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Italian small plates in New York go by three names, and they are not interchangeable. Antipasti belong to a meal. Cicchetti belong to a bar counter in Venice. Spuntini are whatever you eat standing up. Most people hunting the best italian restaurant nyc book a table and order a pasta, which is a fine plan and also the slow way to find out whether a kitchen can cook. A small-plate menu tells you faster and costs less. Seven Manhattan rooms handle the format properly, starting on the blocks around Gramercy Park and Union Square.

At a glance

• For antipasti treated as a real course: Rezdôra, 27 East 20th Street.
• For bar snacks that are not an afterthought: Union Square Cafe, 101 East 19th Street.
• For the cheapest serious hour in the corridor: the $5 Aperitivo Hour on Park Avenue South.
• For pizzette as the opening move: Massara, 913 Broadway.
• For a menu that actually says cicchetti: Aria Wine Bar, 16 Bedford Street.
• For spuntini and no reservation: Bar Pisellino, 52 Grove Street.
• For crudo before anything else: L’Artusi, 228 West 10th Street.

What Italian small plates actually mean in NYC

Antipasti is the only one of the three that is a course. It comes before the pasta, it is priced like a starter, and on a serious menu it is where the kitchen shows you what it bought that week.

Cicchetti is Venetian and it is bar food: small, cheap, eaten standing at a counter with a glass of wine, traditionally in a bacaro. Almost nothing in New York does this the way Venice does, because our bars are built around sitting.

Spuntini just means snacks. It carries no structure at all, which is why it turns up on menus for places open from breakfast to midnight.

Here is the practical difference. Order antipasti and you have started a meal. Order cicchetti or spuntini and you have started a drink. Restaurants that blur the two usually charge you meal prices for snack portions, which is the thing to watch for.

If the drinking side of this is what you are after, the distinction between aperitivo and a standard happy hour is worth ten minutes before you go out.

Where Italian small plates work near Gramercy and Union Square

Rezdôra, Flatiron

Rezdôra at 27 East 20th Street splits its antipasti into three headings, which tells you the kitchen takes the course seriously. Under Caseificio there is a Fett’ Unta at $10 and a Stracciatella con Pomodori at $24. Under Della Zona, a Gnocco Fritto at $18, an Affettati Misti at $38 and a Parmigiano Reggiano Tasting at $26. There is also a salad called Cacio e Pepe in Emilia at $18, which is a joke only if you have never eaten in Emilia.

These are courses, not snacks. The gnocco fritto with the affettati is the order if two of you want to sit at the bar and not commit to the pasta tasting. Service runs 5:00 to 11:00 PM Monday, with lunch added from noon Tuesday through Friday and from 11:30 AM at weekends.

Best suited to a pair who want to eat well without booking the full tasting weeks out.

Union Square Cafe, Gramercy

At 101 East 19th Street, Union Square Cafe keeps a bar snacks section on its dinner menu that most restaurants would treat as filler. The Corn Fritters Cacio e Pepe is $14, listed with pecorino, black pepper and honey. The drinks list carries its own aperitivo section, including a USC Americano at $14 and a Strawberry Sbagliato at $16. There is a separate midday bar bites list for the hours between lunch and dinner.

The restaurant opens from 11:30 AM on weekdays and 11 AM at weekends. It is two blocks from the 6 at 23rd Street and about the same from Union Square itself, which makes it one of the few genuinely good bars in the area you can walk into at four in the afternoon.

Best suited to a solo early dinner at the bar, or the gap between finishing work and meeting someone.

Isabelle’s Osteria, Park Avenue South

The Aperitivo Hour at a restaurant on Park Avenue South runs Monday through Friday from 2 to 6 PM at the bar, and every item on it costs $5. The small bites currently listed include saffron arancini with pomodoro and parmesan, house cured guanciale toast with tomato and ginger jam, ricotta toast with truffle honey and hazelnuts, marinated beets with strawberry and pistachio, cheese focaccia, watermelon and feta, and a poached shrimp gazpacho. Spritzes, cocktails, wine and beer are $5 as well.

Isabelle’s sits at 245 Park Avenue South between 19th and 20th Streets, a contemporary Italian room with a large bar and a private dining room off the main space. This is the closest thing in the corridor to the Venetian arrangement: cheap food, cheap drink, no obligation to stay for dinner. It suits an early group with no plan, or anyone who wants to test a kitchen before committing to a table there. Reservations for the dining room open 30 days ahead on OpenTable and Resy for parties up to ten, and walk-ins are first come, first served, so the practical move is to turn up before six.

