Profile

In a city that often values trendy over traditional, Giambelli 50th Restaurant, an elegant Northern Italian sanctuary across the street from the New York Palace Hotel, unabashedly celebrates the time-honored. Established in 1959, its furnishings have hardly changed: off-white walls, light brown banquettes, picturesque paintings, Classical bronze statues, and riotously colorful floral arrangements. The older, upscale clientele (the restaurant cooked for His Holiness Pope John Paul II in 1995), come for everything from caviar to humble artichoke hearts to beef and fish carpaccios. A pate di Strasburgo also entices. Impeccably prepared pastas are sauced with voluptuous cream, salty prosciutto, onions, basil, and a variety of meat-laden sauces, as well as vibrant pesto. Risotto is worth the 20-minute wait. Chicken and veal dishes dominate the main offerings and are sautéed with butter, sage, rosemary, mushrooms, and white wine; lamb chops, calf’s liver, sirloin steak, and Milanese tripe add intriguing variety. Veal scaloppine Francescana is stuffed with a nutty Fontina cheese and sharp prosciutto. Shrimp fra diavolo cavort in a gently spicy tomato sauce sided with toothsome spaghetti. As a final departing gesture, a long-stemmed rose is bestowed to each female guest. — Michael Anstendig

Vitello Francescana, $28; gamberoni fra diavolo con spaghetti, $35