Where to Eat in Tolentino: Tasting Menus and Cosmopolitan Marche Cooking at Osteria IME
Osteria IME is one of those restaurants that makes more sense once you understand the person behind it. Entiana Osmenzeza was born in Berat, Albania, trained professionally in Italy and built a career through serious kitchens before eventually settling in the Marche. IME, opened in Tolentino on 29 April 2023, brings those trajectories together without reducing them to a convenient label.
This is not Albanian cuisine transplanted to central Italy, nor is it a Marche restaurant decorated with Balkan references. The cooking is more fluid than that. Local produce provides the material; technique supplies discipline; memory, travel and curiosity push the dishes somewhere less predictable.
That becomes the restaurant’s strongest quality. A plate may begin with goat cheese, fennel or local greens and finish with horseradish, sake yeast, wasabi or soba. None of those ingredients appears merely to make the menu look cosmopolitan. The kitchen is interested in what happens when different culinary languages share the same sentence.
During our 2026 visit, that tension between familiarity and movement was what gave IME its personality. Some restaurants make innovation noisy. Here it is often tucked into acidity, fermentation, spice or texture.
A Small Restaurant Built Around Entiana Osmenzeza’s Journey
Osmenzeza’s career helps explain why the kitchen is technically controlled without becoming rigid.
After moving to Turin at a young age, she trained in hospitality and later worked in important Italian and French kitchens. Her professional path included collaborations with Lidia Alciati and Fulvio Pierangelini, whom she has described as a central influence, followed by executive positions within the Rocco Forte group and at Se·sto on Arno in Florence. She also spent time at Noma in Copenhagen before opening Gurdulù in Florence in 2015.
IME came later, after a move to the Marche.
That background matters because the cooking carries traces of several schools at once: Italian product discipline, French technique, Balkan flavour memory and a distinctly contemporary interest in acidity, fermentation and contrast.
Yet the dining room does not feel like a résumé rendered in edible form. The restaurant is intimate, personal and considerably warmer than the word “fine dining” usually suggests.
The Menus Are Structured, but Not Restrictive
Dinner can follow several paths.
There are four-course vegetarian, fish and meat tasting menus at €60, plus a six-course tasting menu at €80. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, an à-la-carte option is also available, with a minimum of two courses per person.
That structure is useful because the restaurant is ambitious enough to reward a full progression, but not so doctrinaire that every diner must surrender the entire evening to a single fixed menu.
The four-course paths also make the restaurant easier to understand. Vegetarian cooking is not treated as a lesser branch, while fish and meat menus allow the kitchen to build sequences with clearer tonal continuity.
Horseradish Panna Cotta Turns a Familiar Texture Upside Down
One of the more revealing ideas is a horseradish panna cotta with vanilla beans, peas and herb-bread crumble.
The technique belongs to dessert, but the flavour logic is entirely savoury.
Horseradish gives the cream a nasal, peppery lift, peas bring sweetness and green freshness, while vanilla is used less as confectionery perfume than as an aromatic bridge. The bread crumble supplies the dry, crisp element needed against such a soft base.
It is the sort of plate that could easily become gimmicky. The success depends on proportion: too much vanilla and the dish turns ambiguous; too much horseradish and everything else disappears.
Handled with restraint, however, it captures the kitchen’s method very clearly—recognisable ingredients, slightly displaced.
Raw Amberjack Shows the More Delicate Side of IME
The raw amberjack with courgette-flower cream, basil and courgettes marinated in aged vinegar moves in the opposite direction.
Amberjack has enough fat to carry acidity, but not so much that aggressive seasoning becomes necessary. The courgette keeps the plate vegetal and gentle, basil reinforces the Mediterranean line, while aged vinegar brings the crucial vertical note.
This is where the restaurant feels most connected to the Marche and to Italian coastal cooking. The intervention is present, but the fish remains recognisable.
There is no need to bury good raw seafood beneath twelve garnishes when one acidic element and one aromatic element can establish the whole architecture.
Soba, Smoked Herring Caviar and Sour Cream Are the Most Cosmopolitan Pasta Course
The soba noodles with smoked herring caviar, sour cream and Breme sweet onion are a much stranger proposition.
