Cactus Bar & Grill stood in the South Loop financial district for more than three decades before the pandemic forced the neighborhood institution to close in 2020. Now, a veteran Chicago chef hopes to tempt visitors with comforting piles of delicate orecchiette and plump raviolo stuffed with pecorino and guanciale. Cristian Mendoza and Petros Papat...

I’m in the cacophonous kitchen of Trattoria da Noemi, a restaurant established in 1958 in the northern Italian city of Ferrara. Maria Cristina Borgazzi, daughter of the titular owner, is demonstrating how she prepares her pièce de résistance. A thick layer of sweet pastry sits on a wide plate. As I watch, perplexed, Borgazzi deftly piles on cooked...

Elisabetta Balzola describes Cucina Lab Torino not as a restaurant, but as a “little corner of Italy” in Michigan. The chef and owner recently marked the third anniversary of the almost hidden place on Crooks at Wattles in Troy that's housed in the same building and behind the Troy Dental School.  Balzola’s annual holiday market is set for 11 a.m.-...

A cookbook author wlll combine a signing of her work with a shopping benefit for Toys for Tots next week in Huntington, NY. Dena Fenza will be signing copies of her new interactive cookbook, My Italian American Table, at Towne Boutique at 255 Main St., Huntington, on Thursday. The event will include time to shop in the boutique, with 10 percent of...

Gianluca Rottura, the proprietor of “In Vino Veritas,” New York City’s landmark wine store, returns to the Italian American Podcast to bring us his take on the famed Italian Amari… But, we go completely off the rails and end up getting some of his best recommendations for the drinks and delicacies you’re going to want to try this Holiday Season!  F...

Russo Ristorante-Mercato has opened at the Tanger Outlets near Grand Rapids. The Russo family, with a long history of running restaurants in the Grand Rapids area, opened up the spot, which offers an Italian fine dining restaurant and an Italian grocery store. Guests can find items like gourmet meats, fresh bread and cheese at the grocery store. Th...

A little before 11 p.m. on a hot summer night on Hanover Street, everything in the North End was business as usual. Old-school locals talked in an animated huddle on the sidewalk, pausing in unison to watch a new-school neighbor passing by wearing a Connecticut-tight ponytail and dressed in head-to-toe Lululemon. The owner of Dolce Vita Ristorante ...

Walking into Il Bracco, a current of déjà vu can sweep your neural system. You’ve been here before, in this dim, low-slung room with its clubby booths, its womblike walnut paneling, its prosperous crowd of grown-ups. To one side the travertine bar beckons, like the world’s longest and skinniest horseshoe. The place seems buffered from reality. Neit...

Franco Nuschese, founder and owner of Cafe Milano in Washington, received the “Ambrogino d’oro” award from the mayor of Milan Giuseppe Sala today. For more than thirty years, Nuschese, originally from the South of Italy, has worked in his cafe in Georgetown, one of the most iconic neighbourhoods of Washington. The cafe has never been a simple Itali...

The documentary “25 Years with Lidia: A Culinary Jubilee” will celebrate celebrity chef Lidia Bastianich’s quarter century on PBS. The hour-long doc will air at 8 p.m. Monday, Dec. 18. The documentary aims to capture a portrait of the Yugoslavian-born chef, restaurateur, cookbook author, television host and Italian food ambassador who tells viewers...