F: Is for food that offers a better world.

Montenapo, is an architectural wonder of lightness and clarity that is Renzo Piano’s New York Times Building. 5200 square-foot, glassed-in space, facing the birch-moss garden courtyard of the building, has a modern, luminescent aesthetic that fits perfectly with the structure’s contemporary design and compliments the classic, yet new-world inspired Italian menu. Chef German Lucarelli is at the helm of Montenapo after having enjoyed a long career at Bice restaurant in Paris. The eclectic menu, offers appetizers like herb-cured buffalo carpaccio with celery and mustard drizzle, pancetta-wrapped green asparagus in tallegio cheese sauce, and poached egg with aged Parma ham, burratina cheese and Sicilian tomatoes, modern pasta like dry vermouth and lemon zest trofie pasta with baby scampi bisque, or more classic dishes like large home made pappardelle with lamb ragout and thyme, and baked lugurian filet of dentice (red snapper) with fingerling potatoes and olives. This place is expensive but its woodsy design, greenhouse architecture, towering birch trees, and clean, fresh tasting food is a reminder of a time before money was so scare and luxury was a given and that is a F.A.C.T.