Rich Torissi, Mario Carbone and Jeff Zalaznick have turned the formerly tired space occupied by Rocco’s into an Italian new generation restaurant where there’s just enough innovation and yet also enough authenticity. The floor tiles are straight out of The Godfather yet the waiters uniforms (designed by Zac Posen) and the art work (curated by the son of Julian Schnabel) show this is no red sauce time warp but the food is served in atavistically massive portions. Luckily, the menu cajoles one into a ‘hang the diet’ sense of abandon at first glance with delights including an unctuous Caesar salad heavy on the anchovies and wind through to linguine vongole, and a pleasingly pink veal chop. Ask the regulars though, and they’ll tell you that it’s perfectly possible to have a disastrous, yet satisfying carb crash with what may well be the best garlic bread in New York City. A Phil Spector heavy soundtrack only adds more glamour to one of the city’s finest new Italian mainstays.

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