Manhattan’s Little Italy is home to a seemingly endless collection of overpriced, wildly mediocre restaurants packed with nostalgic tourists twirling spaghetti on their forks. Let’s face it: New Yorkers don’t eat in Little Italy.

At least, they don’t really eat in the Little Italy of today, a honkytonk stretch of Mulberry Street north of Canal, extending east to Mott Street and occasionally further, dotted with restaurants where the red sauce often tastes like it came from a single underground reservoir.