For more than a decade in New York, Alessandro Pendinelli has been serving hundreds of covers every day in the Upper East Side, a VIP area of the Big Apple. "The secret to success? Listening to the American market and giving it what it asks for. The local customer needs to be educated, but when one recognizes our simple and intense tastes, there's no going back."
The restaurant
There are few restaurants that do hundreds of covers in Italy, a country where the dining industry has always been undersized. Everything is different across the ocean, where one may find it possible to lead the orchestra for an audience both large and generous, lured by the charm of Italian cuisine. It happened to Alessandro Pendinelli, who, prior to his apprenticeship and throwing his heart over the hurdle, was a son of art. His mother and father ran a traditional cuisine restaurant in Molfetta, so he took his first steps in the kitchen when he was a child.
Then the hotel school, a few seasonal jobs, an experience with Sadler and many brigades around Italy, from Canazei to Stintino, from the Aosta Valley to Rome. "In 2013 I moved to New York, to try the thrill of a new adventure, working at Fresco by Scotto, a very famous Italian restaurant also for television appearances, and at Gabriel's, as well as curating events with Matteo Boglione at Le Cirque." He was already executive chef when the proposal landed for him to lead the restaurant La Voglia, at 1645 3rd Avenue, Upper East Side, but it took a few months to square off. In October 2023, he finally brought his concept of Italian cuisine to the table.
It is based on the use of largely homegrown products (flours, tomatoes, preserves, cheeses, oil), plus American vegetables and meats (such as prized Colorado lamb) and fish of various origins. Techniques, on the other hand, are influenced by France, thanks to a pivotal experience on the French Riviera, of which he bears a textbook foie gras. Dishes are partly traditional, partly revisited, half Apulian-inspired. For example, there's tortellini stuffed with burrata with truffles, tuna carpaccio with caviar and mousse also made of burrata, Sicilian caponata with Sardinian bread, grandmother's philological meatballs, and pacchero carbonara di mare the way his parents did it in Puglia, with a sauté of shellfish and molluscs to replace the guanciale, before the embrace with the egg.
"Coming in, I changed everything, and the public responded," Pendinelli says. "If there used to be four of us in the kitchen, now there are 14 of us: the sous chef, the pizzaiolo (as we also serve Neapolitan-style pizzas, leavened for two days), the fresh pasta and bread maker, soon to be the gelato maker are Italian. Everything we serve is made by us, we only buy raw materials." Accompanying it, the wine list features 400 references, more than 70 percent Italian, with super Tuscans and Apulian reds in evidence; plus the usual France and something American, especially from California.
In the evening there is a set 4-course menu for $150; at midday there is a choice of 3-course lunch, but a customer can spend $29 or $100. Plus brunch on Saturday and Sunday, with blueberry jam crêpe Suzette, eggs Benedict with Parma crudo, apricot panettone in syrup, and vanilla whipped cream. And La Voglia rises, so much so that regulars are multiplying, returning as often as three times a week, and satisfaction is an overall.
Certainly the environment helps: in one of New York's most glamorous areas, waiters in their smart uniforms walk through angular spaces, whose fully retractable windows channel air and light. The kitchen, with its dramatic heating lamps, is on view. Then there is the outdoor patio, which adds 80 covers to the 150 inside. And the bar, where European-school cocktails, aperitifs and digestifs can be sipped. Versatile spaces that lend themselves to hosting seven days a week, 11 AM to 11 PM, romantic dates, business meetings and parties, with a private room equipped with screens for corporate events and celebrations.
"To those who ask me how to be successful in the States, I say to listen to market demands and bring to the plate what America is asking for. Now, for example, Roman pastas and Puglia are in fashion, perhaps in the wake of the G7," Pendinelli concludes. "When I arrived, local customers were kind of stuck in the 1980s, with scaloppina and chicken parmigiana. It was hard at first because we were falling flat. But when people started to recognize the simple, intense tastes of Italian cuisine, they understood the difference and never went back."
