It’s time for celebration as Travelers Poets & Friends brings the sunny flavors of Italy to the neighborhood. The heartful Italian café market, wine bar, restaurant and bakery is centered between the Pamina gelato shop and the elevated Italian restaurant, Alaluna. The storefront at Sixth Avenue and West 11th Street sat empty for three years after we lost the iconic Sammy’s Noodle Shop & Grill.

Sammy’s Noodle Shop & Grill

Neighbors and travelers from afar remember Sammy’s, an institution on Sixth Avenue for nearly three decades. The windows were always steamed up from the vats of boiling noodles. A side door was propped open with a broken chair, even in winter, to let some of the steam escape. They offered cheap, authentic Cantonese dim sum, barbecue, and noodle dishes in a red-painted dining room that went on forever. If a guy took you there for a first date, he might be a slumming hedge fund manager or a movie usher spending all his green on you. It was that bad and that good!

Heartful, Healthful New Neighbors

When the four partners who own Osteria 57 (57 West 10th Street) and Alice (126 West 13th Street) took the lease for this pandemic casualty, they had a vision: to create the centerpiece of their One More Hospitality pescatarian restaurant group—a lodestone resource of healthful, authentic Italian staples for the neighborhood for decades to come.

Neighbors watched with interest over the next year and a half, as papered windows gradually transformed into Pamina, a gelato shop, then Travelers Poets & Friends, a heartful Italian café market, wine bar, restaurant and bakery, and finally, Alaluna, their elevated New Italian restaurant.

Mickey Bosco, co-owner and Director of Operations, reflects on their vision of being true friends and neighbors in the community. “It’s not just a place to find good food. It’s a place where you can find a friend, learn about what you eat, and share your story.” Genuine personal connection is part of the healthy lifestyle that they want to promote. What Mickey says is true. I became friends with co-owner and CEO Emanuele Nigro at the “friends and family” opening of Osteria 57 in 2017. Their restaurants are places you can go for a hug and to share your news and joys along the road of life.

In addition to Mickey and Emanuele, the partnership consists of Waél Deek, Beverage Director, and Riccardo Orfino, Executive Chef. Together, they lovingly restored and preserved the building’s exterior, even using the same font for the signage above their new plate glass windows. Inside, a much bigger transformation was taking place as they built their kitchens, three bars, bakery, gelato lab, and pasta station, and completely renovated the dining rooms with their customary exquisite Italian style.

Pamina Dolci e Gelato

One by one, the warren of rooms spanning 453 to 461 Sixth Avenue came to life, filled with new delights. First to open, in June 2023, was Pamina Dolci e Gelato. It has dreamy, creamy treats and pastries, all made in their in-house gelato lab and bakery. My favorite is the Cannolo gelato, with Italian sheep ricotta, candied orange, and Sicilian pistachio. Bellissima!

Travelers Poets & Friends

Second to open, in December 2023, was Travelers Poets & Friends (TPF). This café, marketplace, and wine bar is an all-day bistro that opens at 8 AM for the traditional Italian breakfast of espresso and cornetto. Mickey told me their Head Baker Luca Cascella was raised in the best bakery in Milan. He makes traditional Milanese pastries like bombolini, maritozzi, cornettos, croissants, and three kinds of bread, all fresh-baked daily. I couldn’t resist the poached pear tart, charmingly shaped like a pear—a tart, sweet flavor explosion.

TPF offers self-serve, bar, and restaurant seating for lunch and weekend brunch, and extends into the candle-lit evening with a delightful range of Mediterranean pescatarian cuisine, including their house-made pasta.

There is a wine bar in the market cafe, a second bar in Travelers Poets & Friends restaurant area, and a third bar in the speakeasy-style Alaluna restaurant!

The market section of TPF offers selected luxury Italian foods and fresh, local organic produce from farmers the owners have worked with for years. You can pick up house-made pasta, fresh-made to cook at home like an Italian Michelin-starred chef, as well as selected Italian and local cheeses and fish cold cuts. The owners know everything about each item: who makes what, where they source it, and how they process it. Their philosophy of healthful eating infuses every dish and decision they make. If you don’t feel like cooking, you can pick up freshly made items also found on the café menu and just heat and eat.

