FEATURE
Dear Michelin, Give These Italian-American Restaurants a Star Already
Monteverde, Chicago
By Eric Barton | March 21, 2025
My grandmother, like a lot of Italian grandmothers, was convinced the only way to express love was through food.
Holidays? We skipped turkey for lasagna. A random Tuesday? If we weren’t eating pasta, we were at an Italian restaurant, arguing about whether the sauce needed more garlic. And when it came to celebrating anything—birthdays, anniversaries, my first speeding ticket—we went out for red sauce and chicken parm.
Italian-American food isn’t just part of our culture—it’s among the finest dishes this country has invented. And yet the Michelin Guide, with all its so-called wisdom, doesn’t hand out stars to the places that have perfected it. Fine. If Michelin won’t do it, I will. These restaurants—from old-school institutions to new-wave innovators—are turning out Italian-American food so good, they deserve to be crowned among the best. And while some of these restaurants are in cities not yet covered by the Michelin Guide, consider this a game plan for when the inspectors come to realize the cultural value of Italian-American red sauce restaurants.
Carbone, New York City
181 Thompson St | Website | Instagram
Carbone is the only Italian-American restaurant to have received a Michelin Star, an award it got in 2014, only to watch it be taken away in 2022. That’s a shame, because few restaurants have mastered Italian-American dishes like Carbone. The spicy rigatoni vodka is legendary for good reason, but don’t overlook the tableside Caesar, prepared with the kind of reverence usually reserved for wine tastings. Carbone is a shrine to the red sauce joints of the past, with tuxedoed servers, banana-leaf wallpaper, and a clientele that includes more than a few people with personal drivers. If Frank Sinatra were alive, you’d find him here, flirting with the server and ordering a third martini.
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Carbone Vino, Miami
2911 Grand Ave | Website | Instagram
Miami’s Carbone Vino is what happens when Carbone goes full-on Italian wine bar. The food is just as good—eggplant scapece, baked clams, and that spicy rigatoni—but with a laser focus on wine by the glass and bottle. It’s the kind of place where you can spend an entire night sipping Barolo and pretending you know what “tannins” are, while eating some of the best Italian-American food anywhere.
>>>READ MORE: CARBONE VINO REVIEW>>>
Dominic’s, St. Louis
5101 Wilson Ave | Website
St. Louis has an obsession with Provel cheese that I will forever find cuirous, but Dominic’s smartly keeps to the classics. This is white-tablecloth, old-school Italian at its finest—think waiters who actually know how to properly serve wine, chandeliers that haven’t been dusted since the ‘70s, and a menu full of rich, decadent classics. Get the veal saltimbocca, and thank me later.
Emilio’s Ballato, New York City
55 E Houston St | Website | Instagram
If you’re looking for Emilio Vitolo Jr., good luck—he’s probably off schmoozing with celebrities. But if you’re looking for the best eggplant parm in New York, it’s here, in a simple-looking storefront, where reservations are as rare as a humble hedge fund manager. Emilio’s Ballato is everything you want in an Italian-American restaurant: loud, a little chaotic, and packed with food that tastes like someone’s nonna spent 12 hours in the kitchen making it.
Giacomo’s, Boston
ADDRESS | Website | Instagram
Growing up outside Boston, I was raised to understand deeply that Boston’s North End has no shortage of Italian spots. But Giacomo’s is the one that actually deserves the wait. There’s no website, no reservations, and no patience for people who dawdle with the menu. You’re here for the lobster fra diavolo, which comes swimming in a spicy tomato sauce so good you might ask for a second basket of bread just to soak up the remnants.
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Irene’s, New Orleans
529 Bienville St | Website | Instagram
You know a restaurant is doing something right when the locals treat it like their own personal dining room. Irene’s has been packing in New Orleanians for decades, thanks to a menu that’s as much about old-school Italian-American comfort food as it is about the city’s unmistakable Creole influence. The move here, pictured above, is lasagna bolognese that wears a crown of fried eggplant medallions—a dish that’s proudly not from Bologna. The space is classic French Quarter: dim lighting, just the right amount of kitsch, and the kind of service that makes you feel like you're being taken care of by someone’s very charismatic Italian aunt.
