If you're hunting for an Italian restaurant in New Rochelle, the hard part isn't finding one — it's choosing. This page sorts the city's Italian places by what you'd actually want them for: a quiet anniversary, a loud family table, a plate of pasta with boats bobbing outside the window. Last updated October 2026.
New Rochelle's Italian cooking isn't one thing. There's the old-guard Italian-American tradition that's been feeding Westchester for generations, there's regional cooking — Calabrese, Roman — from chefs who are very specific about where their food comes from, and there's a newer, more ambitious downtown scene that's started pulling people up from the city. All of it is within a few miles of each other.
The blocks around the Metro-North station have quietly become the most interesting place to eat in the city, and it's where you'd take someone you're trying to impress.
Maria Restaurant on Huguenot Street is the headline act — modern Italian, Michelin-listed, and the one locals name first when someone from out of town asks where to go. It's the right call for an anniversary, a milestone birthday, or any night where you want the food to be the event rather than the background. Book ahead; this is not a walk-in-at-eight kind of room.
Spadaro Roman Kitchen at 211 Main St is a different animal entirely, and arguably the most distinctive Italian restaurant in New Rochelle. It's small, chef-owned, Roman in focus, and there's no fixed menu — you're putting yourself in the kitchen's hands and seeing what the night brings. Perfect for diners who like being surprised and hate making decisions. Not the move if someone in your party needs to see a laminated menu before they relax.
Posto 22 on Division Street has been the reliable downtown sit-down for years now. It's Italian plus a proper wine bar, which makes it the easy answer for a date that might be dinner or might just be a couple of glasses and something to pick at. Being a short walk from the station also makes it the obvious meeting point when half your group is coming up from Manhattan.
Leo's Italian Restaurant at 969 Main St is the full-service, unfussy counterweight to all that — and at $$ it's the one you can go to on a Tuesday without thinking about it. It carries the highest rating of any Italian spot in town alongside Da Giorgio, which tells you how consistently it delivers. Good for a solid plate of food, no theatre.
New Rochelle has a genuine waterfront, and a handful of Italian kitchens have planted themselves right on it. These are warm-weather places first, though several are open year-round — check before you drive down.
Lunello's Restaurant sits at the Imperial Yacht Club marina on Davenport Ave, doing Italian-American and seafood with the boats in view. It's the spot for a big occasion where you want the setting to do some of the work — graduations, rehearsal dinners, the kind of lunch where someone's visiting and you want to show off that New Rochelle has a coastline.
Marina View Restaurant & Tiki Bar on Drake Ave leans harder into the fun side of waterfront dining: Italian and seafood, plus a tiki bar and dock-and-dine for anyone arriving by boat. This is the one for a long, loose afternoon with a group that isn't in a hurry, rather than a quiet two-top.
Mamma Francesca over on Pelham Rd, near the marina, is the more straightforwardly homestyle option of the waterfront three, and the most affordable at $$. Come here when you want authentic Italian cooking without the special-occasion framing — it's a neighbourhood restaurant that happens to be near the water, not a destination that happens to serve food.
Away from downtown, the Italian restaurants serve a different purpose entirely: they're where families eat, week in and week out.
Maestro's Italian Restaurant on North Ave in Wykagyl is the template for this — pasta, pizza, meat and seafood, all under one roof at $$, which means everyone from the picky eight-year-old to the uncle who only orders veal is satisfied. It's the default for a weeknight family dinner in the north end, and it earns that position.
Da Giorgio on Quaker Ridge Rd is the north end's serious option, and it's specific: authentic Calabrese cooking, not generic Italian-American. Southern Italian food has its own personality — bolder, more assertive — and this is the place in New Rochelle to find it done properly. Reservations are recommended and you should take that seriously; it's a well-loved room and it fills.
Caridad & Louie's Restaurant on North Ave doesn't fit any of the above boxes, which is exactly why it's worth knowing about. It's Dominican-Italian fusion — Cuban sandwiches sitting alongside comfort food — and it's a genuinely New Rochelle kind of restaurant, the product of a city where those communities have lived side by side for decades. Go when you're bored of choosing between red sauce and more red sauce, or when your group can't agree on a cuisine.
If you only remember a few things: Maria for the big night, Spadaro when you want to be surprised, Posto 22 for drinks that might become dinner, Da Giorgio for real Calabrese cooking, Maestro's or Leo's for a normal Tuesday, and anything on the water when the weather turns. Between them you've got $$ family rooms and $$$ occasion restaurants within a ten-minute drive of each other, which is a better spread than most places this size can manage.
One practical note: the higher-end rooms — Maria, Spadaro, Da Giorgio — are small and busy. Call ahead rather than chancing it, especially on weekends.
Italian dinner is only half a night out. For everything else happening in New Rochelle — live music, markets, family events, festivals and the stuff that doesn't make it onto the big listings sites — head to happs for this week's local picks. You can also sign up for the free weekly digest and get the whole lot delivered to your inbox, so you're never the person who finds out about something good the day after it happened.
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