The Pinwheel Lasagna Behind the 9AM OpenTable Fight
Angie Rito and Scott Tacinelli's West Village Italian-American is easier to walk into than to book — and the lasagna is worth both the queue and the hype.
The lasagna arrives rolled into pinwheels, standing on end like a stack of hardware-store coils someone glazed in tomato and cream. It is the dish every table around you has ordered, the dish every food writer has already described, and — annoyingly, for the jaded — it is the reason to be here. $72 for two people, and the only version of a red-sauce classic in the city that looks nothing like a red-sauce classic and still tastes exactly like one.
Don Angie opened in the West Village under Angie Rito and Scott Tacinelli, a husband-and-wife team whose credentials run through Torrisi and now also power San Sabino a few blocks away. What they built here is the Italian-American equivalent of a French neobistro: high-acid, globally-inflected, technically ambitious cooking served in a room that looks like it's been on Greenwich Avenue since the Carter administration. Rounded archways. Checkered floors. Warm lighting that flatters everyone. It is a very carefully designed trick, and it works.
Editorial Deep
The lasagna for two is the order. $72, non-negotiable, get it. The pinwheels give you more crisp edge per bite than any flat lasagna could, and the ratio of pasta to filling to sauce is dialed in a way that reads as showmanship until you taste it. Around it, build a table: the chrysanthemum salad at $26, with garlic, sesame and parmesan doing the work of a Caesar without the theater; the pineapple and coppa, which sounds like a dare and eats like a pass; the BBQ calamari, served with pepperoni fried rice, which is the kind of sentence that only works if the kitchen can cook.
The room is small, dark, and designed to feel older than it is. Rounded archways frame the dining room. The floor is checkerboard. Lighting is warm, low, and pitched exactly right for the West Village couple two tables over celebrating something they haven't explained to you. A polished marble bar sits away from the entry — enough room to stand, drink, and skip the sense that you're auditioning for a table.
Service reads as neighborhood-restaurant polished. The staff know the menu, know which pasta to steer you toward if you're wavering, and pace a four-course table without hovering. It is warm without being folksy. Occasional reports of drift on busy nights track — this is a small kitchen doing a lot of covers — but on a normal Tuesday the room runs cleanly.
The lasagna alone carries the check, and the pastas around it don't argue. The room adds real value — you're not paying only for food, you're paying for two hours in a dining room that flatters you and a menu that avoids repeating itself. That's the deal, and the deal is fair.
Would you go back? Yes, three or four times a year, at the bar when it opens, for the lasagna and one pasta and a glass of something acidic. The room is good enough that you want to sit in it again; the food is consistent enough that you can send a friend without a caveat. It is a confident recommendation, not a life-changing one — which, at this price point in the West Village, is exactly the correct feeling.
What to eat
Don't miss.
Lasagna for Two, Chrysanthemum Salad, Stuffed Garlic Flatbread, Black Cocoa Tiramisu
“The pinwheel lasagna is the real thing, and the bar at opening is the answer to the 9 AM OpenTable scramble.”
Go for the lasagna, sit at the bar when it opens if you can't book, and skip the wide-tour order. For an easier reservation with the same red-sauce-reimagined energy, walk over to Rubirosa or head to San Sabino for the Rito/Tacinelli B-side.
The Verdict
