An Italian menu in a good restaurant is often written half in Italian, partly out of authenticity and partly because the translations are clumsy. That is fine until you are three courses deep and guessing. Most of the confusion comes from a few dozen recurring words, and once you know them you can read any trattoria menu in the country. Here are the terms worth knowing, grouped by where they show up.
The structure of the meal
An Italian menu runs in courses, and you are not obliged to order all of them. Antipasto is the starter, literally “before the meal,” often cured meats, cheese, marinated vegetables. Primo is the first course, almost always pasta, risotto, or soup. Secondo is the main, usually meat or fish, served plain because the sides come separately as contorni. Dolce is dessert. A common mistake is treating the primo as the main and over-ordering. Pasta is a course, not the whole dinner.
Pasta terms
The shapes have meaning, and the menu assumes you know them. Al dente, “to the tooth,” means cooked firm with a little bite, the correct way. Cacio e pepe is pecorino and black pepper, nothing else, a Roman classic. Carbonara is egg, pecorino, black pepper, and guanciale, never cream. Amatriciana adds tomato and guanciale; gricia is the same without tomato. If you want to know why the shape under those sauces matters, our guide to reading a pasta label covers bronze-cut versus smooth and why it changes how sauce clings.
Pizza and bread words
On the pizza section you will meet Margherita (tomato, mozzarella, basil), Marinara (tomato, garlic, oregano, no cheese, confusingly nothing to do with seafood), and bianca (white, no tomato). You may also see pinsa and al taglio, which are different formats entirely; we untangle them in pinsa vs Neapolitan vs Roman. Focaccia is a soft oiled flatbread; bruschetta is grilled bread rubbed with garlic, and it is pronounced “broo-sket-ta,” not “-shet-ta.”
Ingredients that trip people up
Guanciale is cured pork cheek, richer than pancetta. ‘Nduja is a spicy spreadable Calabrian sausage. Stracciatella is the soft milky inside of burrata, also the name of a gelato flavour, context decides which. Bottarga is cured fish roe, salty and intense. Cotto means cooked ham, crudo means raw or cured. Good tomatoes underpin most of it, which is its own small art covered in tomato varieties worth cooking with.
Ordering like you mean it
Order a primo and a secondo, or just a generous primo, rather than a starter and a main in the English sense. Ask what is local and seasonal. And if you are eating your way around the city, our pick of the best Italian restaurants in London is a decent place to put the glossary to work.
The short version
Primo is pasta, secondo is the main, contorni are sides you order yourself, dolce is pudding. Get those four and the rest is detail you can ask the waiter about without feeling lost.