Four foods anchor the Utica-area table: chicken riggies, Utica greens, tomato pie, and the half-moon cookie. None of them are hard to find — the trick is knowing which kitchens are tied to the tradition rather than just carrying it. This guide covers where to eat the canon, and the history section below explains where each dish actually comes from (with sources, because the origin stories are contested).
The family behind the Chesterfield Restaurant — the kitchen most identified with Utica greens and one of the claimed birthplaces of riggies — now cooks downtown as Chesterfield's Tavolo, with both dishes still on the menu.
A four-time RiggieFest winner and Hall of Fame inductee. Teddy's didn't invent the dish, but few kitchens are more associated with serving it well.
House-made pasta and family-recipe sauces since 1985, with chicken riggies and Utica greens side by side — a one-stop canon dinner in New Hartford.
Utica's oldest pizzeria, whose own history says it originally sold only tomato pie — for a nickel. The upside-down style (sauce over cheese) is specific to this city.
An East Utica deli counter where tomato pie is everyday food, not a novelty — by the slice or the sheet, next to house-made sausage.
The Yorkville bakery sells half-moon cookies by the thousands and ships them nationally; it also bakes tomato pie and jelly buns daily.
Bleecker Street's Italian pastry shop, in business since the late 1920s, sells pasticciotti — pusties — in chocolate, vanilla, lemon and more.
A block-mate of the Florentine dating to the 1920s: pusties, filled-to-order cannoli, and Italian cookie trays.
The century-old family supermarket sells prepared chicken riggies by the pan — the practical answer when you need to feed a crowd or take the canon home.
A food truck serving riggies, greens, and tomato pie at events around here — and bookable for parties.
Rigatoni in a spicy cream-tomato sauce with chicken and hot peppers, native to the Utica–Rome area and dating to the late 1970s or 1980s. Who invented it is genuinely disputed: chef Michael Geno says he created the dish around 1979 at the Clinton House in Clinton for a Monday-night card crowd (Tasting Table), while the Chesterfield Restaurant credited itself circa 1989 (Wikipedia). Local reporting agrees there is no consensus originator — which is exactly why Utica settles it annually at the RiggieFest cook-off (WIBX).
Escarole sautéed with prosciutto, hot peppers, cheese and breadcrumbs. Chef Joe Morelle is credited with shaping the dish in 1988 at the Chesterfield Restaurant, adapting an escarole special he had run at Grimaldi's — which is why the dish is locally called greens Morelle, the name Chesterfield's Tavolo still uses (The Daily Orange). The roots are older: boiled and sautéed escarole was standard in the region's Italian immigrant households long before it had a restaurant name.
A thick, airy rectangular crust topped with tomato sauce and grated hard cheese — little or no mozzarella — served at room temperature, related to Sicilian sfincione and brought by early-1900s Southern Italian immigrants (Wikipedia). A popular local account holds that O'Scugnizzo's, founded on Bleecker Street in 1914, was among the first to sell it in Utica, for five cents (Barking Doodle). Bakeries and delis, not pizzerias, are where most of it sells today.
A cake-like chocolate cookie iced half with fudge frosting, half with buttercream. Hemstrought's Bakery says Harry B. Hemstrought crafted the original recipe in 1920 at his Genesee Street bakery (Hemstrought's); Spectrum News covered the bakery's centennial in 2020 (Spectrum). It is a distinct thing from the New York City black-and-white — don't say that to a Utican unless you have time for the lecture. Holland Farms in Yorkville sells them by the thousands today (thisiscny.com).
"Pusties" is the Utica name for pasticciotti — single-serving Italian custard tarts, a tradition attributed to immigration from the Terra di Lavoro region of Campania (Left at the Fork). The Florentine and Caruso's, a block apart on Bleecker Street, are the classic sources.
Rome's contribution to the candy aisle: turkey joints, a silver candy shell around chocolate and nuts, made by the Haritatos family at Nora's Candy Shop since 1919 (turkeyjoints.com). Strictly a holiday-season ritual, and strictly a Rome one.
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