Italian Coastal Restaurant Opens In Lenox Hill

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A new restaurant serving Italian coastal cuisine — complete with a backyard patio — has opened its doors in Lenox Hill.

La Piovra, named after the Italian word for octopus, opened this past week on East 61st Street, between Third and Lexington avenues.

The menu offers creative takes on regional Italian dishes, including crispy artichokes with mint and yuzu, grilled octopus with a roasted pepper coulis, and a whipped garlic potato mousse with shaved dried-cured roe.

Diners looking for more familiar fare can find Roman-style pizzas, Mediterranean salads and charcuterie.

“It’s Italian coastal cuisine from all around,” owner Dan Nistorescu told Patch. “From Veneto to Genoa, Puglia to Sicily and Calabria.”

Nistorescu, originally from Romania, has traveled far and wide before landing on the Upper East Side, which he said has influenced his menu and tastes.

He left Romania — and law school — to work on cruise ships around the world, and then built a decades-long career in New York’s restaurant industry.

"When I dropped out of law school, my parents, they were heartbroken, but it was not my thing," Nistorescu said. "I was passionate about hospitality, about restaurant business, about talking to people and being kind to people."

Nistorescu started in New York as a waiter, became a manager, and then transitioned into the kitchen as a chef and a partner at La Grolla on the Upper West Side.

Nistorescu later worked at La Grolla on the Upper West Side, Fresco by Scotto in Midtown East and the Refinery Hotel near Bryant Park before taking over at Symposium, a longtime Greek restaurant near Columbia University.

Despite his experience all over Manhattan, La Piovra is Nistorescu's first venture on the Upper East Side.

So far, he said, the response has exceeded expectations.

"I never envisioned that people were waiting for us, people who are passing by every day, saying, 'We want to come in!'" Nistorescu said. "I said, Not yet, not yet, not yet. But then I had my momentum, and I got up, and I said, 'Now!'"

La Piovra is located at 145 East 61st St. in Lenox Hill.

Know of a business opening or closing on the Upper East Side? Email Miranda.Levingston@Patch.com.