Alaluna Ristorante

The spicy finishing touch to the TPF dish, Alaluna Ristorante, opened at the end of March to offer an elevated experience of New Italian pescatarian cuisine in a white-tablecloth setting surrounded by jewel-toned teal walls, warm wood, and greenery. Executive Chef Riccardo researched and developed a menu that features aged and smoked fish prepared using a Japanese-inspired process that brings out the succulent flavors of Montauk fluke, yellowtail, and Hudson trout.

To pair with these luscious flavors, Beverage Director Waél told me, “I chose infusions and garnishes that would go with the menu. I introduced a fennel-oil-infused gin martini that’s a nice, light complementary drink with the charcoal branzino and other fish dishes. I also created a very refreshing, light cocktail, Japanese-influenced, called the Tokyo Drive, featuring sake and passion fruit liqueur.” Other exotic cocktails and carefully chosen wines await your visit.

Exceptional Dishes of Delight

I have flitted like a butterfly to one opening after another, tasting divine delights and marveling with friends. The dishes I’ve tried have been exceptional.

Alaluna’s Hudson trout with beurre blanc and trout roe was pan-crisped to perfection, the roe adding a fresh pop of saltiness to the dish. I shared the white asparagus with black lime zabaion and spigarello kale pesto with my friends Pat and Josh—wonderfully zesty and unique.

In both TPF and Alaluna, the salads play a starring role, with fresh market greens from Union Square farmer’s market, perfectly dressed and bursting with aliveness. Both restaurants also offer the innovative blue fin tuna “Bolognese” lasagna — many-layered with the tenderest sheets of pasta, tuna ground to the same texture as beef, and creamy bechamel – gooey, cheesy, crisp-edged heaven!

TPF’s wild cod pan-seared with delicately sweet corbara tomatoes and basil was moist and tender inside, with a delicious buttery pan-fried exterior. My friend Bill had the garganelli pasta with wild morels—pointed, ribbed cylinders with plenty of surface to capture the smoked ricotta sauce—punctuated with wild morels and fava beans for a trio of flavors. You won’t be able to put down your fork until the plate is clean. If you can fend off your friends’ forks to get in a bite before they eat it all!

I seldom cook, so I asked my friend Sally Sommer to try the prepare-at-home-like-a-Michelin-chef pasta and sauces. She is a wonderful cook and epicure, and I trust her discerning tongue. She tested a number of the sauses and reported back!

• The tomato sauce—NOT a marinara—but a stand up straight tomato sauce! At last! It’s excellent. I love its straightforward simplicity and purity of intention and taste.
• The basil pesto—wonderful! Made with EVOO, pine nuts, basil, and parmigiano and is at the top of the line; a classic pesto that is startlingly fresh and intense. What is rare is it has the proper grainy texture of pine nuts and parmigiano rather than the baby-food purée slurp you get most often.
• The cashew saffron pesto—unusual. Very pure and dense like the other sauces. I would like a little more kick, but applause for its realness. I suspect it should be used in small doses and could be used on a variety of dishes from pasta to veggies to bread to fruit, etc. (very good with apple and pear).
• The saffron pastaaAn immediate aroma of saffron when you open the package. The noodles are toothsome and pleasurable. The saffron flavor is more subtle once cooked, but still a lovely addition.

Stop by the Travelers Poets & Friends trio to taste a ray of Italian sunshine and say hi to Mickey, Emanuele, Riccardo, and Waél. You’ll feel nourished body and soul.

This article first appeared in condensed form in Chelsea News, Upper West Side Spirit, Our Town Downtown, and Our Town Upper East Side.

Style Notes

To celebrate this good fortune for our city as Mickey, Emanuele, Riccardo, and Waél’s dream reaches fruition, I wore:

• Glowing garnet wool silk dress, lined in silk charmeuse. Peekaboo front pleat and unique notched décolletéwith celestial accents at the shoulder from New York artist James Kerr‘s Dominion Day painting. Andrea T. New York, 147 West 35th Street (by appointment only).
• Anna Polan burgundy velvet coat, Lincoln Center’s Autumn Craft Fair. Next fair is September 28-29.
• Candy apple red Mimosa pumps. Browns at The Bay, Vancouver BC.