Top Old-School Italian Restaurants in America

Angelo Ricci, from Monti Lepini, south of Rome, opened an Italian deli with a few tables in this community south of the Seattle airport in 1957. Today his family runs an acclaimed restaurant on the site, serving a range of classic pastas, steaks, and veal and chicken dishes, as well as nightly specials like chicken cannelloni and seafood spaghetti.

Anthony Spino’s mother ran a lunch place called The Soup House in this downtown favorite’s original building in the 1960s. In 1978, her son, Anthony Jr., and his wife expanded the structure and reopened it as Anthony’s Restaurant and Lounge. Today, as Anthony’s on Grand, it’s run by the couple’s sons, serving recipes handed down by their grandmother. Expect lasagna made daily, fried chicken on Sundays, and the house specialty dessert — cannoli.

Arturo Gismondi opened the original Arturo’s in Queens, New York, in 1957. His sons, Giuseppe and Vincenzo, took over in 1972. The family opened this Florida outpost in 1983, selling the Queens original eight years later and it has flourished ever since. Look for carpaccio, minestrone, spaghetti alla carbonara, zuppa di pesce, osso buco, and an assortment of homemade gelato on the menu.

This Williamsburg standby was opened in 1900 by Pasquale Bamonte, a native of Salerno in Italy’s Campania region, and is quite possibly New York’s oldest Italian restaurant. The menu includes such old-style offerings as clams oreganata, fettuccine Alfredo, chicken cacciatore, and steak pizzaiola.

A far cry from the glitzy contemporary Italian restaurants in the hotel-casinos on the Strip, Battista’s is a red-leather-booth place attractively cluttered with Vegas memorabilia. The Little Italy-style menu includes things like minestrone, eggplant parmigiana, spaghetti with meatballs, and shrimp marinara. Free house wine is served with meals and there is a wandering accordion player.