This neighborhood favorite started out as a cafe and became a popular place to dine a few years ago. It still draws crowds for its few tables, despite the absence of drinks and bathrooms. Lillo's lasagna ragout is better than the one grandma made, their meatballs with an ideal texture and sauce are wonderful and their fettuccine with a touch of Parmesan cream sauce are almost too rich to stay in the memory. Aspiring restaurateurs in Park Slope should study this pleasant Fifth Avenue staple before their own opening ceremony.
Although it opened its doors in 1998, Al Di Là is still second to none in the neighborhood. Excellent Northern Italian dishes include ragù noodles, black spaghetti with octopus ragout and braised rabbit. Bamonte's is a New York classic that every red sauce lover should visit at least once. It opened its doors for the first time in 1900 and still retains a great old world appeal; the platonic ideal of a vintage Italian restaurant in Brooklyn with all the dishes on the menu at its height.
Now in its 28th edition, Il Buco is as in demand as ever, with an extremely rustic charm that hides a space that could also function as a film set. It reflects its flattering light on homemade pasta options, such as torchio with sausage at dusk, asparagus and pecorino, and noodles with black truffle and parmesan. Whether the notions of fashion attract you, like an influencer, to a photographic moment or sound forbidden alarms, it's remarkable that Dante is relevant 107 years after its premiere. The “best in the world” intermittent bar offers cheese dishes such as Spuntini and Salumi Misti, a variety of delicious pasta, and main courses such as branzino and chicken parmesana, in a place full of character.
Even with space for 70 people inside and two strips of sidewalk seating outside, Lilia is still packing after six years serving the best pasta program in the area. Its brick and wood interior is informally elegant, and the open kitchen offers hits such as spaghetti with anchovies and a wood-fired leg of lamb with Roman spices. When Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich opened Lupa Osteria Romana in 1999 when they were Babbo babies on a budget, it was an instant success and, over the years and the inevitable chef changes, it's still a success and a lovely place to visit late in the afternoon before the hordes arrive. But the rustic charm of the room with brick walls at night, with its golden sheen, is hard to beat.
So are the chicken alla diavola, the bavette cacio e pepe and, especially, the feint pajata, a rare version of the classic Roman dish of veal intestines fed with milk, which here is loosely interpreted to keep the USDA at bay as an intoxicating ragout of sweetbreads, tripe and guanciale served with rigatoni. Bleecker Street. Luquer Street. Norfolk Street.
Third Avenue. Vanderbilt Avenue. Second Avenue. Everything that goes through the swing door of your kitchen is cooked in moderation and out of keeping with passing trends, which only increases its attractiveness.
Buy the fried artichokes, the puntarelle when it's in season and the fantastic bucatini all'amatriciana and try not to overdo it with the addictive homemade grissini. Gansevoort Street. From rustic Tuscan dishes to tasty Sicilian specialties, this list of restaurants with seating service brings together the best of the best, both the new and the old, in New York City right now. And although it is now necessary for pizzerias in New York to build or even import wood ovens for pizza from Italy, Mario's has stuck with its gas oven so that the pizza dough is perfectly crispy.
The problem with compiling a list of the best Italian restaurants in New York is that there may be more here than in Italy. What follows are the trattorie, the osterie, the enoteche and the Ristorante which, by virtue of the menu or technique, the atmosphere or the energy, are the best Italian restaurants in New York. Mario's embodies the neighborhood's time capsule feel and is perhaps the most authentic place to sample the culinary traditions of New York's old Italian community. That reduces the number of establishments that serve what is arguably New York's favorite food to, oh, a few thousand or so.
From the West Village and the Lower East Side to Bushwick and Carroll Gardens, New York's best Italian restaurants offer a wealth of riches. Unlike Little Italy, in Lower Manhattan, which has been reduced to little more than a cheesy tourist strip, New Yorkers know Arthur Avenue as the “real Little Italy” of the Big Apple, a neighborhood where more than two dozen Italian stores and restaurants have been operating for 50 to 100 years. And while many of their family members in New York have returned to join their families in Naples, Joe and Regina have never tried the limoncello that is grown next to the Blue Grotto, have seen Mount Vesuvius at dusk, or gone to any of the places painted on Mario's walls. It's impossible to draw up a list of the best Italian restaurants in New York without Mario Batali's establishments popping up everywhere like daffodils in spring.
Roberto's modern Italian food, served on a side street away from the hustle and bustle of Little Italy in the Bronx, is a pleasant contrast to the Italian-American food with red sauce that is common in the neighborhood. Since the only buffaloes in New York City lived in the nearby Bronx Zoo, the Migliucci topped their pizzas with cow's milk mozzarella. .
