Best Expensive Italian Restaurant

It's their hand-rolled pasta specials, such as amaretto and pumpkin ravioli with white-truffle cream sauce, and pappardelle with buffalo-meat ragout. Or those rich risottos ingrained with ingredients ranging from broccoli rabe and foie gras to langoustines and porcinis. Could be the thick, juicy veal chops stuffed with fontina cheese and smothered in truffle demi-glace, or the homemade desserts like a distinctly superior tiramisu. Okay, it's many dishes that make Escopazzo deliciously Italian. Entrées can push past the $30 mark, categorizing the place as expensive. But it's the romantic piazza-style dining room with gurgling fountain, extensive wine cellar, stellar service, and ebullient host and owner Pino Bodoni seeing to it that everything is just right, which make this expanded, 70-seat trattoria the very best. Honorable mentions go to Osteria del Teatro and Bice.