Best suited to after-work drinking with food attached, and to groups arriving at different times.

Massara, Union Square

Massara at 913 Broadway opens its antipasti with pizzette, which is not how most Italian menus in this city start. The list includes a Margherita, a Stagione, a Crudo, a Montanara and a Ciabatta. Under Della Zona there is a Classico Antipasto and a Polpo, and the salads include an Insalata del Mercato.

Small pizzas as a first course is a southern habit and it works better for a table of four than a plate of cured meat does, because everyone gets a piece without negotiating. The kitchen serves dinner only, 5:00 to 10:30 PM, seven nights.

Best suited to a group of four, or a pre-event dinner where you want to eat something immediately.

Where the format works further west

Aria Wine Bar, West Village

Aria at 16 Bedford Street is the only place on this list whose menu prints the word cicchetti as a section heading. Everything under it is $17: Olive e Feta, Polpette Pomodoro, Cozze Marinate, Calamari in Umido, Gamberi Aglio e Olio, Melanzane e Caprino, Costicine di Agnello and several more. Salumi is $10 and formaggi $9. The restaurant describes itself as serving small plates with Italian wine, which is an accurate description for once.

Hours run 11:30 AM to 11 PM Sunday through Thursday and to midnight Friday and Saturday. Bedford Street is a five-minute walk from the 1 at Christopher Street.

Best suited to a table that wants to order eight things and no entrée.

Bar Pisellino, West Village

At 52 Grove Street, on the corner of Seventh Avenue, Bar Pisellino is the closest New York gets to an Italian bar in the literal sense: espresso and pastry in the morning, spuntini and drinks later, open daily from 8 AM to 11 PM. The site states plainly that there are no reservations.

This is the one to use when you want the format rather than a meal. You will not leave full. That is the correct outcome for a spuntino and the wrong outcome if you skipped lunch.

Best suited to a drink with something to eat, at an hour when nothing else is serving.

L’Artusi, West Village

L’Artusi at 228 West 10th Street separates crudo from antipasti, and both are worth ordering before you get to the pasta. The crudo runs $26 across hamachi, a wagyu carpaccio and a tuna with olivada. Antipasti sit between $19 and $25, including roasted beets with watermelon and feta crema at $20 and a stracciatella panzanella with heirloom tomatoes at $25.

Reservations release on Resy on a two-week rolling basis each day at 9 AM, with bar and counter seats held for walk-ins, which is the realistic way to eat only the small plates here.

Best suited to a bar seat, two crudo and a glass of white, with no pasta at all.

How to order without ending up hungry

Count on three small plates per person if that is the whole meal, and two if a pasta is coming. Order the vegetable thing first, because it arrives fastest and it is where the kitchen is most exposed. Cured meat and cheese boards are the safest order and the least informative one.

The other rule: at a bar with $5 or $10 items you can order freely, and at a room where antipasti run $18 to $38 you cannot. Three antipasti at Rezdôra costs more than dinner at Aria. For anything shared across a table, the question of which Italian dishes survive being passed around is the practical companion to this one, and for the after-work version of the same evening there is a guide to aperitivo and drinks near Union Square.

Frequently Asked Question

Can you make a full dinner out of Italian small plates?

Yes, but only at the rooms priced for it. At Aria Wine Bar, where cicchetti are $17 and cheese is $9, a table of two can order six or seven things and eat properly for less than two pastas elsewhere would cost. At Rezdôra, where a single antipasto reaches $38, the same approach costs more than the tasting menu. The format is about structure rather than price, so check the numbers before you commit to the strategy. A useful test: if the small plates cost less than a third of the entrée prices, the kitchen intends them to be snacked on.

Where to start

Start on Park Avenue South between 2 and 6 on a weekday. It is the cheapest way to find out whether you like the idea, and if you hate it you have spent fifteen dollars.

For the wider map, our guide to where Italian clusters in Manhattan explains why these rooms sit where they do, and the ranking of Italian by neighborhood is the one to read if you want the full-dinner version. If a single dish is your test instead, we have an argument about cacio e pepe and pasta shape.

Every price and dish above came off each restaurant’s own menu in August 2026. Small-plate lists change faster than anything else on an Italian menu, so check before you go.

Editor’s note: Isabelle’s Osteria is affiliated with this publication. Restaurants were selected using the criteria described above.