Rao's has operated at Pleasant Avenue and 114th Street in East Harlem since 1896 — ten tables, a single Neapolitan-rooted room essentially unchanged in 130 years, executive chef Dino Gatto running a small menu of red-sauce classics (Uncle Vincent's lemon chicken, the seafood salad, the meatballs, the marinara that became a globally-distributed jarred sauce). There is no Resy, no OpenTable, no walk-in waitlist — the room is closed to the public in any practical sense because long-standing regulars "own" the tables and pass them down generationally. Frank Pellegrino Jr. and Ron Straci continue to run the operation; sister rooms in Las Vegas (Caesars Palace, bookable) and Miami Beach extend the brand, while Rao's Hollywood closed February 2026. For the canonical NYC Italian-American institution most diners will never eat at — listed here as editorial canon, not as booking advice.