Laico’s, Jersey City, NJ
67 Terhune Ave | Website | Instagram
Laico’s is the kind of place you’d never find unless you knew to look for it—hidden on a quiet street in Jersey City, with a menu straight out of an Italian-American fever dream (but I promised not to use that phrase, so let’s call it a culinary fantasy instead). The shrimp Francese is the order, but honestly, you could close your eyes and point to anything, and it’d be the best thing you ate all week.
Lidia’s, Kansas City
101 W 22nd St | Website | Instagram
Lidia Bastianich didn’t just open a restaurant in Kansas City—she brought Italian-American cooking at its best and set it down in the Crossroads Arts District. The space is all exposed beams and warm lighting, the kind of place where you settle in for the long haul, preferably with a glass of Amarone and a plan to leave in a pasta-induced haze. Back when I lived in Kansas City, my go-to was the Pasta Trio, a bottomless parade of house-made noodles that change daily. If you leave without ordering the tiramisu, you’ve officially failed at dinner.
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Lucali, Brooklyn
575 Henry St | Website | Instagram
Mark Iacono never intended to open a restaurant—he just wanted to save an old candy shop from being turned into a chain. Now Lucali is one of the hardest tables to get in the country, and for good reason. The pizzas are simple—thin, perfectly charred, and best eaten with nothing but a drizzle of olive oil and a heap of fresh basil. It’s cash-only, BYOB, and if you don’t line up before the sun sets, you might as well go home. Oddly enough, the Michelin Guide awarded Lucali’s outpost on Miami Beach a Bib Gourmand but has passed over the original. It’s time to fix that.
Macchialina, Miami Beach
820 Alton Rd | Website | Instagram
Miami Beach isn’t exactly known for its subtlety, but Macchialina keeps things refreshingly unpretentious. Chef Michael Pirolo could be running some fancy white-tablecloth joint, but instead, he’s serving the best Italian-American dishes in South Florida, i.e., cavatelli with porchetta ragu is the stuff of dreams. The move here is to order the chef’s tasting and let them bring you whatever’s best that night.
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Monteverde, Chicago
1020 W Madison St | Website | Instagram
Sarah Grueneberg didn’t just open another Italian restaurant in Chicago—she built a pasta empire. Monteverde’s pastificio, where fresh pasta is made in-house daily, is the beating heart of the restaurant, and every single dish feels like a revelation. If you leave without trying the cacio e pepe, you’ve done it wrong.
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Nostrana, Portland, OR
1401 SE Morrison St | Website | Instagram
Portland is filled with people who have strong opinions about pizza, and Nostrana has successfully quieted all of them with its perfectly blistered Neapolitan pies. Chef Cathy Whims is a six-time James Beard finalist, and her menu somehow makes rustic Italian feel fresh again, thanks to dishes like grilled radicchio with balsamic and hand-cut pappardelle with wild boar ragu.
Pizzeria Bianco, Phoenix
623 E Adams St | Website | Instagram
Chris Bianco is the pizza god of Phoenix, and if you haven’t been to Pizzeria Bianco yet, I suggest you clear your schedule. The crust has that perfect balance of chew and crispness, and the Wiseguy pizza—topped with wood-roasted onions, housemade mozzarella, and fennel sausage—should probably be in the Smithsonian. And to be clear, this isn’t pizza that conforms to some regulation set up by some Neapolitan bureaucrat; this is the kind of pie that can only exist on these shores.
>>>RELATED: 15 STANDOUT RESTAURANTS IN PHOENIX>>>
Spano’s, Point Pleasant Beach, NJ
719 Arnold Ave | Website | Instagram
New Jersey has a lot of Italian restaurants, but few do it as well as Spano’s Ristorante Italiano. The portions are enormous, the red sauce is rich and slow-cooked, and the seafood dishes—like the linguine with white clam sauce—taste like they were made by someone who actually knows what the ocean is.
Trattoria Sofia, Houston
911 W 11th St | Website | Instagram
Houston might not be the first place you think of for Italian food, but Trattoria Sofia makes a compelling case. This Heights neighborhood gem has an open-air courtyard that feels like it belongs in Sicily, and the handmade pastas, like the saffron-infused spaghetti, are worth the trip alone.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who spits his time between Asheville and Miami. He’s on a constant hunt for the best pizza, best places to bike, and for his next new favorite destination. Email him here.
