“For my favorite veal parma in midtown Manhattan, I go to Pietro’s, where tomatoes, cheese, bread crumbs, and a thin cutlet – pounded until it covers the oval serving platter like a quilt on a feather-bed -fuses into one sublime entity that could be eaten with a spoon, like pudding.

Pietro’s has been on E 43rd Street since 1984, and in the neighborhood since 1932. So many New York children have had their heights marked off on the wall by Pietro’s front door that it looks as if it belongs in the house of the world’s most fertile grandmother. New generations are always being inducted into the cult of Shells a la Nat, a gratineed pasta in bone marrow sauce that is unique to Pietro’s.”