Piccolo MORINI brings handmade pasta back to SoHo in 2026

Altamarea Group brought the MORINI name back to SoHo with Piccolo MORINI, a June 2026 opening at 40 Kenmare Street that leaned hard into handmade pasta, shareable Italian plates and martinis instead of a formal dining-room script. The move put the brand back into a neighborhood where Osteria Morini had already made its mark, and it gave the new room a built-in test: whether a smaller, more neighborhood-first version of MORINI could feel credible in one of downtown Manhattan’s most crowded Italian battlegrounds.

The address mattered. Piccolo MORINI opened in the former Kimika space at 40 Kenmare Street and Elizabeth Street, returning the brand to the same SoHo stretch where Altamarea said Osteria Morini was first introduced in 2010. The original SoHo Osteria Morini closed in June 2024, with relocation plans already in motion, so this opening read less like a fresh concept from scratch and more like a carefully managed reset.

Bill Dorrler led the kitchen, and that choice gave the project continuity. Dorrler had been the opening chef at Osteria Morini and later oversaw Morini in Washington, D.C., tying the new restaurant directly to the group’s established playbook. Altamarea Group itself, founded in 2009 by Ahmass Fakahany with Marea as its flagship, has long used MORINI as one of its most recognizable Italian brands, with locations now spanning Manhattan, Washington, D.C. and Bernardsville, New Jersey.

The food side of Piccolo MORINI was built around pasta first. The menu was set to include more than a dozen fresh pastas, including mascarpone stuffed cappelletti with truffles and prosciutto and gramigna with sausage ragù. That range suggested a kitchen aiming for comfort without drifting into routine, with rich fillings and classic shapes doing the heavy lifting.

The bar program pushed the same idea in a different direction. Piccolo MORINI planned to serve $9 martinis throughout the evening at the bar, not just during a narrow happy-hour window, with versions built around dirty martini basics and Italian-leaning ingredients like tomato, basil, olive, caper, anchovy and Parmesan. Dorrler had previously said diners were moving in a more casual direction, gathering for drinks and light bites, and that shift now seemed to shape the room’s identity as much as the pasta did.

In a SoHo lined with Italian openings that compete on style, pedigree and noise as much as on the plate, Piccolo MORINI tried to win with something more practical: a familiar name, a local address, a serious pasta line-up and a bar built for repeat visits rather than one-night occasions.