Via Carota & the Best Italian Outside Italy 2026
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Via Carota at 51 Grove Street is the West Village trattoria from James Beard winners Jody Williams and Rita Sodi, and the best argument that great Italian food lives well outside Italy. Four more New York rooms make the same case.
There is no reservation line to join at 51 Grove Street, only the wait. Via Carota has spent a decade proving that Italian cooking abroad can rival the regions it came from, and a handful of New York rooms now do the same. Here is the case, led by the room that makes it best.
Why Via Carota Leads the Case
Jody Williams and Rita Sodi opened Via Carota in 2014 as a shared trattoria, drawing on Sodi's Tuscan upbringing and Williams's years cooking in Paris and Rome. The room is small, green-walled and walk-in only, and the food is deceptively plain: vegetables treated with real respect, handmade pasta, a chopped-steak svizzerina that has become a New York landmark.
In 2019 the pair won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: New York State, a rare nod for a restaurant built on simplicity rather than spectacle. The four rooms that follow extend the argument: New York now holds Italian cooking that stands beside the best in Italy, from Williamsburg pasta counters to a Greenwich Village dining room with a Michelin star.
Via Carota and Four More for Italian Outside Italy
The green-walled West Village room is walk-in only and almost always full, because the cooking is exactly right: an insalata verde that people order two of, a Tuscan chopped-steak svizzerina, cacio e pepe, and braised artichokes. It is the rare famous restaurant that under-promises and over-delivers.
The insalata verde, the svizzerina, and the cacio e pepe.
James Beard winners cooking the best simple Italian in New York, no reservations taken. Go early or late and wait it out, once.
Robbins turned a former Williamsburg auto-body shop into the city's most coveted pasta reservation, built around a handful of perfect plates: mafaldini with pink peppercorn, agnolotti, wood-fired seafood. The technique is exacting and the menu short, which is the point.
The mafaldini with pink peppercorn and the sheep's-milk-cheese-filled agnolotti.
Missy Robbins's Williamsburg pasta room, the hardest Italian table in Brooklyn. Reserve a month out for the mafaldini alone.
Secchi trained under Massimo Bottura in Modena and brought that region's pasta tradition to the Flatiron: tortellini in brodo, and a dish of pasta scraps called 'Nonna's handkerchiefs' that has become a signature. The room is loud and the wait long, both worth it.
The tortellini in brodo and 'Nonna's handkerchiefs'.
Bottura-trained Emilia-Romagna pasta in the Flatiron, as good as the region it copies. Try it for the handkerchiefs and the tortellini in brodo.
The husband-and-wife team reinvented Italian-American red-sauce cooking for a new generation, and their pinwheel lasagna for two, rolled and crisped at the edges, is one of the most photographed dishes in the city. The room is small and the booking competitive.
The pinwheel lasagna for two and the Caesar with anchovy.
A husband-and-wife kitchen reinventing Italian-American with a famous pinwheel lasagna. Book ahead and share the lasagna for two.
Carbone is theatre as much as dinner: tuxedoed captains, a mid-century soundtrack, and tableside service of a spicy rigatoni vodka and a veal parmesan for the table. It is the most expensive and the most fun room on this list, and it earned a Michelin star doing it.
The spicy rigatoni and the veal parmesan to share.
A one-star Greenwich Village homage to mid-century Italian-American, all theatre and tableside flourish. Go once for the rigatoni and the show.
Who This List Is Not For
If you need a guaranteed table at a fixed time, Via Carota is the wrong start: it takes no reservations and the wait runs long at peak hours. And anyone hunting for cutting-edge, modernist cooking should look elsewhere; this is deliberately traditional Italian, where the ambition hides inside simple plates rather than on the surface. Carbone, by contrast, is a splurge built on spectacle, not value.
How to Eat at These Rooms
Via Carota is walk-in only; arrive when it opens or late in the evening, put your name down, and have a drink nearby while you wait. The others all take reservations and are competitive: Lilia, Don Angie and Carbone open their windows weeks ahead and sell through within minutes, so set a reminder for the release time and have a backup date ready.
For the best odds, aim for a weeknight and an early or late seating, and consider the bar or counter where these rooms keep walk-in seats. New York's Italian scene runs far deeper than this list; for the wider picture, see our full New York dining guide, and for another argument about cuisine abroad, our Korean BBQ outside Korea guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Compiled by the Restaurants for Kings editorial team from named published sources (Michelin Guide, The World's 50 Best, James Beard Foundation and local critics). Prices and reservation windows current at the last update above; confirm with the restaurant before you book.