Parm City Guides
Each guide is written and fact-checked by hand: where the city’s Italian community settled, which family rooms are still cooking, and where the parm tradition lives now. Every guide sits on top of that city’s live rankings, which are rebuilt from fresh ratings, reviews and restaurant menus. How Parm Score works.
Arizona
Phoenix
Phoenix’s red-sauce map splits between old rooms that have been at it for decades and newcomers still building a following.
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California
San Diego
San Diego’s Little Italy began as a fishing quarter.
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San Francisco
North Beach is where Italian San Francisco took root.
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San Jose
Before it was Silicon Valley, this was the Valley of Heart’s Delight.
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Colorado
Denver
Denver’s Little Italy was North Denver, where Italian immigrants settled along Navajo Street between 32nd and 38th avenues and founded Our Lady of Mount Carmel in 1894.
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Connecticut
Hartford
Hartford’s first Little Italy was downtown on Front Street, near the river.
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New Haven
New Haven’s apizza fame starts on Wooster Street, where Frank Pepe opened in 1925 and Sally’s followed down the block in 1938.
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Illinois
Chicago
Chicago’s Italian map has two old centers.
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Indiana
Indianapolis
Indianapolis was never a big Italian city, but it had a real Italian quarter, and you can still eat in it.
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Maryland
Baltimore
Baltimore’s Little Italy sits just east of the Inner Harbor, a few rowhouse blocks wedged between downtown and Harbor East.
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Massachusetts
Boston
Boston’s parm story starts on Hanover Street in the North End.
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Michigan
Detroit
Detroit’s Italian story starts east of downtown.
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Missouri
St. Louis
St. Louis’s Italian neighborhood is The Hill, a grid of brick houses south of Manchester Avenue and west of Kingshighway.
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Nevada
Las Vegas
Las Vegas has two parm scenes: the celebrity-chef rooms on the Strip, and the old-school Italian places off it that sell a version of Vegas the resorts have mostly torn down.
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New Jersey
Cherry Hill
Be honest about the geography: most of the best-known parm within reach of Cherry Hill is across the Delaware.
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Newark
Newark’s Little Italy was the old First Ward, the tenement blocks along Seventh and Eighth Avenues that the historian Michael Immerso says once held 43 bakers and pastry shops, plus restaurants like Vesuvius and Nanina Mari’s that drew d…
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New York
Albany
Albany’s own Little Italy grew up around Madison Avenue and Grand Street, with St.
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Buffalo
Buffalo’s Italian-American story starts on the West Side, where the city’s Italian street festival began on Connecticut Street in 1976.
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New York
Manhattan’s red-sauce story starts downtown, though there is less of it left than the postcards suggest.
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Queens
Queens doesn’t keep its Italian-American cooking in one neighborhood, so a parm here can mean a deli hero, a pizzeria plate or a sit-down dinner, depending on which way you drive.
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Rochester
Rochester’s parm runs from East Ridge Road in Irondequoit to Elmridge Center in Greece, with the old Italian west side along Lyell Avenue, and its westward spill into Gates, in between.
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Utica
Utica is historically one of the most Italian cities in the country, and East Utica is where that history lives.
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Ohio
Cleveland
Cleveland’s Little Italy sits where Mayfield and Murray Hill roads meet, roughly East 119th to 125th streets, tucked between University Circle and Lake View Cemetery, where the neighborhood’s early Italian stonemasons carved monuments.
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Pennsylvania
Philadelphia
Philadelphia’s parm comes out of South Philadelphia, where Italian immigrants settled in large numbers at the end of the 19th century and the curbside stands on Ninth Street, between Fitzwater and Wharton, became what everyone calls the…
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Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh calls Bloomfield its Little Italy, and the name is earned.
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Rhode Island
Providence
Providence’s red-sauce story starts on Federal Hill.
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Tennessee
Nashville
Nashville never had a Little Italy, and its oldest Italian thread ran through a chili bowl.
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Texas
Dallas
Dallas’s red-sauce story starts with a Sicilian family and a bar.
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Houston
Houston’s Italian story is mostly a Sicilian one.
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San Antonio
San Antonio’s Italian story is older than most visitors guess.
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Washington
Seattle
Seattle’s Italian story starts in the Rainier Valley.
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Washington, DC
Washington
Washington never grew a Little Italy on the scale of Baltimore’s or Philadelphia’s.
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Wisconsin
Milwaukee
Milwaukee’s first Little Italy was the Third Ward.
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