Best Chicken Parm in New York, NY

Chicken parm in New York, NY: our top picks

Manhattan’s red-sauce story starts downtown, though there is less of it left than the postcards suggest. Little Italy once ran from Lafayette Street to the Bowery; today it is about five blocks of Mulberry Street north of Canal, and the 2010 count found almost no Italian-born residents there. The Feast of San Gennaro, begun in 1926 by Neapolitan immigrants as a one-day observance, still takes over the street for 11 days every September. Uptown, East Harlem once had a larger Italian population than Little Italy, and Rao’s, opened by Charles Rao in 1896 at 114th Street and Pleasant Avenue, still runs ten tables that regulars treat as heirlooms. The outer boroughs, Arthur Avenue included, have their own pages.

The modern parm revival started on Mulberry Street too. Rich Torrisi and Mario Carbone opened Parm at 248 Mulberry in November 2011, then next door to their Torrisi Italian Specialties, with chicken, meatball and eggplant parm on a roll, a hero or a platter. A second Parm took over the old Lansky’s deli space on Columbus Avenue in December 2014. In 2013 the pair opened Carbone on Thompson Street in Greenwich Village, in the room Rocco Restaurant had held for some 90 years; its veal parm is a showpiece that even admirers file under splurge.

The older guard holds up its end. Lidia Bastianich and her son Joe opened Becco on Restaurant Row in 1993, and it is still best known for its pasta tasting menu. Trattoria Dell’Arte, the late Shelly Fireman’s room across Seventh Avenue from Carnegie Hall, dates to 1988. Carmine’s brought the family-style platter to Broadway at 90th Street in 1990; founder Arthur Cutler named it for harness driver Carmine Abbatiello, and for its 20th birthday it handed out eggplant parm on the sidewalk. Tony’s Di Napoli works the same shareable formula on West 43rd Street and on Third Avenue, where it moved after Second Avenue subway construction pushed it off East 83rd Street. And in the East Village, Lil’ Frankie’s, Frank Prisinzano’s wood-oven pizza spot on First Avenue since 1999, keeps a chicken cutlet parm on the menu.

1. Trattoria Dell' Arte (New York) — Parm Score 87. Chicken parm comes up in 2 of the recent Google reviews we sampled, and the tone is positive. It is on the menu, too. 4.4 on Google across 2,691 reviews.
2. Parm Mulberry Street (New York) — Parm Score 75. Chicken parm comes up in 1 of the recent Google reviews we sampled. It is on the menu, too. 4.2 on Google across 1,210 reviews.
3. Parm Upper West Side (New York) — Parm Score 74. Chicken parm comes up in 1 of the recent Google reviews we sampled. It is on the menu, too. 4.1 on Google across 1,885 reviews.

We ranked 21 restaurants in Manhattan, within 7 miles of New York, NY. 14 of them have the parm confirmed, by reviewers or on their own menu, and Parm Scores run from 56 to 87. Confirmed places rank first; the rest are well-reviewed Italian spots where the parm is not yet confirmed, and pizzerias and steakhouses need a mention to appear at all. How Parm Score works.

More rankings: Veal parm in New York, NY · Eggplant parm in New York, NY · Brooklyn, NY · Queens, NY · Bronx, NY · Staten Island, NY · Pearl River, NY · Buffalo, NY · Rochester, NY · Albany, NY · Best chicken parm in New York