Popular Milanese Restaurant Heads Stateside With New UES Restaurant

The team behind a longtime restaurant from Milan, Italy that’s popular with the fashion set is making its way to New York.

After twelve years, Enrico Proietti has closed Per Lei at 1347 Second Ave., at East 71st Street, and the Upper East Side space has been taken by Italian restaurateur Antonio Sinesi and his partner Claudio Della Monica, who own fifteen-year-old Al Valentino, an upscale restaurant visited by people like Armani and Dolce and Gabbana. Proietti, who also owns Upper East Side restaurant Bella Blu, says he’s closing because “six years of construction from the Second Avenue subway really hurt us.”

But Italian fare will still be served in the new restaurant. It will be called Il Divo, named as such because Valeninto “was a star, a male diva,” and they cannot transfer the Al Valentino name here, Sinesi says.

The new restaurant will have 60 seats inside and 60 outside when weather allows, and chef Massimo Sola, who was head chef at shuttered Michelin-starred restaurant Quattro Mori in Varese, will act as consulting chef. The menu will feature some of Il Valentino’s signature dishes such as rib eye agrodolce, gnocchi with saffron and pistachio, linguini with scallion and tomato, and hangar steak with 60 herbs. Like Al Valentino, the place with be cozy with art-filled walls. Look for a late October opening.