Italian Restaurant
 

Looking for nice, reasonably priced, Italian Restaurant around Midtown.
Appreciate any suggestions. Pizza okay.
Thanks in advance.

Please define "reasonably priced." Remember that, in New York, it is customary virtually everywhere, pizza or not, to add a 15% to 20% tip (before the almost 9% sales tax is added).

For pizza, there's an outpost of John's in Times Square.

"Reasonably priced," maybe $30-40 per person.
Thanks for the help.

We ate Italian at 2nd Ave around 88th St at a place called Carino. It's sorta across from Elaine's. I didn't get exact address. Owner Sicilian and we enjoyed dinner. About $75 with a bottle of wine. I googled it and it came up in Brooklyn but that isn't the one.

Not exactly midtown, but easy to get to on the #1 train and a personal favorite now, having stumbled upon it.

Angelina Restaurant at 104 and Broadway (take the #1 train uptown to 103rd St).

It is a cute very good italian restaurant with brick oven for the best pizza I have ever had. Brought a bunch of friends there recently and they all raved about the place. A fav of everyone was the calamari. I get the Margarita Pizza, very thin crust and amazing toping. They also do an interesting pizza, haven't tried that one yet, but salad pizza heaped with arugala.

Really worth the ride on the subway.

We thought Trattoria Trecolori was good, and we loved John's Pizzeria near Times Square mentioned by bachs above.

Sorry to disagree but Trattoria Treclori is just above average and John's is fine but not the best NY has to offer.

A short train or taxi ride-I Trulli

http://maps.google.com/maps/place?hl...ed=0CCUQqgUwAQ

Much further away

Peasant
Cacio e Pepe
I Coppi

Trattoria Trecolori does get pretty consistently good reviews. It's ranked around #15 or so over on Tripadvisor and 92% of people recommend it. They fit the bill for what the OP asked for and are conveniently located. Not fancy of course; we picked it because the location was close to Broadway, but we weren't disappointed. So what's the best pizza NY has to offer?

That is why I do not post on Trip Advisor. The choices of restaurants are mysterious. They seemed to overwhelmed by visitors who do not know of the better spots around town.

Among the places that are exlusively serve pizza or serve whole pies restaurants in Manhattan:

Motorino
Pizza Fresca
Luzzo's
Lombardi's

I have not been to Co. and Keste but people I trust say it they are very good.

And not as good as the others but certainly worth the money

Tontonno's
Gruppo
Posto

I just checked out Trip Advisor:

Bubba Gump was ranked 72 out of 7,025 restaurants. 72!!!

Juniors was 46, And although I love their cheesecake everything else is average

Maloney and Porcelli was 45. If you go the other topic of steakhouses in NYC, no one even mentioned them in passing.

Bubba Gump 72!! That says it all.

Take a look at http://www.osteria-doge.com/

I like opentable.com for restaurant reviews and menupages.com for suggestions.

Perhaps many of the glowing reviews written for the chain restaurants on Trip Advisor were written by visitors who were experiencing a chain restaurant for the first time. All of the reviews on Trip Advisor are suspect to me. I do know that there are B&B reviews on TA and on Fodors that have been written by the OWNERS of the inn. That's not good.

Anyway, bubba gumps serves swill.

Tripadvisor ranks popularity - not quality of food or service. Lots of people go to awful restaurants due to "name" or location - dspsite the food being deplorable. For restaurant info don;t look at tripadvisor - look at Zagat's or Chow Hound - mostly locals who eat out all the time - and usually have higher standards than mall-style chains.

I am not sure that is correct NYTraveler. The ranking I saw was according to quality. They had five little hooters as a standard and the top ones had 4 1/2 hooters.

Cellini, at East 54th between Park and Madison, is a very reliable restaurant. The waitstaff is always attentive and the food very good (try the homemade envelope pasta called imbustata).

Adu and nytraveler - you are both right in a sense. Tripadvisor does rank by "popularity." However, the determination of popularity depends on the star rating based on reviews. The problem is that it doesn't matter if a restaurant has two reviews or two hundred. That's why it doesn't much matter if a restaurant is ranked number 1 or number 101. For those restaurants that have a lot of reviews, I do find it helpful to see what people have said. You can get a general sense of the restaurant by poring over the reviews. I've had some good experience using it as a tool (one of several tools) when researching restaurants.

For example Adu - Although Bubba Gump is ranked 72, reading the actual reviews, even though many praise the place, I can tell that it would not be for me (I knew that already, just using this as an example). Things like "it was a lot of fun" "Forrest Gump" theme, "great for kids," and my personal favorite -- "Worth a visit for the fun factor, and if you want some entertainment flip your sign over to "stop forest stop". A server will come up to you saying "Stop forest Stop, I am your server, how can I help" -- are actually quite helpful to me in deciding that this is not the restaurant for me.

Appreciate the input--Thanks to all!

Tom42

The fact that Bubba Gump appears in the top .01% of any food suvey indicates that is not relaibale, no matetr the criteria or those participating. The top place sells cookies where you have to walk down a few steps. The cookies are good, but if that is best place in NY, then I'm moving.