Sandro's

The story

Crafted with passion, served with love

A Roman Kitchen with Deep New York Roots

Sandro Fioriti's story begins not in a classroom but in a kitchen. After his father issued an ultimatum between school and work, a teenage Sandro started washing dishes and peeling potatoes at Ristorante Cacciani in Frascati, outside Rome. By his 17th birthday he had risen to sous chef under the renowned Franco Carbonari, and just before turning 21 — in 1968 — he won first prize at the prestigious Circolo della Stampa in Milan. The dean of Italian food critics, Vincenzo Buonassisi, presented the award with a prediction: "given the opportunity, you will, one day, bring a whole new dimension to the thousand year old tradition of Italian cooking."

That prediction proved accurate. Sandro's first restaurant, D'Artagnan, introduced dishes that became his signatures — risotto with strawberries, penne with a vodka sauce, salads made with fried tulips — alongside impeccable homemade pastas and roast meats. When Tony May, chairman of the Gruppo Ristatori Italiani, invited him to New York in 1984, Sandro brought that same Roman-rooted creativity to the city. The original Sandro's opened in 1985 to immediate acclaim; USA Today ranked it among the top ten new restaurants in America.

Four Decades, One Consistent Vision

The decades since have included consulting stints at celebrated addresses — il Buco and Nello's in New York, Coco Pazzo in Chicago, Sapore Di Mare in the Hamptons — and a stint in the Caribbean that ended when a hurricane took the restaurant. Each return to New York has sharpened rather than diluted Sandro's focus on Roman-style Italian cooking. The current address on East 86th Street, where the restaurant relocated in July 2022, carries over the same staff and menu from its East 81st Street predecessor: only the door has changed.

Critics across decades have returned the same verdict. Mimi Sheraton in the New York Times called it her "currently favorite hometown Italian restaurant" and declared its amatriciana the world's finest without a plane ticket. Alan Richman in Bloomberg Market wrote that "the food at Sandro's can make you weep with joy." Time Out New York praised the bucatini all'Amatriciana — "a fine balance of thick, chewy pasta and piquant tomato sauce, dense with chubby nibs of pancetta" — alongside a spaghetti al limone described as "a tangy explosion of citrus tempered by sweet cream." That sustained critical regard is echoed in Gambero Rosso's recognition of Sandro's with 2 Forks in its 2026 guide, a distinction that underscores the restaurant's place among New York's most serious Italian tables.

Family at the Table

The restaurant today is run by Sandro, Anna, and Sandro Jr. — a genuinely family-operated trattoria where the stated ambition is straightforward: "every meal is a celebration of family, flavor, and fond memories." Dinner runs nightly, weekend lunch is available on Saturdays and Sundays, and the room accommodates private parties. For anyone who wants Roman-style Italian cuisine cooked by someone who has spent his entire life refining it, East 86th Street is the address.