La Pista

Verdict

La Pista earns its place at the top of the Lingotto building and at the top of your Turin shortlist. Three tasting menus, a Michelin Plate in both 2024 and 2025, a setting that no other restaurant in the city can replicate make this a strong choice for a special occasion dinner. At €€€ pricing, it sits a tier below the full Michelin-starred rooms in Turin, which means you get serious creative cooking without the €€€€ outlay of Del Cambio or Piano35. Book it for a celebration, a date, or any meal where the setting needs to match the food.

Portrait

The tasting menu format at La Pista is built around three distinct paths, choosing between them is the first real decision you make as a diner. "Radici, gli essenziali" follows traditional Piedmontese cuisine, drawing on the region's deep larder of truffles, aged cheeses, braised meats, slow-cooked grains. "Botanic World" is a fully vegetarian menu, structured around the botanic garden that now covers the famous rooftop test track where Fiat once ran cars around the building's roof. The third option, "Trust," removes all choices from you entirely: chef Alessandro Scardina selects every course, the menu changes according to what he wants to cook that day. For first-timers, "Trust" is the most direct way to understand what the kitchen is capable of.

The architecture of the experience here matters. Most special-occasion restaurants in Turin operate at a single register: either deeply traditional Piedmontese (see Consorzio at €€) or aggressively contemporary (see Condividere at €€€€). La Pista runs all three modes simultaneously, which gives it flexibility that most of its peers lack. If your party splits on whether to go classic or adventurous, the menu architecture here solves that problem before you arrive.

Lingotto building itself adds a layer of context that shapes the meal before the first course arrives. The former Fiat factory, designed in the early twentieth century, was one of the most audacious industrial buildings in Europe. The rooftop test track, once used to put production cars through their paces before delivery, has been converted into a botanic garden. When the "Botanic World" menu draws its vegetarian dishes from that garden's botanical logic, the connection between the space and the plate is more than decorative. For a diner who appreciates that kind of layered thinking, the meal reads differently because of it. Dining here before or after a walk through that garden is worth planning for, the restaurant provides navigation instructions to help you reach the lift without getting turned around in the Lingotto shopping centre below.

Cooking under Scardina carries two consecutive Michelin Plates, which signals consistent quality at a level the inspectors consider worth noting, even if a star has not followed. At €€€ pricing, the value proposition is clear: you are getting a serious creative tasting menu in a setting at a price point well below the full starred experiences in the city. For context, Cannavacciuolo Bistrot and Carignano both operate at higher price tiers with fuller Michelin recognition. La Pista sits usefully between the entry-level and the best of the market.

Diners are arriving with high expectations, managing an unusual logistical journey, still rating the experience highly. That is a harder result to achieve than a direct city-centre reservation.

For the special occasion diner comparing options in Turin, the question is whether the setting justifies the choice over a more central restaurant. The answer depends on what the occasion calls for. If you want a meal with a story attached to it, the Lingotto location and the rooftop garden provide that in a way that no basement dining room or hotel restaurant can match. If you want the deepest Piedmontese wine list and maximum service formality, Del Cambio is the safer call. If you want progressive Italian cooking in a contemporary room at the top of the market, Piano35 competes directly. But for a meal where the architecture, the history, the garden, the cooking all reinforce each other, La Pista has no direct competitor in the city.

Booking difficulty is rated Easy, which means you do not need to plan weeks in advance the way you would for Turin's starred rooms. That said, for a specific date tied to a celebration, booking at least a week ahead is sensible. The restaurant is not a walk-in destination given the building's layout and the tasting menu format.

For broader Turin planning, see our full Turin restaurants guide, our full Turin hotels guide, our full Turin bars guide, our full Turin wineries guide, and our full Turin experiences guide. If creative tasting menus at the European level are your benchmark, compare La Pista against Osteria Francescana in Modena, Reale in Castel di Sangro, Uliassi in Senigallia, or further afield, Quique Dacosta in Dénia and Arpège in Paris.

Practical Details