Arrive Magazine - March/April, 2008

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

“He wanted to create a place where cultured New Yorkers could come after the opera or a late dinner and enjoy an espresso and a game of Scoppa.” Scoppa, a card game named for the establishment’s proprietor, was just one of the famed features of Ferrara’s. Lepore claims the café’s cannoli cookie recipe—a traditional Italian pastry filled with a blend of mascarpone and ricotta cheeses (the singular, cannolo, means “little tube” in Italian)—is “the most famous in the world,” and it has been in the family for 116 years.

Inside Ferrara’s you won’t find the chic deer antlers or moody modern lighting that may be de rigueur at the surrounding downtown cafés and restaurants. Instead, Ferrara’s still keeps it simple and welcoming with gleaming polished marble floors, wooden tables and chairs, and bright lighting, which highlights the glass cases filled with any number of sweet

Italian-French delicacies. Among them, sfogliatella, a flaky pastry filled with ricotta and fruit; dacquoise, a bittersweet chocolate pouch filled with praline-and-gianduia cream; and of course, the café’s world-famous New York cheesecake. Scoppa may no longer be played at any of the tables on Ferrara’s two floors, but you can find a cluster of clubgoers mixing with a table of silver-haired, fur-clad doyennes, all enjoying a strong espresso as their nights wind down … or just get started.

“Ferrara’s is the stronghold of Little Italy,” says Lepore. “Our motto has always been, ‘Old world, new love.’ And that’s what it is here … a factory of food and love.”