Born Here, Made In Italy
Emilio Branchinelli sits in a cozy booth under warm lighting at his restaurant, Passione, in Carle Place. In front of him are two heaping plates of linguine with white clam sauce—one made with fresh linguine, the other with the boxed variety. The restaurateur, whose culinary lineage traces back to some of New York’s earliest pizza pioneers, wants t...
Neighborhood Eats: A taste of Italy at Senso Unico in Queens
For this edition of Neighborhood Eats, we're headed to Queens for a taste of Italy. Senso Unico is Italian for "one way," and once you find your way to this spot in Sunnsyide, Laura and Vincenzo Garofalo hope you keep coming back. She's from Astoria, and he's from Italy -- where they met -- and opening their own restaurant in New York City was thei...
Master Italian Pizza Maker To Open Park Slope Eatery
A new restaurant getting ready to open up on 5th Avenue hopes to make customers feel more like they're sitting at a pizzeria in Italy than one in New York City, owners said. L'Arte della Pizza Brooklyn, a collaboration between two Italian pizza chefs, is putting the final touches to its 172 5th Avenue storefront next week. The restaurant plans to h...
Pizza man from 'The Sopranos' fires up Giacomo's on Staten Island
Giacomo Santangelo ran a successful linen cloth Italian restaurant in Brooklyn with his namesake. Yet when the business cut so severely into his family life, Giacomo felt it was time to make a change. As luck would have it, someone approached him about buying his place. So he picked up with a more casual concept and similar moniker -- Giacomo's Wo...
Beloved Italian neighborhood spot returns with new name and NY-style pizza
Ben Berg's changes to Carmelo's restaurant in the Memorial area include more than updating its look and feel. He's changing the name, too. When the restaurant reopens at the end of April, it will be known as B.B. Italia Kitchen & Bar; in addition, the restaurant will be home to B.B. Pizza, a delivery and to-go pizzeria. The new names leverage the b...
Misi, a New Restaurant in Brooklyn, Puts the Art of Pasta Making on Display
Should you find yourself near Williamsburg’s waterfront on a given afternoon, you might discover an act of theater unfolding on Kent Avenue. Looking through the ground-level windows of the restaurant Misi, chef Missy Robbins’s eatery that opened last fall, you’ll find cooks preparing for the evening’s guests. Specifically, they are making pasta—kne...
At 100, Marie Grillo says 'hard work and plenty of olive oil' are her secrets
In an age where Americans are reaching the ripe old age of 100 and even exceeding, and a good percentage of super seniors engaging in active, productive lives more than ever, in walks Marie Grillo, a perfect case in point. In fact, Marie, who rounded the century mark on Feb. 12, shares her birthday — though they weren’t born in the same year — with...
Roberto Deiaco expands restaurant empire to the Upper East Side
Chef Roberto Deiaco and his wife Giselle are building in the space of a former legend — and expanding their brand to the Upper East Side. The couple recently opened Avena Downtown in the Sixth Avenue location of onetime hotspot Da Silvano, a Page Six staple that opened in 1975 and served everyone from Donald Trump and Yoko Ono to Rihanna until it c...
Rocco DiSpirito’s Nostalgic Return to the Kitchen at the Standard Grill
By the time Rocco DiSpirito was a contestant on “Dancing with the Stars,” in 2008, it had been so long since he’d worked as a chef that it wasn’t clear whether the job description still applied. He’d come to prominence in the late nineties as one of the most promising young culinary talents in New York City—but quickly became one of the first celeb...
Gelato just in time for summer
Maria Macrina is just a simple second-generation Italian-American girl from Sherrill who’s family taught her the value of Italian culture and traditions which she said consists mainly of family, faith and food...including gelato, which she is bringing to the residents of Clinton. Actually, to be exact, she brought it to Clinton in 2016, by way of a...
Come see a Sicilian pastry kitchen in Carroll Gardens
I’m in a dessert lover’s dreamland. Zeppole and sfingi surround me. A baker brushes glaze on tarts topped with fresh fruit. Three perfect lemon pies with sky-high swirls of meringue are coming out of the oven in a minute. I’m in the kitchen at Pasticceria Monteleone, a traditional Sicilian bakery in Carroll Gardens. I have a lifelong obsession with...
Fresh Mozzarella Makes This Queens Deli One of the Top Places to Get an Italian Hero
Last week in our Sandwich of the Week column, we examined the rise of the super torta, which is like a regular torta blown up with a bicycle pump, containing not one but several main ingredients stacked high on a giant round bun. Often still less than $10, it has appeared in several places around town including Tortas Neva in Corona and Don Pepe in...