Page 43 - 2025 Westchester Relocation & Moving Guide

Lanni’s Cucina Verace
ESparkill / lanniscucina.com
ven in high school, people
wanted Vittorio Lanni’s food. “We didn’t get peanut butter and jelly for lunch, my mother
packed us veal cutlet Milanese,” says the chef, whose family moved to Jersey City, New Jersey, from Naples, Italy, when he was f­ve. “All my friends wanted to eat my lunch.”
And now, as the owner of a restaurant located in what’s becoming Sparkill’s culinary corner, diners
are clamoring for his authentic
Italian dishes that put a premium on ingredients. “There are 20 regions in Italy, and each one has a different style of cooking,” says Lanni, who imports 95 percent of his products from his homeland. “So, I make sure the proper items come from the proper region.”
To that end, the pepperoncini that gives his fra diavolo sauce just the right amount of heat comes from Calabria; the caciocavallo in his popular beef carpaccio appetizer is made in Naples; and the sheep’s milk ricotta that makes “cannoli taste the way it should” hails
from Sicily. (Every Wednesday, he sends his son, Vittorio Jr., also a chef, to Newark Airport to pick up the goods.)
Lanni learned the basics from his mother—who made everything from scratch—and after college, he got a job as a chef at the exclusive Columbus Citizens Foundation, a nonprof­t in New York City that celebrates Italian- American achievement. From there, he moved to North Palm Beach, Florida, where he opened his f­rst restaurant, Lanni’s, at the age of 27. His unique menu offerings, like octopus and tripe, became a huge hit with the crowd.
He opened two more bistros, before moving back to the Northeast, where he switched gears and began working for a wine distributor.
But the itch to get back into the kitchen never went away, so when he and his wife, Kimberly, came upon a space for rent in Sparkill, they jumped on it. With 40 seats inside, Lanni’s is a cozy, romantic experience complete with low lighting that casts a moody glow off the dark floral papered walls,
the perfect environment for enjoying one of their delicious cocktails.
Kimberly, whose background is in the beverage industry, created the cocktail menu, and Vittorio Jr. cooks alongside his father, learning his painstaking craft. “I’m teaching him more mentally than physically how to cook,” says
the elder Lanni, whose staff prepares each pasta dish to order. “It’s about maintaining consistency. Every dish must be the same, whether it’s the f­rst dish of the night or the last.”
The foie gras, lobster and scallop appetizer, handmade squid ink pasta with colossal crab meat, and tiramisu are just a few standout examples of the staff’s attention to detail.
And that desire for perfection
has made Lanni’s one of the hottest reservations in town. “This is how I like to eat when I go to a restaurant and I want people to have the opportunity
to experience higher end items,”
says Lanni. “We are a personal touch restaurant. We make people feel like they’re at home.”
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PHOTO BY RUNYON PRODUCTIONS