Via Carota

Rita Sodi and Jody Williams cook Tuscan at 51 Grove Street from late morning until late, without a break, and the dish three cooks name first is a heap of lettuce dressed with olive oil, vinegar and a little water.

Why go

Sodi and Williams took the name from the 17th-century villa in the hills outside Florence that Sodi once lived in, and the room is furnished with the keepsakes they carried out of it.1 The kitchen runs osteria hours, food and drink without a pause from late morning into the night, which is why it works for a solo lunch and a late plate of pasta on the same day. The MICHELIN Guide's inspector starts with deep-fried olives that are plump, piping-hot and stuffed with pork sausage and calls the risotto cacio e pepe luscious (and unmissable).2 Alice Waters adds the detail that says most about how they buy: the bread comes with oil from the chefs' own olive groves in Florence.

Order this / avoid

Order: the insalata verde. Ruth Rogers calls it a huge heap of lettuce with a beautifully balanced vinaigrette and gives the build as a little water to the dressing, along with fantastic olive oil and really good vinegar.3 Then the risotto cacio e pepe, or in spring the asparagi alla parmigiana, which is Waters' own return dish: asparagus baked with tomato sauce and melted cheese. Ruth Reichl orders the anchovies with bread and butter and the lemon risotto.4 White truffles are on the tagliarini when they are on.
Order: the svizzerina if you want meat. The kitchen chops the New York strip with a knife rather than grinding it, sears the puck on cast iron and sends it out with no bun and no fries, so it eats like steak.6
Order: the vegetables, which is where the kitchen stops being strict. Salsify caramelized in brown butter, and poached leeks under shaved cured mullet roe and grated egg.6
Avoid: rolling up as a six on a Friday night. Walk-ins are always welcome and the Michelin inspector still writes that "reservations fill quickly at this popular spot," so book or come at the edges of the day.
Avoid: ordering one thing from every section, which is how the bill reaches a hundred dollars a head without anybody deciding to spend it.6

What locals & experts say

Alice Waters (Chez Panisse), naming her favorite restaurants in the world: "This Italian restaurant feels like stepping into a hillside trattoria in Tuscany. Everyone loves the cacio e pepe, of course, but I'll go back again and again for the perfect springtime asparagi alla parmigiana." Supplied text, The Relisher's Bay Area edition; her one New York room.
Ruth Rogers (The River Café, London), 2026-05: The last time I was there, we had a fantastic tagliarini with white truffles and the veal. It was perfect. She calls it one of the best Italian restaurants in the city and goes in the evening.3
Ruth Reichl, critic, 2024-03: always the green salad. It's a huge heap of lettuce, and the dressing is a perfect vinaigrette — their secret is that they add a little water to the vinaigrette.4 Rogers writes the same trick in nearly the same words two years later and sources it to hearsay, the secret, I'm told, so read those two as one observation. Waters is the third voice that stands on its own, and she names different dishes.
MICHELIN Guide New York: in the selection, with the inspector calling the flourless chocolate cake downright excellent.2
Pete Wells, reviewing it for The New York Times in March 2015 at two stars: Ms. Williams and Ms. Sodi are cooking deeply appealing food, without mugging.6
Ligaya Mishan, keeping it on the paper's hundred best in May 2026: The food is rustic and cosmopolitan at once — bright, monumental salads, whole carrots and leeks baptized by fire, skeins of pasta, and Parmigiano snowing down — but the secret is the seeming effortlessness.7
James Beard Foundation (2019): Best Chefs, New York City, to Rita Sodi and Jody Williams. That is a person's award and it does not travel to the door. The room itself reached the foundation's 2026 Outstanding Restaurant semifinalist ballot, which does.9

Good to know

Timing: open from late morning to late at night every day, service without a break, and an hour earlier at the weekend.
Booking: walk-ins always welcome per the restaurant, though the Michelin inspector reports that tables go fast. The terrazza on Grove Street is the good-weather option.
Standing: The Infatuation ranks it third in the city.7 8
The room: the chandelier over the bar is a clam rake the sculptor Warren Muller rebuilt, and the beechwood chairs came out of a chapel in Wales.6

Verdict

must-visit — Finish on the raspberry crostata, thin sticky jam under pastry barely holding together. If they cannot seat you, Rita Sodi's own I Sodi is round the corner and the pasta there is hers too.

Via Carota.