Via Carota, one of the best restaurants in NYC, doesn't take reservations, and there's pretty much always a wait of two or more hours. Obviously, that's kind of annoying, but it doesn't deter us from eating here. This place manages to stick out among thousands of Italian restaurants in NYC by making food that’s unfussy and uniformly delicious. A meal here should involve some of the dozen-plus vegetable dishes, the steak tartare-like svizzerina, and the cacio e pepe (which is non-optional).

There are a ton of Italian restaurants in Brooklyn, but there’s nothing else like Lilia. The space feels like a glamorous, whitewashed warehouse, and their modern Italian food is always perfectly executed. While this place is great for special occasion dates and impressing out-of-towners, our favorite way to eat here is by grabbing a few seats at the bar. Start with a negroni and an order of squishy focaccia, and plan to go deep on pastas.

From the folks at Carbone who brought you the $89 veal parm with a side of paparazzi, this Noho restaurant is a full-on production. It’s big, it’s flashy, and, against all odds, it actually has a personality. Torrisi is more Italian-ish than straight-up Italian, and the more-inventive dishes are just as good as the classics. For a fun celebratory dinner, this is one of your best options.

Whenever we recommend Emilio’s Ballato in Nolita to someone, we receive an answer along the lines of, “I’ve always wanted to go there, but I need some place that takes reservations.” To which we say: No you don’t. It’s high time you waited in line for some of the city’s best old-school Italian food, like exemplary baked clams, bolognese, and veal parm. And if you do end up sitting next to someone famous while dining, consider that not the point, but an added bonus.

There’s no seating at this tiny takeaway spot on the border of Windsor Terrace, but that doesn’t mean Joe Brancaccio doesn’t make some of the best Italian food in Brooklyn. During breakfast and lunch, there’s often a line out the door for his sandwiches, which are served on chewy sesame seed bread and have a loyal local following. But the real move here is to pick up dinner to go: meatballs, orecchiette with broccoli rabe, and rotisserie porchetta are some of our favorites.

Formerly located on Grove Street, in a room the size of a shipping container, I Sodi now has a larger home around the corner on Bleecker. It’s not as charming as the original, but now you have a better chance of snagging a table, so we’ll call it a draw. Like the plain farmhouse interior, the Tuscan food here isn’t anything too elaborate. Don’t skip the simple vegetable dishes, which are often just a pretense to eat cheese and olive oil, and focus on the pasta.

Misi is a Williamsburg restaurant from the people behind Lilia, and its basic premise is: f*ck entrées. This is an Italian restaurant where the menu has three sections: antipasti, pasta, and gelato. There are always 10 pastas on the menu, and choosing between them will be the hardest decision you make all year. But here's a tip: The best things at Misi are the simplest. Try the fettuccine with buffalo butter and black pepper, and don't skip the unbelievably good gelato.

The pasta at Marea is going to make you feel something. You may not be moved to tears, but when you take your first bite of octopus and bone marrow fusilli, you’ll feel like the main character in a coming-of-age movie who finally realizes what was missing all along. This fine-dining restaurant near Columbus Circle is one of our favorite places to eat pasta in NYC, simply because the options go way beyond usual suspects like linguine and clams or a frutti di mare spaghetti.

Arthur Avenue in the Bronx has plenty of places with decent red sauce fare. But Tra Di Noi is the only restaurant of the bunch where we can order anything off the chalkboard specials, and come out 100% satisfied. The 15-ish specials change every night, but expect things like meaty swordfish topped with crisp bread crumbs, and chicken marsala that pulls apart with the touch of a fork. Tra Di Noi opened in 2002, but it feels older, with checkerboard-tablecloth charm.

When you walk into Ci Siamo, you'll feel like you're checking into a nice hotel, about to start a vacation in Milan (despite the fact that you still have that meeting on "team dynamics" to get to after lunch). The menu centers around live-fire cooking, although your focus should be on the breads and pastas. Get the ricotta-filled agnolotti, and don't leave here without eating the caramelized onion torta.