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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Family-style dining at Grasso.
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.
Dante’s elegant dining room.
Dining and Cooking