I Ate at Every Carbone in America. Was It Worth the Trip?

A decade after the first one opened, the Italian American juggernaut is still a celebrity magnet and impossible reservation. Take our red-sauce tour.

Carbone is a luxury brand, a celebrity beacon, a theatrical production, an indoor theme park celebrating the meatball-topped maximalism of Italian American cuisine and pop culture.

It is also a restaurant. And from the moment it opened in Greenwich Village in 2013, this red-sauce fantasia with its wisecracking waiters, “Goodfellas” décor and $91 veal Parmesan has been a sensation. Reservations are nearly impossible to secure. Regulars include Kim Kardashian and Rihanna. Even the chef Mario Carbone and his partners in Major Food Group, Rich Torrisi and Jeff Zalaznick, have achieved a swaggering sort of fame. (That’s Mr. Carbone on the July-August cover of Cigar & Spirits magazine.)

Carbone has become such an emblem of exclusivity that the partners recently opened a private club with a $20,000 initiation fee and a restaurant called Carbone Privato. It’s brought the Sinatra playlists and slippery spicy rigatoni to some of the world’s most moneyed cities, including Hong Kong; Doha, Qatar; and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. New locations will open next year in Dubai and London.

Yes, for all that glitz and glamour, Carbone is a chain. And people seem to either love it or hate it. I wanted to understand it.

So I went on a Carbone America tour. In one week, I visited its three other U.S. locations, in Miami (opened in 2021), Dallas (2022) and Las Vegas (2015). I also dined twice at Carbone New York. I wanted to see how the business has weathered its first decade, and how well this deeply New York establishment has translated beyond the city.