Buckwheat, smoke, lactic richness and onion sweetness create a dish that could have emerged from several culinary traditions at once.
Soba brings nuttiness and a slightly austere texture. Smoked herring caviar supplies salinity and depth, sour cream cools and rounds the edges, while Breme onion contributes sweetness without dragging the dish back into conventional Italian pasta territory.
This is where IME becomes genuinely difficult to classify.
And that is a strength.
The restaurant is not trying to convince diners that soba secretly belongs to the Marche. It simply treats it as another ingredient capable of entering conversation with Italian produce.
Fusilli with Fennel, Almond and Salted Ricotta Keep One Foot Firmly in Italy
The fusilli with herbs, Trapani-style pesto with fennel and almonds, and salted ricotta are easier to read.
Fennel introduces freshness and aniseed lift, almonds bring fat and grain, salted ricotta gives the pasta its savoury spine.
This is one of the dishes where the kitchen needs less conceptual explanation because the flavours already belong naturally together.
The pleasure comes from balance: enough almond to give body, enough ricotta to season, but enough greenery to stop the sauce becoming heavy.
Placed beside the soba, the fusilli reveal the breadth of IME more effectively than any manifesto could.
Tuna Belly Is Built Around Bitterness and Fruit
The tuna belly with sautéed chard and chicory, finished with sweet-and-sour wild blackberries, is richer and more assertive.
Tuna belly carries substantial fat, which makes bitter greens particularly appropriate. Chard and chicory cut through the flesh rather than simply accompanying it, while blackberry introduces fruit, acidity and a slightly feral sweetness.
The important decision is keeping the berry component sharp.
If pushed towards jam, the dish would collapse under its own richness. Kept tart, it acts almost like an agrodolce condiment and makes the tuna feel lighter.
This is one of IME’s recurring ideas: acidity is not decoration. It is structural.
Beef with Sake Yeast and Wasabi Pushes Harder
The seared beef marinated with sake yeast, green beans in wasabi sauce and Mignola extra-virgin olive oil snow is the clearest demonstration of the restaurant’s more adventurous side.
Sake yeast introduces fermented complexity before the meat ever touches the plate. Wasabi gives the beans heat and aromatic sharpness, while the olive-oil element reconnects the dish to central Italy.
It is an unusual triangulation: Japan, the Marche and a classic seared beef preparation.
What prevents the dish from becoming culinary tourism is the fact that all three elements have practical functions. Fermentation deepens the meat, wasabi cuts its richness and olive oil restores fruit and softness.
The dish is bold, but not random.
Eggplant Parmigiana Becomes a Question of Texture
The puff-pastry eggplant parmigiana is perhaps the restaurant’s most playful reinterpretation of an Italian classic.
Parmigiana normally depends on softness: aubergine, tomato, cheese and sauce folding into one another until individual textures nearly disappear.
Adding puff pastry changes the architecture completely.
Now crunch becomes central. The familiar flavours remain, but the experience is lighter, sharper and more layered.
This is exactly the kind of reinterpretation that can provoke unnecessary nostalgia. Better to treat it as a separate dish inspired by parmigiana rather than a proposal to improve the original.
Wine Pairings
Raw amberjack: Pievalta Perlugo Verdicchio Metodo Classico Dosaggio Zero — taut, saline and precise with raw fish and vinegar.
Soba with smoked herring caviar: Centanni Floralia — an aromatic Marche orange wine with enough grip for smoke and sour cream.
Beef with wasabi: Clara Marcelli Decò — fresh, savoury and lively enough to handle spice without amplifying it.
The Cellar Is Personal Rather Than Monumental
The wine list follows the same logic as the kitchen: Marche first, but not Marche only.
Verdicchio naturally plays an important role, joined by wines from producers such as Pievalta, Tenuta Musone, Luigi Giusti, Centanni, Maria Pia Castelli and Clara Marcelli. Italy then broadens the picture through Alto Adige, Abruzzo, Puglia, Calabria, Sicily, Tuscany and Lombardy, while France appears particularly strongly among the sparkling wines.
Prices remain unusually reasonable for a restaurant operating at this level. Pievalta Perlugo is €27, several Marche bottles remain in the low-to-mid €20s, Franciacorta starts in the mid €30s, while Champagne provides the more ambitious ceiling.
