L’incontro by Rocco is a new red-sauce joint where the old regulars are filling the dining room.
I have previously called any restaurant bearing the approval of our mayor and unofficial club promoter, Eric Adams, a red flag. But last week, my convictions were challenged when, already en route to dinner at L’incontro by Rocco, I peeped Adams’s grin framed by a Knicks hat and two thumbs up on its opening-night Instagram post. Driven by momentum and hunger — plus the promise of rollatini and meatballs — I decided this was not the time to pivot.
L’incontro is in its third week of operation on the Upper East Side, but it’s not exactly a new restaurant. For 25 years, it stood on 31st Street in Astoria, prior to closing at the end of May. Chef and owner Rocco Sacramone, who emigrated from Abruzzo to Astoria in 1970 with his parents and late brother, blames “out of control” rent for shutting down his former flagship. When he wasn’t able to negotiate a deal to stay, Sacramone decided to fully turn his efforts to the Manhattan restaurant, originally intended to be a second location, which had been in development since before the pandemic.
The venue may have changed, but the recipes are all the same, which becomes apparent when the large, uncomplicated platters hit the table: mussels in red sauce from a bread bowl, grilled figs and prosciutto with mixed greens, dover sole for two. This is not food that was engineered for a restaurant in 2024, but it is enjoyable, and the room, much smaller than the original, is already filled with people who feel right at home, like a table of colleagues ordering successive bottles of Sassicaia and the hefty man at another table gesticulating with an unlit cigar whenever there wasn’t a fork in his hand. I was in awe of a couple cuddling on the banquette, taking up two separate tables like they owned the place.
“A lot of the people that we see nightly here, there’s always between 10 and 20 people that I knew already from Astoria,” says Sacramone. “When you establish your business for 25 years, you know, your customers become family members, almost.” A few days earlier, he’d Ubered in one of his weekly Astoria regulars to try the new spot. “The last week that he knew that we were closing, he came every single night.”
Staff is another carryover, both cooks and servers, so the room operates with a fluidity that doesn’t usually exist in a weeks- or even months-old restaurant, reciting specials and doling out baked clams just as some have done for more than a decade.
I started with an artichoke special, which Sacramone thinks should be available through summer or as long as he can get “perfect” ’chokes. It arrived rather unassumingly in a wide-brimmed bowl, slightly stewed in a pale broth until the exterior leaves collapsed from tenderness, with a light layer of melted Fontina and toasted, anchovy-laced bread crumbs sprinkled on top. The combination of bread crumbs, wine-scented broth, and cheese became a porridge-y bread soup as I ate. I loved it; this stuffed artichoke didn’t taste like it had been around for 25 years — more like 100, which is probably why it’s the best thing I’ve eaten at a restaurant in months. I also had an order of chicken parm, completely covered in a rich, slightly sweet tomato sauce and browned mozzarella, which was absolutely fine.
There is no shortage of Italian food in New York, but Italian restaurants like this — existing out of time, beholden to neither trends nor TikTok — are increasingly endangered. Just look, for example, at the recent demise of Pietro’s. It’s too bad. Every neighborhood needs a place that is as immediately comfortable and inviting as L’incontro.
As for Adams, he was a first-timer who came to eat with some friends of Sacramone’s. What did the mayor, whose diet is famously “imperfect,” end up ordering? “He wanted a piece of fish, but ‘I don’t eat this, I don’t eat that,’ so I just made it in parchment paper,” the chef says. “Very simple — no oils, no nothing.”
