I Sodi
Rita Sodi cooks simple Tuscan food on Bleecker Street, and Bryan Kim puts the pappardelle al limone in the top ten pastas in New York City.
Why go
Kim, in The Infatuation, rated the Bleecker Street room 8.5. He talks you out of the order the internet arrives with. The lasagna runs ten parts pasta to one part sauce. The paccheri does the opposite, so the ragu grips the inside of every tube.
Rita Sodi's plates run on cheese and olive oil. The insalata di carciofi is planks of parmesan over artichokes and tastes of nothing but those two things. The pappardelle al limone is lemon, a dash of black pepper and a bouncy noodle. The pici are hand-rolled. Kim says the pesto on them looks like it was chopped by a lawnmower.
Sodi runs Via Carota down the same street. The MICHELIN inspector calls them two of the most beloved Italian rooms in Manhattan. Come here for the quiet half. The walls are bare and white. The jazz plays at a volume you can talk over. Kim calls Via Carota eternally chaotic by comparison. The insalata di carciofi is planks of parmesan over artichokes and tastes of nothing but those two things. Lemon, a dash of black pepper and a bouncy noodle make up the pappardelle al limone. The pici are hand-rolled. Kim says the pesto on them looks like somebody chopped it with a lawnmower. Cheese and olive oil carry these plates, and the discipline is the one the paccheri runs on.
Sodi opened this in 2008 and cooks Tuscan because that is what she ate. The family farm north of Florence produced the prosciutto, the salami, the vegetables and the olive oil, and she taught herself to cook.3 In 2019 she and her wife Jody Williams took Best Chef: New York City at the James Beard Awards, an award the Foundation files against their other room.4
Sodi runs Via Carota down the same street. The MICHELIN inspector calls the two of them the most beloved Italian rooms in Manhattan. Come here for the quiet half. The walls are bare and white. The jazz plays at a volume you can talk over. Via Carota runs loud all night, and Bryan Kim's ranked guide puts it slightly ahead of this one.7
Rezdôra in the Flatiron is the other room in this argument. Stefano Secchi cooks a narrower menu there. Babbo, in Greenwich Village, used to hold this ground.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the pappardelle al limone, then the paccheri. Start on the verza, shredded cabbage with walnuts, raisins and a creamy robiola dressing, and open with a negroni.
- Order: the lasagna once. Kim's own instruction is to try it once, twice or maybe three times, and to know that the paccheri is technically better.
- Avoid: the secondi unless you have room. The pastas come in large portions and you will want more than one.
What locals & experts say
- Bryan Kim, The Infatuation, 21 November 2023, at 8.5:
I Sodi continues to serve some of the most impressive, understated Italian food in New York City.
1 - The MICHELIN inspector, on getting in:
this cozy, buzzy hotspot remains a difficult reservation to score so consider planning on an early-hour walk-in.
2 - Aaron Stern, writing an essay about the room for the guide in January 2024, has been going since the eight-table original and orders the fried artichokes every time:
They taste almost like popcorn.
6 - The guide selects the room and gives it no star. I read the whole 2025 New York roster, every Three, Two, One and Green Star, and I Sodi is on none of them.5
Good to know
- Getting in: the host will quote you a two-hour wait at peak. Walk in early and take the bar, which is the route in for one or two people. The restaurant's own line is that walk-ins are always welcome.3
- Noise: low enough to hold a conversation, which is rare on this block.
- Outside: there is a flagstone garden off Grove Street, and lunch runs Saturday and Sunday.3
- One door: the city's register carries a single permit under this name, at 314 Bleecker Street.
- Jeff put this on the list himself, 3 September 2026.
Jeff's take (his words)
Not on Jeff's saved list. He named the place on 3 September 2026, in the paragraph he wrote on what New York is to him, and asked for it.
Verdict
must-visit — Ask for the fried artichoke hearts; Kim says they are always offered as a special, which he takes for a mind game. Order a bourbon Invernale off the negroni list while you wait.