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" ROBERTO PACIULLO EXPLAINS a recent cancellation: &amp;quot;My waiter says, &amp;#039;This actor Larry Fish, he call and say he&amp;#039;s sorry &amp;#039;cause he has to cancel his reservation.&amp;#039; I say, &amp;#039;Who&amp;#039;s this Larry Fish?&amp;#039; Then I think, Maybe he means Joe Pesci. &amp;#039;No, no,&amp;#039; he says, &amp;#039;Larry Fish, the guy in The Matrix.&amp;#039; But I don&amp;#039;t know this guy. I never get outta the kitchen.&amp;quot;  Laurence Fishburne did the right thing calling ahead if he ever wants to get into the perpetually packed Roberto&amp;#039;s, a 65-seat trattoria in the Belmont section of the Bronx (New York City&amp;#039;s real Little Italy) where everyone from Joe Torre and Marisa Tomei to Mike Wallace, Peter Jennings, and Jerry Springer come to eat the best Italian food in New York--which means the best in the whole country. No one looks at the menu, choosing instead from the extensive blackboard entries for the day. Better yet, ask padrone Paciullo to cook for you. &amp;quot;Whaddayou like? You like baby lamb? I got bee-yoo-tiful baby lamb! I got some fantastic rabbit tonight. You gonna go crazy you taste this rabbit. You wanna fish? I got branzino so fresh it gonna bite you back. And you gotta try this new wine I just get in from Sardinia. You drink this, you make love all night.&amp;quot; (Maybe not, but his perfect Neapolitan cheesecake, called pastiera, comes a close second to the act.) Think of Roberto&amp;#039;s as the city&amp;#039;s version of a dockside trattoria in Salerno, where Roberto comes from and where he learned to cook from his father. Or more to the point, think of it as the place where the owner doesn&amp;#039;t know you from Larry Fishburne and just wants to make both of you happy. 632 East 186th Street; 718-733-9503. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a2558/esq0304italianrestaurant/>