The Pasta Is Worth the Plaza You Have to Cross to Find It
Hillary Sterling's live-fire Italian sits behind an entrance nobody finds on the first try. The cavatelli explains why people keep looking.
The plates come off a wood-fired hearth that anchors the room, and the pastas come out of a kitchen that has decided pasta is the whole reason you came. Both assumptions are correct. The cavatelli allo scoglio arrives with crab and chili and a slick of vermouth doing quiet work underneath, and the room around it has floor-to-ceiling glass framing the Empire State Building like the view is a house pour. This is Union Square Hospitality Group's Italian, opened in 2021.
Hillary Sterling runs the kitchen. The pastas are made in-house, the vegetables get charred, the focaccia arrives blistered, and the menu behaves like someone with a clear point of view drew it. What none of that prepares you for is the front door. Ci Siamo sits inside Manhattan West Plaza, between 9th and 10th on 33rd Street, and the restaurant publishes walking directions on its own website because first-timers cannot find it. Enter the plaza from 33rd, walk past the Pendry, keep going toward Daily Provisions, and the door is on your left. Nobody tells you this on Google Maps.
The pasta program does the work of a restaurant twice its price, and the entrance does the work of a speakeasy nobody asked for.
Editorial Deep
What went back to the pass empty: the cavatelli allo scoglio, the rapini agnolotti, the blistered focaccia. What sat: half a portion of the roasted half chicken, kale and schmaltz and competent poultry, which is not what this kitchen is for. Order accordingly.
The glass runs floor to ceiling and the Empire State Building sits in the frame like it was hung there. That is the room's headline and it earns it — at dusk the light does the work no designer could bill for. The hearth anchors the far end, visible from most of the dining room, throwing heat and a low orange cast that reads warmer than the overhead lighting alone would.
Set an alarm for 11:55 a.m., 28 days before you want to eat. Reservations release at noon on SevenRooms — the restaurant is also on OpenTable as a secondary channel, but SevenRooms is where the inventory actually sits. Lunch has more availability than dinner and always will; if you are flexible on daypart, 1 p.m. on a Tuesday is a materially easier booking than 8 p.m. on a Thursday. If you missed the 28-day window, walk in. This is the part most people do not try — the team welcomes walk-ins and the GM has said so on the record. Show up at 5:15 or between the turns around 9 and ask.
Roughly a third of what you pay at Ci Siamo is the room and the address — the Manhattan West rent, the Empire State window, the fact that USHG is running the floor. That is not a complaint.
Bring the out-of-town parents, the client who wants to see New York look like New York, the friend who has never been to a USHG restaurant and does not know why the service feels different from the last four Italian rooms they ate in. The window seats at dusk are the reason. Book lunch on a slow Tuesday if you want the pasta program without the crowd — the same cavatelli, half the volume, an easier reservation.
What to eat
Don't miss.
Cavatelli allo scoglio, rapini agnolotti, wood-fired trout, blistered focaccia
“A serious pasta program and a hearth worth ordering from, hidden behind a plaza entrance nobody finds on the first try.”
Go for the cavatelli, the agnolotti and the window at dusk. If Ci Siamo's 28-day drop defeats you or the plaza address does, Don Angie delivers a denser, more inventive Italian evening in a smaller room for comparable money — and it is bookable.
The Verdict