The list does not feel assembled to impress collectors from across the room. It feels designed to be drunk.
That is preferable.
Desserts Continue the Same Conversation
The tiramisu with soft biscuit, amaretto, mascarpone mousse and coffee cream, at €12, retains recognisable flavours while changing texture and construction.
More intriguing is the rice and vanilla mousse cake with soft cocoa, strawberry jelly and Damask rose. Rice gives the dessert a quiet, almost neutral foundation; rose adds fragrance, while strawberry supplies acidity and familiarity.
The sablé tart with ricotta mousse, sour cherries and walnut crumble, also €12, is the most naturally Italian ending: ricotta, tart fruit, nuts and pastry arranged with enough precision to remain light.
Desserts here are not a retreat from the rest of the meal. They continue the restaurant’s interest in acidity, herbs, flowers and contrasting textures.
Service, Atmosphere and Prices
IME is small enough for hospitality to feel personal.
The evening starts at 7:30 pm, and the restaurant serves dinner from Tuesday to Saturday, closing on Sunday and Monday. The compact format suits a kitchen built around tasting menus and detailed plating; this is not a room designed for rapid table turnover.
Prices are clear. A four-course tasting menu costs €60, while the six-course menu is €80. On à-la-carte evenings, starters generally sit around €16–€18, first courses at €20–€22, mains between €22 and €26, and desserts at €12.
A three-course à-la-carte dinner might therefore total roughly €50–€60 per person before wine, putting it close to the four-course tasting menu. For a first visit, the tasting route makes more sense.
The restaurant also asks diners to communicate allergies or dietary restrictions when booking and, where possible, at least 24 hours in advance. Small pets are accepted.
Useful Information
- Address: Via San Nicola 48, 62029 Tolentino, Marche
- Opened: 29 April 2023
- Chef: Entiana Osmenzeza
- Cuisine: Contemporary Italian cooking shaped by Marche produce, Balkan memory and international influences
- Four-course vegetarian tasting menu: €60
- Four-course fish tasting menu: €60
- Four-course meat tasting menu: €60
- Six-course tasting menu: €80
- À la carte: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
- À-la-carte minimum: Two courses per person
- Starters: Approximately €16–€18
- First courses: Approximately €20–€22
- Main courses: Approximately €22–€26
- Desserts: €12
- Opening: Tuesday–Saturday, 7:30 pm–midnight
- Closed: Sunday and Monday
- Telephone: +39 331 121 7733
- Email: [email protected]
- Dietary requirements: Best communicated when booking
- Pets: Small pets accepted
- Best for: Tasting menus, contemporary Marche cooking and diners interested in cross-cultural cuisine rather than rigid regional orthodoxy
Our Rating of Osteria IME
Food: 9.2/10
Technically disciplined cooking that crosses borders without losing contact with the ingredient.
Creativity: 9.4/10
The strongest ideas arise from genuine culinary dialogue rather than decorative fusion.
Starters: 9.2/10
Raw fish, vegetables, acidity and unusual savoury textures establish the kitchen’s language immediately.
First Courses: 9.3/10
From fennel-rich fusilli to soba with smoked herring caviar, this is where IME’s personality becomes clearest.
Fish: 9.1/10
Clean handling of seafood, with bitterness and acidity used intelligently.
Meat: 9.1/10
The beef with sake yeast and wasabi shows how confidently the kitchen can move beyond Italian convention.
Vegetarian Cooking: 9.3/10
A dedicated tasting path is justified by dishes built around vegetables rather than substitutions.
Desserts: 9/10
Precise and aromatic, with fruit and acidity preventing sweetness from dominating.
Wine List: 9.2/10
Strong Marche representation, sensible prices and enough international breadth to support the kitchen’s wider vocabulary.
Service: 9.2/10
Personal, attentive and suited to a restaurant where the meal is intended to unfold rather than simply arrive.
Atmosphere: 9/10
Intimate and focused, with the warmth of an osteria but the rhythm of a contemporary tasting-menu restaurant.
Value for Money: 9.3/10
€60 for four courses and €80 for six place the restaurant in a particularly compelling position for cooking of this ambition.
Overall Rating: 9.3/10
