Rao's

The story

Getting a table at Rao's is considered one of the hardest things to do in New York City. Joshua Anthony Rao founded the restaurant in 1896 after moving with his parents from Italy, buying a small shop on the corner of Pleasant Avenue in what was then a vast Italian-American community in East Harlem. He ran it until his death in 1909, when his sons Vincent and Louis took over. Today Rao's and the Giglio Society of East Harlem are the last keepers of that vanished neighborhood's culture.