With some of the city’s most iconic foods being pizza and the various dishes invented in the original red-sauce joints, Italian food in New York City dates back to the late nineteenth century when waves of immigrants from southern Italy started arriving in Lower Manhattan.
Since then, New York’s Italian food scene has gone through endless iterations that reflect everything from trends to the availability of ingredients at specific historical periods.
Over the last decade, new Italian restaurants have increasingly looked to move away from certain stereotypes around Italian-American cuisine and bring all the diversity of regional Italy to diners (although fusion restaurants that offer new takes on classics that are native to the city have also found their place in a food scene that is constantly reinventing itself).
Roman-style pizzeria Forno D’Oro comes to Chelsea
One of the most recent openings highlighting the power of fusion is Pizza Studio Tamaki: famed Japanese pizzaiolo Tsubasa Tamaki brought his distinct Tokyo-style Neapolitan pies that exploded in popularity in Japan over the last decade to a new home in St. Marks Place.
In the Chelsea neighborhood, Forno D’Oro (“golden oven” in Italian) opened on Eighth Avenue at the start of the summer with a family thread running through it: master pizzaiolo Salvatore Olivella built it as a Roman-style pizzeria with three nephews from their home city of Verona in northern Italy.
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Along with an extensive menu of red and white pizza as well as dishes like Lamb Chops Milanese and Octopus Carpaccio, the restaurant will launch Italian culinary classes teaching individuals and groups to make mozzarella and pizza from scratch by the fall.
Olivera’s entry into the NYC dining scene occurred in 2022 with the opening of the Little Charli intimate pizzeria in West Village. At Forno D’Oro, the traditional wood-fired brick oven is the centerpiece of the restaurant through which pies with both classic (Margherita, mozzarella and San Daniele ham) and creative (“The Frank Sinatra” with burrata, arugula and breasola and the “Inferno” with ‘Nduja sausage, Soppresatta and hot honey) are churned out before the eyes of diners.
Forno D'Oro
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At the start of the spring, Rocco DiSpirito also opened the new Bar Rocco at the Kimpton Era Midtown New York hotel. The Queens-born chef designed a menu full of Italian-American classics he grew up with through a more upscale twist: Mama’s Meatballs, Sunday Gravy Lasagna and a Big Italian Burger with an aged wagyu beef blend paired with provolone cheese and a dijon-based vinaigrette.
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And in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn, the Ferdinando’s Focacceria Sicilian restaurant that operated continuously between 1904 and 2025 was reenvisioned as Bar Ferdinando by chef of the nearby Cafe Spaghetti restaurant, Sal Lamboglia.
Long-time patrons of the Brooklyn Italian neighborhood mainstay come for an all-day menu of coffee and Italian pastries like bomboloni and maritozzi as well as negronis served alongside small plates that start at $5 for pizza-spiced chickpeas and do not go over $21 for a plate of clams in white sauce served over fries.
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