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dictates which idea will take root; each concept is a complete
vision in which the culinary and aesthetic points of view are
in alignment. “I think when you have one author writing the
first chapter, so to speak, the design of the room, and the
same author is in the kitchen writing it, you have this unique
thing,” Williams says. Sodi believes you can’t appreciate the
soul of the dish in front of you if you don’t have a comple-
mentary atmosphere to eat it in. “It has to be everything,”
she says. “It would take something out of the food.”
The two share a respect for raw materials that applies to
both the seasonal produce being prepared in the kitchen
and the reclaimed wood on the floor of the dining room.
Despite owning and running multiple businesses, they
continue to insist on handpicking every table, every chair,
every hook. Williams is a bit of a pack rat and can’t stay away
from an antiques shop or flea market. Take that surprising
bathroom fixture: She found it in Bucks County, Pennsylva-
nia, one afternoon, “just going for a walk, and there was this
horse.” She asked Sodi if they could buy it, accustomed to
her usual “No, no, no” response. But they bought it, “’cause
I buy a lot of junk,” Williams adds. It’s got company at the
restaurant: “You’ll look around and you’ll see a couple horse
heads, not overdone.” There’s a crow and boar, too. “We
had to get a boar because it’s Florence, right?” Williams is
referring to the Florentine Il Porcellino, a famous bronze
boar fountain in the Piazza del Mercato Nuovo, and to the
fact that Via Carota is named for the street on which Sodi’s
residence is located in that city. Items from the house are
hiding in plain sight throughout the restaurant—the 15th-
century knocker on the front door is one of many examples.
“We’ve got pieces in storage that are so incredible we’ll
build restaurants around them,” Williams says. Via Carota
was built around one—a Welsh meat locker she’d found years
ago. Before Pisellino’s opening, a shipment of Sodi’s own
furniture from Italy showed up, providing additional options
for what they consider, as Williams puts it, “another canvas
for us to collaborate on and paint.” At that point, it was
still “dust and dirt.” The following week, the mosaic floor
they’d had custom-made by a company in Arkansas that
specializes in historical tile was installed, and then, eventu-
ally, the lighting fixtures made by their friend and longtime
collaborator Warren Muller in Philadelphia went up. Later,
personal touches like a bronze baby boar were added.
“Everything is important to us because we live and work
in these places.” Williams says. As business owners, she and
Sodi think of themselves as caretakers—of their team, but
also of the property. “We feel ... like the space is a friend or
living,” she says, and applies “the same standard we have at
home.” She means it, admitting: “Our employees, if they’re
handling a wretched-looking broom, we think, ‘Oh my God,
can you imagine if that was in our house?’ We’d run out the
door!” Accordingly, each of their restaurants is outfitted with
a Miele vacuum, which is what they use at home.
Is there any part of the process they trust someone else
to oversee? Not really. But they acknowledge that a good
restaurant is a collaboration of many hands. “We relinquish
control the day we open the restaurant,” Williams says. “The
public will say, ‘This is what this place is for me. This is what
I feel.’” The point is that it makes them feel, and it makes
them feel good—good enough to return over and over again.
There’s I Sodi, the Tuscan place that Sodi, a native of that
region, opened 10 years ago on Christopher Street (a few
blocks away from that equine fixture), after leaving the
fashion industry for a new career as a restaurateur and chef.
Three years later, Williams, a self-taught chef from California
who’d earned her stripes and critical acclaim at downtown
Manhattan institutions like il Buco, Giorgione, and Morandi,
opened Buvette, what she calls a “gastrothèque” (or Gallic-
ish bistro-bar), on nearby Grove Street. Two international
outposts of Buvette have followed: one in Paris, the other
in Tokyo. Arriving in 2014 a few feet away, Via Carota was
their first joint venture, and just across the same street, they
recently unveiled Pisellino, an all-day café where neighbors
can rub elbows while enjoying a morning espresso or an
evening cocktail and an assortment of traditional Italian bites.
People love to talk about I Sodi’s lasagna, how it’s unri-
valed in the city. Or they’ll want you to know they’ve had the
“petit burger” at Buvette, a well-kept secret tucked between
a spliced slab of onion focaccia. They continue to debate
which of the salads at Via Carota is the perfect salad. What
they won’t tell you is that each of Sodi and Williams’ din-
ing rooms transports you to an enveloping, self-contained
world, one that’s simultaneously homey and escapist. Enter
these spaces and the city outside falls away—you feel like
you’re on holiday.
That’s not an easy trick to pull off. It demands the same
level of care and skill needed to nail a mound of cacio e pepe
or steak tartare; the only way it works is if you can’t see the
effort required. The finished product should seem like “it’s
always been there,” Sodi says. “You open the door and say,
‘Oh, I didn’t see that before. How long has it been there?’
That’s our goal.” It’s easily taken for granted, but it’s what
makes people keep coming back.
“The truth is we have a list of places we want to go to, and
if they don’t exist, we want to make them,” Williams says.
It may begin with an idea, but it’s the space that ultimately
If you’ve ever been to Via Carota, Rita Sodi
and Jody Williams’ perpetually packed Ital-
ian restaurant in New York City’s Greenwich
Village, and had to use the restroom, you’ve
probably noticed a certain bronze horse head
mounted on the wall across from the toilet.
It’s a bag hook, and it’s one of many playful,
practical fixtures that fill the six establish-
ments in the couple’s purview.
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