Business of the Month: Il Corallo Trattoria, 176 Prince Street

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How do you run a business intended to serve a neighborhood when the neighborhood changes all around you? That is the challenge that some of our most cherished stores and restaurants have faced — sometimes for decades. Our December Business of the Month, Il Corallo Trattoria, opened at 176 Prince Street (btw Thompson and Sullivan Street)  back in 1992, when there were few restaurants nearby. Since then, this once gritty artist enclave has been overrun by trendy eateries, designer boutiques, franken-pastries, and corporate retail outposts. Through it all, however, Il Corallo has continued serving delectable, unpretentious Italian fare that manages to please both longtime regulars and new customers from among the waves of visitors and new residents that have followed. Perhaps its devotion to the neighborhood has been the secret to its longevity. And as we’ll see, a bit of good fortune didn’t hurt.

Saturno Baiocchi moved to New York as a young man from Trieste, where his mother owned a trattoria. Upon arrival, he decided to try his hand at the family business. In 1992, he opened the Il Corallo, a seafood-centric casual restaurant that offered a wide (and soon wider) selection of handmade pastas. On its first day of operation, a neighbor wandered in. Her name was Lori Kennedy. She and Saturno became a couple and together they ran Il Corallo for the next two decades.

Il Corallo soon became part of the community, which could count on it for a warm welcome and a selection of toothsome Italian dishes that Saturno, always deeply attuned to his customers’ tastes, kept adapting to suit the local palate, without abandoning the orthodoxies of the traditional Italian kitchen. Before long, the place had a headliner, the ever-popular Taglierini Sorrento (i.e. squid ink pasta, shrimp and assorted seafood on a tomato, white wine sauce), and a supporting cast of around 60(!) pasta dishes from throughout Italy.

NYU film student and nearby resident Stephanie Markowitz had sworn never to work at a restaurant again when she walked past Il Corallo in 1996 and saw a “Help Wanted” sign. She needed a job, popped in, and soon started training. Stephanie worked there as a waitress for three and a half years and so loved the experience and mentorship received from Saturno that it instilled in her a passion for restaurant work and helped inspire her decision to pursue a career in hospitality. Upon leaving, she asked Saturno to call her should he ever decide to sell his place. That call came almost fifteen years later, by which point Stephanie had become a chef and gained experience at numerous acclaimed restaurants both at the front and the back of the house. She agreed to take over from the retiring couple on the spot. The details would be worked out later. In 2013, Stephanie became Il Corallo’s owner and operator, and got an opportunity to continue the legacy of the restaurant that helped launch her own career.

It was a transition made in heaven. Stephanie got what she knew was a solid, time-tested business—a beloved restaurant with a local following and a loyal staff, members of which had worked there since day one. Il Corallo got in Stephanie someone deeply committed to preserving what Saturno had built and knowledgeable enough to modify it without betraying its fundamental character. Stephanie compares the changes she introduced to the tuning of an instrument. Stephanie aimed to amplify the restaurant’s existing strengths, continuing to meet old regulars’ expectations, while also responding to the demands of new ones.

Il Corallo’s basic approach did not change. Stephanie kept the restaurant’s staff and chef, its local suppliers, and a distillation of Saturno’s dishes. The heart of the menu still consists of its numerous seafood pasta dishes, like spaghetti vongole or fettuccine salmone. But it also includes a selection of other classics such as fusilli norma, spaghetti carbonara, rigatoni bolognese. Beyond the pasta, Il Corallo offers a variety of wood-fired pizza, salads, and antipasti, as well as more substantial secondi, like the whole grilled trout.

The menu changes introduced by Stephanie stem from the Italian culinary context that she grew up in and from her professional awareness of customers’ increasingly diverse dining habits. As an Italian-American, she, like no doubt many of her diners, has a fondness for typical dishes not found in Italy, and she does not share Saturno’s traditionalist Italian convictions about what does not belong on a proper Italian menu. As a result, diners can now enjoy not just long standing house specialties, but also old-school favorites like chicken parmigiana and spaghetti with meatballs. Beyond that, they will now also find dishes designed with dietary restrictions in mind, be they of the vegetarian, vegan, low-carb, or gluten-free variety. More generally, Stephanie has tried to find ways to increase and improve the number of ways that one can dine at Il Corallo. You can swing by for an aperitivo and have a small dish with it. Or you can come in with a large party and order family style. Or you can take it to go. Or you can treat yourself to one the best lunch deals in town. For what you pay at many places for a sandwich, you can have a soup or salad and a steaming bowl of pasta. For $8 more, you can add a glass of wine. And for $8 more, you can add dessert — or a second glass of wine. 

For being a beacon of hospitality in the South Village for over 30 years and for treating visitors and neighbors old and new to affordable and consistently delicious classic Italian food, we’re thrilled to name Il Corallo Trattoria our December 2025 Business of the Month. 

What special small business would you like to see featured next? Just click here to nominate our next one. Thank you! #shoplocalnyc

Here is a map of all our Businesses of the in Month: