurants gives useful context for deciding how to structure a broader Italian trip. Atelier Moessmer Norbert Niederkofler in Brunico operates in a comparable Alpine geography at €€€€, with a creative tasting menu format that puts it in a different category entirely. If your trip is built around fine-dining landmarks, Atelier Moessmer is the northern Italian mountain option. Alla Pace answers a different question: where to eat well, cheaply, and with genuine local conviction, while already in the Carnic Alps. These are not competing decisions , they serve different trip architectures. Elsewhere in Italy, Dal Pescatore in Runate, Osteria Francescana in Modena, Reale in Castel di Sangro, and Quattro Passi in Marina del Cantone all operate at €€€€ with international booking competition. Alla Pace offers none of that friction and none of those prices.
| Venue | Awards | Price | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alla Pace | Not the easiest place to reach unless you are already in the area, Sauris di Sotto is a picturesque mountain village, with houses that seem lifted from a fairytale. Here you’ll also find this restaurant, with its characteristically Alpine interior. The menu naturally celebrates the local territory, beginning with the area’s famous cured meats, an excellent frico of cheese and potatoes with polenta, and, of course, plenty of meat.; Michelin Bib Gourmand (2025); Michelin Bib Gourmand (2024) | € | — |
| Atelier Moessmer Norbert Niederkofler | Michelin 3 Star, World's 50 Best | €€€€ | — |
| Dal Pescatore | Michelin 3 Star, World's 50 Best | €€€€ | — |
| Osteria Francescana | Michelin 3 Star, World's 50 Best | €€€€ | — |
| Quattro Passi | Michelin 3 Star, World's 50 Best | €€€€ | — |
| Reale | Michelin 3 Star, World's 50 Best | €€€€ | — |
Comparing your options in Sauris for this tier.
No group-specific policies are documented for this venue. Given the characteristically Alpine interior and the village-scale setting of Sauris di Sotto, this is likely a mid-sized dining room rather than a large-group venue. check the venue's official channels before planning a group booking, and factor in that the remote location at roughly 1,200 metres means logistics require planning for the whole party.
Oro Nero in Sauris is the nearest direct comparison for Italian Contemporary cooking in the same village, and serves as the main local alternative if you want a different register than traditional Friulian. Outside the village, the broader Carnic Alps and Friuli-Venezia Giulia region have further options, though none at the same combination of Bib Gourmand recognition and sub-€30 price point in this specific location.
The price range and relaxed Alpine format make it one of the more approachable solo-dining options in the Carnic Alps. At the Bib Gourmand price tier, ordering a few dishes without the cost pressure of a higher-end restaurant is comfortable. The setting in Sauris di Sotto also suits solo travellers who are already touring the area rather than making it a standalone destination trip.
Start with the cured meats — Sauris is known for its smoked speck and salumi, and the restaurant leans into this directly. The frico of cheese and potatoes with polenta is the dish most closely associated with the venue and worth ordering on any visit. Meat dishes anchor the main courses, reflecting the Friulian mountain pantry the kitchen is built around.
The venue data doesn't confirm a dedicated tasting menu format, so this is not a tasting-menu destination in the way an omakase counter or modern Italian kitchen might be. What Alla Pace offers instead is Bib Gourmand-priced Friulian cooking in the single-euro price range, which makes ordering broadly across the menu an affordable way to cover the territory. For structured tasting menus in the region, Atelier Moessmer Norbert Niederkofler in South Tyrol is the more appropriate choice.
It works well for a celebration if the occasion suits a relaxed Alpine setting rather than a formal dining room. The Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition gives it credibility, and the mountain village location in Sauris di Sotto makes the experience feel genuinely different. For a more conventionally formal special occasion, Dal Pescatore or Osteria Francescana in Emilia-Romagna would be stronger choices.
Keep this venue in your Pearl passport, rate it after you visit, and track it alongside every other place you collect.
