A Diner’s Guide to 2025’s Italian Restaurant Boom
Image: Courtesy Thomas Teal
In the early twentieth century, a community of Italian immigrants started selling fruits, vegetables, and other fare in Portland’s Central Eastside, earning it the moniker Produce Row. These Italian American fruit markets and groceries planted the seeds of what would eventually become the city’s farm-to-table ethos.
Despite the outsize impact of the Italian community on our food scene, Portland isn’t exactly a Little Italy town, lacking a dense concentration of ristorantes and trattorias. For decades, its Italian food scene has involved a scattering of restaurants like Gino’s, Nostrana, and Estes, most of which focus on traditional ingredients and techniques from the old country or the stalwarts of the twentieth century Italian American restaurant.
Then, in 2022, Gabbiano’s opened on NE Killingsworth Street, soon drawing crowds and media buzz for its playful, inventive take on East Coast pasta spots. Since then, the city’s Italian scene has expanded, and in 2025, it grew in several directions. There’s fresh bronze-extruded pasta from a food cart, Roman-style pizza and focaccia sandwiches from a slim counter bakery, a deli-market with a supper club, a steakhouse running surf-and-turf over open flame. And while nostalgia appears in the form of a family recipe or vintage heirloom stand mixer, the work stays contemporary. There’s no singular, unifying thread—just chefs and bakers reworking Italian food on their own terms. Some cook from lineage, others from instinct. Some take cues from Italian American staples, others from Roman street food or Las Vegas fine dining. Join us as we take a giro through the city’s newest Italian restaurants and carts, with an eye toward some of the standout dishes.
Image: Courtesy Ron Scott
Angolo
northwest district
In the thick of bustling NW 23rd, Angolo compresses Florence, Sicily, and Portland into a narrow corner counter. Baking comes first: flaky focaccia, Roman-style slices, and salami-and-provolone mezzaluna with warm marinara. The margherita uses a cooked red sauce rather than fresh tomato, a quiet flex that spotlights the shop’s sauce work and restraint. “We use very little yeast, so the dough stays light,” Francesca says. “It’s easier for people to enjoy.”
Image: Courtesy Ron Scott
Bistecca
Northwest district
In Slabtown, chef Gabriel Pascuzzi’s latest sings a different sort of tune to a steakhouse rhythm. The room is dark and fire-lit. Wagyu New York strip and grilled lobster tail zigzag under an oversize Al Capone on their way to diners’ tables. The tell is the foie-stuffed $42 burger, priced like a prized cut and treated with the same panache: house burger grind on a house bun with braised oxtail, grilled foie, horseradish aioli, pomodoraccios, and frisée. The kitchen’s live fire touches more than steaks and burgers (Pascuzzi likens it to “a cheat code”), and the Italian backbone supports occasional pastas and an Italian-heavy wine list along with classic cocktails. For all its high-end components and sexy, contemporary ambience, it is still simplicity in technique and execution, the hallmark of a Pascuzzi joint.
Image: Courtesy Ron Scott
Dimo’s Italian Specialities
kerns
Before opening his Burnside pizzeria Dimo’s Apizza, Doug Miriello started with a Roccbox and a dream, baking charred, chewy New Havenish pies at bars and breweries. The pizzas built the following, but the pastas and sandwiches kept people rolling through the door. Since it opened this summer, the expanded iteration Dimo’s Italian Specialties has built on that foundation: At the counter, raspberry bomboloni seduce diners popping by for a quick slice or a cold-cut-loaded Italian sub, not to mention underrated Philly Italian stalwarts like pork and rabe sandwiches. A case in the corner stacks cold cuts and marinated vegetables, while shelves bear pantry staples like tinned fish, dried pasta, imported olive oils and vinegars, Calabrian chile, and house sauces, as well as a sizable wine selection. In back, handmade pastas and seafood snacks run at dinner under low light, tangles of vongole tagliolini mingling with bowls of chard and ricotta–filled tortellini.
Maglia Rosa
Richmond
The mind behind Bollywood Theater, Chef Troy MacLarty transformed the SE Division Street location of his Indian street food standby into Maglia Rosa this summer. It opened with a single-origin espresso bar and a spacious dining room that spills out to a patio where customers twirl pasta and sip wine under colorful umbrellas. Early menus included spaghetti alla norma, supplì in two styles, prosciutto with peaches warmed in brown butter and burrata, and braised pork shoulder with Romano beans. Adjoining the dining room is the market, open late for last-minute provisions: marinara, brodo, ragù, fresh and dried pasta. A cold case holds tubs of ice cream and sorbet—pink grapefruit and Campari, peach leaf stracciatella—alongside soups, stocks, and prebaked pastas.
Image: Courtesy Thomas Teal
Monty’s Red Sauce
sellwood-moreland
Opened in February, this East Coast–inspired pasta restaurant swaps the Piedmontese restraint of sibling restaurant Montelupo for full-tilt Italian American comfort: platter-size chicken parmesan, linguine Alfredo, the kind of cooking that lingers on a sweater long after dinner. Its red leather booths are watched over by the twin wolves of Montelupo (literally Wolf Mountain), spaghetti dangling from their mandibles. Chef Jason Coburn—who previously cooked at Ashland’s Italianesque winery Belle Fiore and at Montelupo’s NE Portland location—runs the line while barman Marc Dyer polishes stemware with a magician’s flourish as dusk sets the forest-green wainscoting aglow. Spritzes, martinis, and easy-drinking Italian wines round out the mood.
Rose City Pasta Co.
northwest district
From his lipstick red cart within the Nob Hill pod, chef Daniel Stramm extrudes bronze-cut pasta using Camas Country Mill flour and Bob’s Red Mill semolina. Shapes rotate; guests choose sauce, vegetables, and meat; orders move quickly. Since opening, pressed panini on house focaccia joined the lineup: prosciutto with basil pesto, whipped mortadella with ricotta, Bridgetown mushrooms with goat cheese and onion jam. This isn’t a place for multicourse meals; the food stays focused and fast, making it a worthy pit stop for weeknight takeout or lunch break penne alla vodka.
