South Philadelphia-born and -influenced, second-generation Italian chef Joey Campanaro opened the Little Owl in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village in 2006 and immediately he had a hit on his hands. That happens a lot in shiny new thing-obsessed New York, but what doesn’t happen very often is that the restaurant is as coveted a reservation 15 years later as it was at its birth.

Renowned across America—that’s not an exaggeration—the tiny restaurant seats only 28 people at a time when there isn’t a pandemic. Over the last year, he has had to “put the entire restaurant on the street. We’re 100 percent outside.”