Uliassi

A Beach Club Setting That Earns Three Stars

Arrive at Banchina di Levante on a summer afternoon and the first thing you register is how ordinary it looks from the road. Beach parasols line the shore, sunbathers fill the sand, and the noise of the Adriatic carries across the promenade. Uliassi sits inside this scene rather than apart from it, occupying a white wooden structure on the marina edge that reads, on first approach, more like an upscale beach club than one of Italy's most decorated kitchens. That contrast is not accidental. It is, in fact, the point. The Marche coast has always eaten at the water's edge, and the restaurant refuses to perform the trappings of formality that might detach it from its location. The terrace overlooking the sea remains one of the more specific arguments for booking a summer lunch rather than waiting for the autumn dinner season.

The restaurant operates Wednesday through Sunday, with lunch sittings from 12:30 to 2:15 pm and dinner from 7:45 to 10 pm. Monday and Tuesday are closed. At the €€€€ price tier, it sits at the apex of Senigallia's dining options, well above the accessible seafood offer at Cuoco di Bordo and in a different register entirely from Trattoria Vino e Cibo. For the local seafood-forward alternative at a closer price point, Sepia by Niko is the natural comparison. Booking well ahead is advisable, particularly for summer weekends.

Where Uliassi Sits Among Italy's Three-Star Tier

Italy's three-Michelin-star cohort is smaller and more geographically scattered than France's equivalent, which means each holder occupies a distinct regional identity rather than clustering in a single city. Uliassi has held three stars since entering the top tier and in 2025 scored 97 points on La Liste, which placed it among the highest-rated restaurants in the country by that measure. On Opinionated About Dining's European ranking it reached 12th in 2025, up from 14th the previous year, and peaked at 12th on the World's 50 Best list in 2022 before settling at 34th in 2023 and 50th in 2024. The trajectory across multiple independent ranking systems over several years is the more useful signal than any single position: this is a kitchen that cross-referencing critics consistently treat as a serious candidate for the upper tier.

The Italian three-star peer set provides useful context. Osteria Francescana in Modena and Piazza Duomo in Alba anchor Italian fine dining in inland, produce-driven traditions. Le Calandre in Rubano and Enrico Bartolini in Milan represent urban, technically ambitious programs. Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence leans heavily into cellar depth. Uliassi's position within that peer set is defined by geography and philosophy together: a coastal Adriatic address, a menu built on seafood without excluding the land, and a kitchen that has chosen depth over expansion. The restaurant also holds the Les Grandes Tables du Monde designation (2025), a membership body that tends to weight service culture and dining room hospitality as heavily as kitchen output. Beyond Italy, the comparison that stands up at this scale of seafood ambition is Le Bernardin in New York City, another kitchen whose identity is inseparable from the sea.

The Kitchen's Logic: Land, Sea, and the Marche Tradition

The Marche's culinary character has always moved between coast and interior more fluidly than Emilia-Romagna or Tuscany. The hills behind Senigallia support game, truffles, and cured meats; the coast delivers bivalves, cuttlefish, and the dense, oily fish of the northern Adriatic. Uliassi's kitchen treats that duality as a structural principle rather than a novelty. The seared cuttlefish with cheek lard oil, chard, honey, and anchovy sauce is described in the restaurant's own documentation as an example of this sea-land exchange, where the pork fat bridges the gap between brine and sweetness. The pasta with tomato sauce named for perfumer Hilde Soliani is another case: an apparently simple dish made strange by conceptual framing.

Foie gras wafer and kir royale that open the meal have become fixed points of the menu. According to La Liste's documentation, regular guests would object to their removal, which says something about how a kitchen can create rituals out of individual dishes across decades. The restaurant opened in 1990 and has been refining this balance between the classic and the new every year since. Each season, the team introduces ten new courses alongside the Classic menu, developed during a 40-day winter research Lab where the kitchen works without service pressure. That structure, seasonal innovation layered over a stable core, mirrors what some of the better Italian wineries do with their blending philosophy: a house style maintained across vintages while individual expressions push boundaries.

For broader context on how northern Italian kitchens at this level approach the relationship between regionality and creativity, Atelier Moessmer Norbert Niederkofler in Brunico and Dal Pescatore in Runate offer instructive comparisons. Quattro Passi in Marina del Cantone provides a southern coastal counterpoint, and Atomix in New York City demonstrates how a similar research-first kitchen model operates in a very different culinary geography.

Wine in the Marche Context: What the Region Brings to the Table

The editorial angle of food and wine pairing at this level is worth examining carefully, because the Marche is a wine region that operates below its actual quality threshold in terms of international recognition. Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi, grown in the hills immediately behind Senigallia, is the most consequential white wine of the Adriatic coast: mineral-edged, age-worthy in its Classico Superiore and Riserva expressions, and structurally suited to the iodine-forward seafood the restaurant sources. The grape's bitter finish, which puts off casual drinkers, makes it a more precise match for cured anchovy, sea urchin, and raw shellfish preparations than Soave or Gavi at equivalent quality levels.

A kitchen working the sea-land axis that defines Uliassi's menu creates particular challenges for wine pairing. Dishes that combine pork fat with briny shellfish, or game-derived sauces with fish, sit in a narrow band where a single wine rarely serves both components equally. The sommelier's role at a three-star coastal restaurant is therefore more interpretive than at a kitchen focused on a single ingredient type. Rosso Conero, the Montepulciano-based red from the same region, handles the meat-adjacent preparations; the broader Italian cellar, particularly Campanian whites like Fiano di Avellino, fills gaps where local options fall short. The La Liste documentation does not detail the wine program specifically, but the Les Grandes Tables du Monde membership implies a cellar managed at the level the food requires.

For those visiting Senigallia with wine as a primary interest alongside the meal, the Senigallia wineries guide maps the local producers. The broader context for planning a stay, including hotels and bars, is covered in the Senigallia hotels guide, the bars guide, and the experiences guide. The full dining picture is in the Senigallia restaurants guide.

Practical Considerations for Planning a Visit

Uliassi's address, Banchina di Levante, 6, places it directly on the marina waterfront in Senigallia, on the Adriatic coast of Marche, roughly two hours by car from Bologna or Florence and accessible by train via the Senigallia station on the Adriatica coastal line. The summer season concentrates demand for both lunch and dinner, and the beach-adjacent setting makes the midday sitting a more distinctive experience than most three-star restaurants can offer. The kitchen's environmental commitments, documented in the La Liste entry, include a ban on plastic within the restaurant and active pressure on fish suppliers to eliminate polystyrene transport packaging, details that matter if provenance and supply chain practices affect how you read a menu. The front-of-house is run by Catia Uliassi, Mauro's sister, with his son Filippo also part of the team, a family operational structure that sits within a broader Italian tradition of restaurant-as-family-enterprise visible at venues like Dal Pescatore.

What's the leading thing to order at Uliassi?

The question is more useful answered at a structural level than a dish-specific one, given that the menu changes annually with ten new courses each season. The fixed appetisers, particularly the foie gras wafer and kir royale, have become canonical enough that La Liste specifically flags them as dishes guests resist losing, which means they function as a reliable entry point regardless of the year you visit. The tasting menu format gives access to the full research Lab output; the Classic menu offers the more settled expressions of the kitchen's Marche identity, including the sea-land pairings that define the restaurant's cuisine. For a first visit, the tasting menu is the more informative choice; for a return, the Classic menu's depth becomes apparent. Either way, the Adriatic seafood sourcing and the Marche wine list should be treated as inseparable from the food, not as supplementary decisions made after ordering.