By Gus Saltonstall
An Upper West Side restaurant was recently named among the 100 best pasta places in the United States by Yelp.
In honor of the upcoming National Pasta Day on October 17, the crowd-sourced review and recommendation platform published its first-ever list of the best pasta spots in the country.
The Upper West Side eatery that earned a spot on the ranking?
Arco Cafe at 886 Amsterdam Avenue, between West 103rd and 104th streets. It was ranked as the 39th best pasta place in the country for 2026.
The Upper West Side eatery describes itself as a Sardinian restaurant with a focus on homemade pasta and freshly baked focaccia.
“Everything begins with the dough. Every morning, our kitchen makes pasta from scratch — malloreddus, fregula, ravioli — using the same techniques passed down through Sardinian families for generations,” reads an about section on the restaurant’s website. “There are no shortcuts. No pre-made bases. No frozen anything.”
Arco Cafe, which opened on the Upper West Side in 2014, currently offers 11 pasta dishes on its menu, including Pappardelle ai Funghi Porcini with mushrooms and cream sauce and Bigoli Uova e Pancetta with pancetta, egg yolk, parmesan, and pecorino. You can also order nine homemade pastas from the restaurant to take home to cook yourself.
“We never did it for the recognition. We did it for the people around the table,” Arco Cafe wrote on its Instagram in response to the inclusion in the Yelp ranking. “So if we’re on this list today, it’s because of you, every guest, every review, every evening spent with us.”
Yelp created the rankings by narrowing down the best-reviewed restaurants across the nation in the “pasta” category through a combination of the number of reviews and overall rating. No more than 10 restaurants were included per state.
“We tapped our Yelp community to help build Yelp’s inaugural Top 100 Pasta Places list reflecting the authentic experiences of users nationwide,” Tara Lewis, a Yelp trend expert and vice president, told Food & Wine.
Let us know in the comments your favorite pasta place on the Upper West Side.
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Wonderful, thank you.