Nizza

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Five years ago, chef Andy D’Amico and partner Simon Oren, who went on to open Nice Matin on the Upper West Side in 2002, were traveling around the famed French locale when they hatched up the idea of serving socca, a Nicoise chickpea-and-olive-oil flat cake that has its roots in Northern Italy. The dish needed a special oven, which the duo didn’t have at Nice Matin. “I said, ‘One day, maybe we would expand on that,’” he recalls. Enter: Nizza. The Hell’s Kitchen spot is named after what the Italians call Nice and focuses on cuisine from the French and Italian Rivieras—socca and all (here, it’s seasoned with sage, onion and Pecorino). “Chefs always want to build the place they’d like to go to at the end of the shift, and it fell into the natural flow [for Nizza] to go there,” says D’Amico, who started writing the menu over a year ago. (Other highlights include fried ravioli with crescenza cheeze and stuffed veal rolls with arugula and meat sauce.) D’Amico also oversees Marseille next door, but unlike that pre-theater standby, Nizza—with its sleek, retro-Italian space, circa 1960—is gunning for a more casual, neighborhood-y feel, with later hours, an extensive wine list and a no-reservation policy.

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Hell's Kitchen restaurants, Midtown restaurants, Midtown West restaurants, New York restaurants, French restaurants, Italian restaurants