Europe is no longer innovative? Quite the contrary. The continent’s culinary scene is vibrant and thriving. Falstaff presents five of the most exciting European restaurants worth travelling for in 2026.
Text: Georges Desrues and Tove Oskarsson Henckel
The hottest restaurant in stylish Milan is a simple trattoria that looks like something out of a 1950s Italian film, with Sophia Loren in the kitchen. But appearances are deceiving: despite its retro atmosphere and vintage furniture, Trippa has only been around for a few years. The name can also be misleading. It means “tripe” in English, and yes, tripe is served – lightly fried, for instance, as one of the house specialties – along with other offal dishes. Yet chef Diego Rossi himself eats mostly vegetarian, which is why the menu also features beautifully prepared vegetable dishes. All of this comes at very reasonable prices, which helps explain why Trippa is booked out weeks in advance.
Willem Hiele’s eponymous restaurant in Oudenburg is a deeply personal gastronomic destination, shaped like an ongoing dialogue with its surroundings. Hiele cooks with instinct, memory, and an uncompromising sense of place. The North Sea dictates the rhythm, its fish and crustaceans defining the dishes, while vegetables and grains from nearby fields stand as equal protagonists. His cuisine rejects spectacle in favor of purity and depth, layered like the tides themselves. His signature Ostend shrimp bisque—enriched with cream and coffee powder, topped with delicate grey shrimps—is both refined and distinctive.
While London now boasts exceptional British cuisine, its greatest strength remains its diversity of outstanding international restaurants, allowing visitors to experience global flavors without leaving Europe. Amy Poon hails from a Chinese restaurateur dynasty that shaped London’s dining scene as early as the 1970s. Since last year, she has been serving refined homestyle cooking from her ancestral homeland within the majestic Somerset House complex—at an impressively high level. Highlights include an outstanding duck salad with house-made pickles and clay-pot rice with a variety of in-house air-dried meats.
At Le Coquillage, the sea is ever-present—even when it retreats hundreds of meters, as the tides in the Bay of Mont-Saint-Michel are among the strongest in the world. It is reflected in the restaurant’s name (“the shell”), in the elegant villa overlooking the bay with its leather armchairs, binoculars in the windows, and model ships on the mantelpieces. It is embodied by chef Hugo Roellinger, who once sailed the world as a merchant marine captain before taking over his family’s establishment. And it defines the cuisine, which entirely forgoes meat in favor of ingredients drawn exclusively from the sea. Together, these elements create a truly unique maritime experience.
Among the great chefs Peru has produced, Gastón Acurio is considered a figurehead. The 58-year-old has helped bring Peruvian cuisine to global fame through many projects, including his cevichería called La Mar. A branch opened in Madrid last March and made an explosive debut. In addition to the freshest fish and seafood for ceviche – arguably Peru’s most important contribution to world cuisine – there are numerous other dishes that tell the story of the country’s cultural and geographical diversity, spanning the Amazon, the Andes, and the Pacific. These include anticuchos, grilled skewers of beef heart served with chimichurri sauce, giant white corn, and a rare Peruvian potato variety.
