Best Italian Restaurants in New York 2026
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"It is not a pasta restaurant," Mario Carbone said in a 2014 interview. "It is a New York Italian-American restaurant. There is a difference, and the difference is the whole point." Twelve years and one Mulberry Street relocation later, that distinction still organises the entire New York Italian map. There are the Italian-American rooms — Carbone, Torrisi, Don Angie — where the cooking is calibrated to a particular memory of a Sunday in Queens. There are the regional rooms — Rezdora for Emilia, Marea for Liguria — where the pasta is the cuisine, not the homage. And there is the Missy Robbins axis, anchored in Williamsburg, where flour, semola, and an Italian grandmother's wrist-flick of olive oil produce the best pasta course in the five boroughs. Below, the eight Italian rooms the bureau books in 2026, in the order we book them.
Eight Italian Restaurants in New York Worth the Booking
Torrisi reopened in the Puck Hotel in 2022 — the spiritual continuation of the original Torrisi Italian Specialties that closed in 2014 to become Carbone. The new room is bigger, more formal, and built around a nine-course tasting menu that ranges over the entire MFG Italian-American canon: clams casino, a hand-rolled cannelloni, the Sunday rigatoni vodka recast as the bridge course, and an aged ribeye that arrives in the third act. Two Michelin stars from the 2024 New York guide. The wine programme leans Italian — Barolo and Brunello dominate — and the markup is gentler than at the comparable Manhattan tasting rooms.
Angie Rito and Scott Tacinelli are married, they cook together, and Don Angie reads like exactly that — a restaurant by people who genuinely like each other's company and want yours. The lasagna for two has been on the menu since opening night in 2017: pinwheeled rather than layered, finished with mozzarella under a salamander, photographed more often than any other dish in New York after the Carbone rigatoni. The pinwheeled lasagna is the signature, but the chrysanthemum salad and the Sicilian-style stuffed clams are the test dishes — order all three. The room is candle-low, dressed in tile, and seats forty-two.
Stefano Secchi trained at Osteria Francescana under Massimo Bottura and at Trattoria Amerigo in Bologna; he opened Rezdora on East 20th Street in 2019 and earned the Michelin star in 2022. The signature is the seven-pasta tasting menu — a march through tortellini in brodo, cappelletti, anolini, garganelli, tortelli, lasagna verde, and a seasonal closer. Every shape is rolled in the front-of-house pasta room. The Lambrusco list is the deepest in New York and a meaningful part of the meal. The room is sixty seats over two floors, marble bar, the lighting is correctly low. James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: New York in 2023.
Carbone is a restaurant about a restaurant. The room is dressed in red leather, the captains are in tuxedo dinner jackets, the bread service is a peasant loaf and a tableside Caesar, and the soundtrack is Sinatra at volume. None of it would survive without genuinely good cooking — and the cooking has held its line since 2013. The spicy rigatoni vodka is the most photographed pasta in New York for a reason; the veal parmesan is a slab the size of a paperback; the lobster fra diavolo is fairly priced for the quality of shellfish on the plate. Major Food Group's flagship and the room that built the empire.
Marea is the most consistent fine-dining Italian room in Manhattan: one Michelin star carried for fifteen consecutive guide years, a wine list with serious Italian-by-the-glass depth, and a crudo programme that still defines the genre in the city. The fusilli with bone marrow and red wine sauce — Michael White's most-photographed pasta — is on every table; the spaghetti with crab, sea urchin, and basil is the alternative the locals order. The room is white-tablecloth formal but the noise level is manageable, the bar is honest for a pre-dinner drink, and the Central Park South location is correct for a New York anniversary that wants the postcard view on the walk home.
Lilia opened in 2016 in a converted Williamsburg auto-body shop and immediately rewrote the conversation about Italian cooking in New York. Missy Robbins won the James Beard Best Chef: New York City in 2018 on the strength of the pasta programme — mafaldini with pink peppercorn, cacio e pepe fritters, and the ricotta-stuffed agnolotti are the menu fixtures. The room is loud, busy, and exactly as crowded as a serious Italian restaurant should be on a Tuesday at 8 PM. Resy drops thirty days out at 9:00 AM Eastern. Walk-ins are accepted at the bar from 5:00 PM.
Misi is the experiment Lilia made possible: a 150-seat room on the Williamsburg waterfront where the menu is almost entirely pasta. Twelve to fourteen shapes are made by hand each morning in the glass-walled pasta room visible from the dining floor. The cappellacci di zucca — squash-filled pasta in brown butter with sage and amaretto — is the dish to order, full stop. The room is more polished than Lilia and the views over the East River are part of the experience. Wine list leans Italian but the by-the-glass selection includes serious Champagne, which is the right answer with the cacio e pepe.
L'Artusi has done a difficult thing: stayed honestly good for nearly two decades on a West Village street where the rent has tripled and a dozen contemporaries have closed. The room is two floors of bright modern Italian — open kitchen on the ground floor, quieter banquettes upstairs — and the menu is built around vegetables and crudo as much as pasta. The roasted mushrooms with truffle pecorino is the signature opener; the spaghetti with anchovies, garlic, and chili is the test pasta. The wine list is the most thoughtful all-Italian programme in the West Village and the by-the-glass is genuinely interesting.
How to Choose Between Them
If the occasion is the point and the budget allows: Torrisi. Two Michelin stars, a tasting menu that walks through the entire MFG canon, and a room calibrated for the most important night of the year.
If you want serious pasta technique with no theatre: Rezdora. The seven-pasta tasting is the cleanest expression of Emilian cooking in North America.
If the goal is the spicy rigatoni vodka and a loud, glamorous night: Carbone. The reservation is the work.
If you want the West Village date dinner with the lasagna everyone has seen on Instagram: Don Angie. Better booking odds, intimate room, and a kitchen that delivers what the photos promise.
If you want a Brooklyn evening built around pasta: Lilia for the full menu; Misi for the pasta tasting; both are Missy Robbins and both are correct depending on the night.
How New York Italian Compares to Italy
New York Italian — the Carbone / Torrisi / Don Angie register — is not Italian food. It is a specific American immigrant cuisine that crystallised in the 1940s and 1950s and has been refined since. The regional rooms (Rezdora for Emilia, Marea for the Adriatic, Lilia and Misi for a more pan-Northern register) are closer to the cooking you would eat in Modena, Rimini, or Milan. Both registers are valid; both have their place. A trip to Bologna will not prepare a visitor for Carbone, and a meal at Carbone will not prepare anyone for a Bolognese ragù served by an actual rezdora — the home cook of the title that Stefano Secchi borrowed for his sign.
The most honest answer to "where in New York eats most like Italy" is Rezdora, with Misi a close second on pasta technique alone. The most New York answer is Carbone. Both answers are correct depending on the question being asked.
Frequently Asked Questions
Editorial independence: RFK accepts no payment for inclusion. Some links may pay an affiliate commission on completed reservations; this does not affect rank order or whether a restaurant is included. See methodology for our scoring rubric and revisit cadence.