"There’s no place quite as much fun as Bamonte’s. Founded in 1900 by immigrants from Salerno, Italy, just south of Naples, Bamonte’s is one of the city’s oldest continuously operating restaurants, and it shows every year of its venerable age. You can still see bouffant hairdos in the front barroom, and the tuxedo’ed waiters are nearly all old-timers. The sprawling dining room, sometimes containing tables of priests in their collars, ends in a glassed-in kitchen. The menu is the perfect evocation of Italian-American cuisine, including a spaghetti with meat sauce and meatballs that could serve as a model for cooking schools. The baked clams are a “don’t miss,” and so is the chicken francese, putting on French airs for a working-class constituency. The pork chops with peppers (sweet or hot) is the city’s best version of that recipe." - Robert Sietsema
