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Lucciola Belongs on Every Serious Gourmet’s New York Hit List

An intimate Upper West Side restaurant with extraordinary wines, century-old Aceto Balsamico di Modena, and soulful Italian cooking.

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Food, Food Presentation, Meal
Lucciola

My younger sister works in tech and lives her best life in the West Village. When she first moved to New York, she developed a simple strategy for choosing restaurants: open Instagram or TikTok, identify the week’s viral sensation, and fight for a reservation.

As the weeks passed and photos from the latest algorithmic darlings poured into our text thread, I watched with mounting alarm. My sweet little sister—so innocent, so naïve—lost to the wicked spell of the influencer. The squandered income! The wasted chances for truly great meals! When she mentioned what she’d spent for dinner at The Corner Store, I finally reached my breaking point. I vowed to show my wayward sibling the light.

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So I took her to Lucciola, a restaurant too busy cooking exquisite food to worry about social media fame.

A Manhattan Shrine to Wine and Balsamic Vinegar

Alcohol, Beverage, Cocktail
Johnny Motley

In a cozy dining room framed by racks of wine, Lucciola serves the rich, soulful cuisine of Emilia-Romagna. Chef Michele Casadei Massari has a generous hand with Emilian luxuries like Prosciutto di Parma and Parmigiano Reggiano, but the star of the menu is balsamic vinegar from Acetaia Giusti. Founded in 1605, Giusti is the world’s oldest producer of balsamic vinegar. Like Jimmy Russell combing Wild Turkey’s rickhouses for honey barrels, Chef Massari personally selects casks at Acetaia Giusti, bringing the finest of Modena to the Upper West Side.

Each dish in the six-course tasting menu features Giusti balsamic—some expressions as young as eight years, others older than a century. In the opening courses, youthful, honey-hued balsamics add tangy zip to langoustine crudo and whipped cheese. As the meal progresses, both the dishes and the vinegars deepen in richness. Button ravioli and veal rosettes drizzled with inky syrup as funky as aged shoyu. Parmesan wedges streaked with jet-black ambrosia. Dessert, a milk custard with rhubarb compote, arrives with a dusty vessel of vinegar so dark it could bend light.

Lucciola quietly boasts one of the most impressive Italian wine cellars in New York, the sort of list serious oenophiles study before they arrive. Alongside auction-worthy Barolos and Brunellos are esoteric bottles from Puglia, Sicily, Alto Adige, and nearly every other corner of Italy. The house Negroni, infused with century-old Giusti balsamic, may well be the finest in the city.

Johnny Motley
Johnny Motley
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Johnny covers travel, men’s fashion and whiskey. Read Full Bio
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