Peasant
Olivier Pillard helped Frank DeCarlo pour this concrete floor, and he stayed in the kitchen when DeCarlo sold up. DeCarlo built most of the room with his own hands and ran it with his wife Dulcinea Benson.1
Why go
The kitchen runs on live fire and a wood oven, which is why Forgione wanted it. DeCarlo opened here in 1999. His last month was December 2019, and Forgione bought the room.6 Forgione is the son of Larry Forgione, the pioneering New American chef. His own restaurant has traded since 2008.1 The pastas are rolled here daily.6 They butcher whole animals in house and turn them on custom rotisseries.7 Sonal Shah rated it 7.5 for The Infatuation in September 2026. The room smells of the fire and reads like an old church, she wrote, with real pews among the seats.3
Order this / avoid
- Order: the suckling pig, roasted for hours and pulled with a rib over milk-braised potatoes. Amelia Nierenberg wrote in the Times that many chefs consider it the heart of the menu.1 Shah says the potatoes steal it.3
- Order: the octopus, which comes to the table still bubbling out of the fire.3
- Order: the roasted skate, in an iron pan under breadcrumbs, tomato and capers. Shah calls it a menu highlight.3
- Avoid: the crab spaghetti alla chitarra, which Shah found too blunt to let the saffron and crab through.3
What locals & experts say
- William Grimes, then the New York Times restaurant critic, July 2001, at one star:
If this be peasant fare, don't tell the royals.
He was cooler on two things:The pasta at Peasant, like the mozzarella, is good, not great.
2 - Marc Forgione, on his own site:
Every morning we light a fire and start cooking.
6 He told the Times he could not imagine shutting the place down and changing the sign.1 - Alan Sytsma, Grub Street, October 2019, on the news that DeCarlo was going: he called it
an Ageless Restaurant 15 Years Ahead of Its Time.
4 - Where it stands now: I have not found Peasant on a current best-of list. Shah calls Torrisi and Oriana its glossier new neighbors.3
Good to know
- Whole animals: email three days ahead for a large cut. The whole pig dinner has its own set menu and wants four days and a deposit.7
- Walking in: Shah found a table easier to get here than at the newer rooms nearby.3
- Drinks: four vermouths by the glass at $15, and a negroni list that runs to mezcal and Gran Classico. Michael Laudenslager buys the wine, every region of Italy, minimal intervention.8
- Bread: $2, and you have to ask.3
Verdict
should-visit — Order something that came off the spit. Everything else here is a decent Italian dinner.