2342 Arthur Avenue

Mario’s opened in 1919. It received a rave review from Craig Claiborne in The New York Times in 1976, and is known to have served Nelson Rockefeller, Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher, the
renowned soprano Anna Moffo, and Clint Eastwood. The restaurant’s renown extended to its mention in Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather (1969), though the restaurant’s owners, the Migliucci family, declined a request to have the restaurant appear in the film version. In 2018, John Mariani, the authority on Italian-American food, wrote in Forbes that Mario’s “sets a civilized example for anyone who wants to know what the Italian- American restaurant should be.”

Photo courtesy of Bronx Little Italy.