Trattoria 160, Pleasantville
Colette Connolly photo
A new restaurant with New York City flair has come to Pleasantville in the form of Trattoria 160. The northern Italian-style eatery opened last month with a special ribbon cutting hosted by the Pleasantville Chamber of Commerce.
Owner Dave Morganelli is excited about introducing this Marble Avenue restaurant to Westchester diners. Trattoria moves into the space that was formerly occupied by Louie Linguine’s.
A Yonkers native, Morganelli has years of experience in the restaurant industry.
He got his first taste of the business at 16 years old when he started waiting tables at a restaurant in Eastchester.
Morganelli, now an Ardsley resident, quickly moved around, serving as general manager at several metropolitan area restaurants, including the former Ye Old Steakhouse in Mamaroneck, and more recently, Valbella in Manhattan, a popular establishment in the meatpacking district that attracts celebrities and other well-heeled customers.
“It was always part of the plan,” said Morganelli, referring to his eventual ownership of the restaurant, which seats up to 300 people. “It was more about finding the location and the right town to set up in.”
Morganelli’s head chef, Joseph Giordano, also made the move with him from Valbella.
In fact, Morganelli, who is married with two young children, is determined to bring the same high quality customer service, attention to detail and sophistication he was accustomed to providing at Valbella to his Westchester customers, but at a more reasonable price.
Trattoria 160 has a spacious dining area, a lounge area that surrounds a well-stocked bar offering 15 brands of wine and 200 liquor labels. There is also a smaller dining section situated beyond the restaurant’s newly built wine cellar, which seats up to 25 people and has over 1,800 wines to choose from, noted Morganelli, a dedicated wine enthusiast.
When it comes to the menu, Morganelli insists that everything must be fresh.
“No meat, produce or seafood comes in here without inspection,” he stressed.
To provide customers with a consistently high quality of food, Giordano treks daily to the Hunts Point Market in the Bronx to find the freshest ingredients for the day’s menu. With a wide selection of homemade pasta, fresh seafood dishes and succulent meats to choose from, not to mention the delectable desserts, Trattoria 160 has something for everyone, Morganelli said.
Appetizers include the tartare, made of hand-chopped filet mignon, red onion, anchovies, capers, tabasco, dijon mustard and egg yolk for $14; capesante, which includes seared sea scallops with fried asparagus and lemon aioli for $15; and salsiccia, a combination of homemade sausage over escarole, barlotti beans and shaved ricotta salata for $11.
Entrees range from the pollo di castagna, a breast of chicken stuffed with sweet onion chestnut bread and sage oven roasted in a chicken veloute for $22 to the vitello filetto, a tenderloin of veal with sausage, baby leeks, radish and pearl onion, along with mustard gastrique for $25. There is also a variety of grilled meats, including shell steak, filet mignon and loin veal chop, and the roasted rack of lamb.
The restaurant offers about 10 to 12 daily specials.
In addition, Trattoria 160 caters a variety of parties. Its large banquet room seats 130 guests, the wine cellar caters to about 25 and a semi-private space seats up to 35 people. A variety of pricing options are available.
Happy to finally call this place his own, Morganelli couldn’t imagine being in any other business.
“I love meeting people, talking to them and being part of their night out,” he said.
Trattoria 160 is located at 160 Marble Ave. in Pleasantville. For more information or to make a reservation, call 914-579-2126 or visit www.trattoria160.net.
Colette Connolly is a copywriter and p.r. expert. She owns Connolly Communications, which is based in Bronxville, New York. Colette specializes in providing content-rich, SEO-optimized press releases, articles, newsletters, brochures, and customer success stories.
