For London’s latest take on Italian cooking, restaurateurs have turned to America, not Italy, for their inspiration. London spent several decades pursuing regional Italian authenticity. Now it is falling for the Italian food of the USA, and some of the most fashionable new restaurants are celebrating a cuisine that was created precisely by leaving Italy. A hybrid of a hybrid.
I'm ensconced in a plush velvet banquette at The Dover on Dover Street, sipping an ice-cold martini. The seductively low, warm lighting gives the polished, wood-panelled room – and everyone in it – a gloss of glamour that feels like the New York of film stars in the 1950s.
This is not London. I'm here to eat Italian food, and despite the faultless quality of the martini, the menu is concerning me somewhat. I was expecting something more River Cafe than spaghetti and meatballs and prawn cocktail, but it turns out I'm missing the point. This is the new kind of Italian dining experience that has hit London, and a few bites into my chopped salad, I realise I'm ready to embrace it.
As The Dover's owner Martin Kuczmarski puts it, ‘There was a lack of understanding of what “New York Italian” is. Since opening The Dover, I believe we have set the bar and encouraged this style of food being brought to more people.’
London has seen plenty of straightforward US imports over the years: Manhattan steakhouses, burger joints, but combining Britain's beloved Italian cuisine, imported straight from Italy, with its Italian-American interpretation hadn't really been attempted. Chris Leach and David Carter opened Manteca in Shoreditch in 2021, serving what appeared to be straight-up Italian food, built on hyper-seasonal ingredients and nose-to-tail cooking. But those in the know would have picked up on a more Californian spin, not just in what they cooked but in how they served it: generous flavours, liberated from the sense of authenticity to which other Italian restaurants were bound.
When The Dover opened in 2023, Martin Kuczmarski narrowed it down to something more specific: New York-Italian cooking – not just as a menu, but as a whole experience. At The Dover, he reproduced the dishes Italian immigrants brought from home and adapted to the American appetite, as well as the theatre, service and generosity they brought with them, too.
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Grasso, opened by the McCaffrey family, launched in Soho the same year. Their family's story runs from Syracuse in Sicily to New York in the 1950s, embodying the classic Italian-American journey. Grasso offers its ‘red sauce’ dishes in a bustling room of chequered floors and neon signs, just like a family joint in Brooklyn or Queens.
Carbone opened in the former US Embassy building in Grosvenor Square this time last year, to the fanfare of the food press. It's an exact blueprint of the famous Greenwich village Italian-American institution that originally opened in 2013: theatrical, cinematic, and overflowing with abbondanza (over-the-top American-style generosity). Another import followed suit this June, with Dante, another Greenwich Village fixture since 1915, opening at Claridge's, bringing the food, the cocktails, the music and the fun to one of Mayfair's grand institutions.
When I ask Chris Leach what inspired him to introduce this style to Manteca, his focus remains on the food. ‘I liked the way [the American’s] approached Italian food with a certain freedom, using great seasonal produce, being generous with flavour, and not worrying too much about whether something was strictly traditional. It made me realise that you can take the principles and flavours of Italian cooking and interpret them through your own experience without losing what makes the food feel Italian.’
For places that serve the more ‘classic’ Italian-American menu, it’s about familiarity and consistency in the atmosphere these US restaurants manage to create. At Carbone, Mario Carbone puts it: ‘We wanted to take the Italian-American dishes people had eaten a hundred times and make the best possible version of them. The Spicy Rigatoni is exactly that. Vodka pasta was something you found in casual neighborhood restaurants and pizzerias, and we elevated it without losing what people loved about it.’
One of the most important factors for these places is to emulate American-style hospitality: generous, welcoming and full of energy. There's a clear aesthetic, too, whether it's Grasso's casual diner style, where you can drop in for mozzarella sticks and a slice of New York cheesecake that Mrs McCaffrey makes every day, or glamming it up with a Dante Martini, tricolore olives stacked at the bottom of the glass, before tucking into chicken alla diavola from the wood-fired oven. It's all the same cultural shorthand for some kind of Goodfellas vibe. As Dante's Linden Pride says: ‘Italian-American hospitality is built on a blend of the best of both worlds – premium Italian food, great cocktails and world-class hospitality. It's an immigrant story about bringing people together at the table. I think London is ready to embrace that as a tradition in its own right, rather than a pastiche.’
That's the real shift underway. London isn't just borrowing an aesthetic, it's starting to treat Italian-American food as a tradition with its own integrity, rather than a watered-down imitation of the real thing. I've always admired the standard of service in the States, and it's a welcome addition to London's restaurant scene; comfort food doesn't have to mean diminished quality, and it can still be served in glamorous surroundings. So next time I feel like eating something Italian, I'll put on a slick of red lipstick, order a martini, and tuck into a plate of chicken parm.
