Search restaurants near me in the West Village and the results will be dense, competitive and mostly Italian-adjacent. I Sodi, at 314 Bleecker Street, is the one that has been quietly doing something more specific than the rest for well over fifteen years. It is not Italian in the general sense; it is Tuscan, and narrowly so. Two things on the menu tell you the kitchen means it: a list of seven negroni variations, and a lasagne that is rebuilt every season rather than held constant. Most people book for the second and never notice the first.
Dinner here starts at half past four, which is early enough that the first hour behaves completely differently from the rest of the evening. Ask Karpo how the West Village is running tonight and whether an early seat is realistic before you walk over.
A Florentine who arrived by an unlikely route
Rita Sodi grew up on a small family farm north of Florence and did not come to cooking early. She spent years as an executive at Calvin Klein before leaving to open a restaurant in 2008 — an unusual second act, and one that shows in how the room is run. I Sodi has never chased trend cycles, expanded into a group, or reinvented its menu to stay current.
The restaurant spent its early years in a much smaller room on Christopher Street, where it built its reputation on scarcity as much as on cooking — the space was tiny and getting in was genuinely difficult. The move to Bleecker Street gave it a larger dining room without changing what comes out of the kitchen, which is a harder trick than it sounds and one that most restaurants fail at when they scale up.
Sodi's partner Jody Williams runs her own well-known West Village rooms, and between them the two are responsible for a meaningful share of how this neighbourhood eats. But I Sodi is the older and the more single-minded of their projects, and it is the one where the regional focus is strictest.
Seven negronis is a statement, not a gimmick
A negroni is three ingredients in equal parts: gin, sweet vermouth, Campari. Offering seven versions of it sounds like a novelty until you understand that almost every classic Italian aperitivo is a variation on that same structure — swap the gin for prosecco and you have a sbagliato; swap it for whiskey and you have a boulevardier; change the bitter and you change the whole drink.
So the list is really a short lesson in one family of drinks, and it is the most Tuscan thing on offer here after the food. The practical use of it is that it gives you a reason to arrive early and drink before eating, which is exactly how the meal is designed to run. Ordering a negroni at the end of a meal is not wrong, but it is backwards.
If you have only ever had the standard version, the useful move is to order something from the list you cannot identify from the name and ask what changed. The room is happy to explain, and the answer is usually one substitution rather than five.
The lasagne is a moving target
The lasagne is the dish people come for and the one most likely to be different from the version a friend described. It is built to the season, and the variations are substantial rather than cosmetic — a spring version and an autumn version are genuinely different plates, not the same plate with a different garnish.
This is worth understanding before you order, because it changes what a recommendation is worth. Being told to get the lasagne here is useful; being told to get the specific lasagne someone had eight months ago is not. Ask what the current one is and decide on that, rather than arriving with a fixed expectation you may not be able to satisfy.
The Tuscan framing matters here too. Tuscan cooking is not the tomato-heavy, garlic-forward register that most people mean by Italian-American — it is plainer, more meat and bean and bread-led, and considerably less sweet. If the food seems restrained on first encounter, that is the region rather than the kitchen holding back.
Timing the room
Service starts at half past four on weekdays and runs to half past ten. A half-four dinner sounds absurd until you use it once: the room is calm, the bar is free, and you can sit with a drink before eating without holding a table anyone is waiting for. It is the single best-value hour in the day here and it is the least contested.
The opposite end — eight to nine — is the peak and the hardest to get into. If you cannot book, the bar is the answer rather than the waitlist, and this is a restaurant where eating at the bar is a normal thing to do rather than a consolation.
Practical notes
I Sodi is at 314 Bleecker Street in the West Village, serving from half past four in the afternoon until half past ten on weekdays. It has been open since 2008 under Rita Sodi and moved to this address from a much smaller original room. Come early rather than at eight; the first hour of service is the calmest of the evening and the easiest to get into. Order a negroni from the list before you eat rather than after, ask what the current lasagne is instead of assuming, and read the menu as Tuscan rather than Italian in general. Christopher Street and West 4th Street stations are both a short walk away.
Tags: #restaurantsnearme #isodi #westvillage #nyc #tuscanfood #negroni #lasagne #bleeckerstreet #nycitalian #ritasodi #nycdining #aperitivo #nycrestaurants #villagenyc
All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Ask Karpo first
The West Village has more good Italian rooms per block than anywhere else in the city, and they are not interchangeable — one is Tuscan, one is Roman, one is neither. Ask Karpo which one fits what you actually want tonight, which are seating early, and where the bar is a real option rather than a waiting area.
