There are neighborhood Italian restaurants in New York that you go to primarily for comfort: the motherly warmth of the room, the staff, the clientele, and, somewhat incidentally, the food. There are white-tablecloth Italian restaurants that take pains to distinguish themselves from the homely neighborhood joints by offering caviar service and charging $45 an entrée. And then there is “Ze Spot.”
That’s the informal name of Il Posto Accanto, a cramped, eccentric little restaurant that has occupied a storefront on East Second Street between Avenues A and B since the 1990s. It’s a nod, this nickname, to the thick Roman accent of the restaurant’s chef and co-pilot, Beatrice Tosti di Valminuta.
