It would be easy to call San Sabino a neighborhood restaurant. It’s small, for starters, with only 55 seats, including the bar. Then there’s the decor: The dining room is adorned in a warm, welcoming butter yellow and accented with mahogany tables and a fabric ceiling. Finally, there’s the food itself, which includes lobster ravioli, shrimp parmesan, and cheesy frittelle—comforting dishes that feel elevated but not esoteric. Oh, and the wine list? A third of the bottles are under $100.
Yet all that leaves out some important culinary context: San Sabino is the second restaurant by Angie Rito and Scott Tacinelli, whose first venture, Don Angie, earned a Michelin star in 2021 and remains one of the most difficult reservations in New York. Creating delicious yet unpretentious restaurants is their secret sauce (well, that and a mean marinara), and San Sabino is no exception.
Rito and Tacinelli would never call their cuisine purely Italian; they respect the traditional techniques of true Italian food too much. (In 2023, Italy nominated its culinary traditions to the UNESCO Cultural Heritage list.) “We take a lot of liberties and risks and break a lot of rules when it comes to typical Italian cuisine,” Rito says. They do, however, call it Italian-American. Their dishes are often inspired by the melting-pot meals they both enjoyed growing up in their respective Italian-American families: Tachinelli’s mom, for example, would always order lobster ravioli from their favorite restaurant in New Jersey.
