In between sharing our Thanksgiving food and starting to bake up some fun Christmas treats, we’re going to take a moment to share not a recipe but some New York restaurant recommendations.  The places we’re featuring today represent just two of the many, many good spots in the city for Italian food, but beyond this shared cuisine these restaurants are actually pretty different.  They’re in different neighborhoods, have different histories, and give off different vibes.  But they represent the diversity of food experiences here in New York, even within restaurants that serve food from the same part of the world, so check them out!  Just as a warning, though, there is one image of meat here.

First up is a brand new restaurant, Amarone Scarlotto, which came about recently after two separate Italian spots merged together.  This is a really convenient place to get a bite to eat:  it’s in midtown Manhattan, close to Times Square and all the Broadway theaters, so it’s great if you want a good meal that you don’t have to travel far for.  When we visited we were able to make ourselves an entirely vegetarian meal, starting with the insalata Amorone, which comes topped with artichokes, roasted red peppers, fresh mozzarella, and shaved Parmesan.

Then we split two pastas:  first, the rigatoni Siciliana, made with eggplant, tomatoes, and mozzarella …

… and the fettucine ai funghi, with mushrooms in a white truffle oil sauce.

A few weeks later, we managed to squeeze into Elio’s on the Upper East Side.  In the 41 years that it’s been around, Elio’s has become an establishment in the neighborhood – in fact, it’s reportedly one of Gwyneth Paltrow’s favorite New York spots, and there was a kerfuffle earlier this year when Sarah Palin ate there twice in the same week.  With all that, we knew it would be tough to snag a table there, so our strategy to get in was to call on a random Thursday and ask if they had any same-day reservations – and they did, due to a cancellation.  Since we were so excited to get in, we decided to try a whole bunch of different things, starting with the chopped salad, made with mixed lettuce, onions, mushrooms and strips of red peppers.

And also the asparagus and artichokes, topped with a tomato sauce.

Then Miriam had one of their pasta specials of the day – this pappardelle with pesto and chopped tomatoes.

Meanwhile, Cyril had their famous paglia e fieno, with a prosciutto, pea and cream sauce.

And we finished off our meal with their crème brulee.

We were really glad we got to squeeze into Elio’s and try this famous place, but we also enjoyed visiting to new pan-Italian spot as well.  Elio’s was a good celebratory treat (we went there for Cyril’s birthday) and we splurged a little there, while Amarone Scarlotto was a good place to try a variety of vegetarian pastas before going to a Broadway show.  Of course there’s wealth of Italian restaurants in New York, and so many of them are great, so in order to help cut through all your options we’re happy to feature these two interesting places.