Massara – Campania's wood fire, back on Broadway

On a stretch of Broadway in Flatiron, inside a rare two-storey building, chef Stefano Secchi and his partner David Switzer run Massara, a restaurant built entirely around the regional cuisine of Campania. The name itself carries the history: in Campanian dialect, Massara means matriarch, head of the household, and the kitchen cooks accordingly, with Secchi introducing a menu inspired by his childhood memories of visiting Southern Italy and the region's rich abundance of farms and fisheries, all centered around cooking from both a wood-burning oven and grill. It is the sibling project of Secchi and Switzer's Restaurateurs Stefano Secchi and David Switzer co-own Manhattan's acclaimed Rezdôra, in the Flatiron District, after more than a year of planning, they expanded by opening a new Italian restaurant, Massara, on Broadway, around the corner from Rezdôra's location on East 20th Street. Massara is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide. A June 2025 kitchen fire forced a year away at a Park Avenue pop-up before the restaurant reopened on Broadway in July 2026, calmer and more settled than before.

01The room and the setting

Massara occupies a historic two-storey building on the far side of Broadway from Rezdôra, a rarity among its taller neighbours, designed by Brooklyn-based Sarah Carpenter & Studio to offer guests a variety of dining experiences under one roof. Italian materials were installed wherever possible, including limestone for walls, travertine flagstone floors and Carrara marble bar tops, while dining room walls layered in clay plaster by Edmundson Studio let the original brick courses peek through beneath a 14ft ceiling. Chocolate-coloured leather cushions back fumed oak banquettes, and vintage Murano pendant lights hang over the bar.

The ground floor holds the open kitchen and a dramatically framed pizza oven clad in raw limestone, with a three-storey atrium pouring natural light onto the marble counter where pizzette are shaped. Across its two floors the room seats around 105 guests, nearly double Rezdôra's count, built around a custom wood-burning oven and a communal table crafted from the original wooden beams of a building first raised in the early 1900s.

02The chef

Massara is the creation of chef Stefano Secchi. Born to immigrant parents and raised in Texas, Secchi trained at the CIA in New York, worked with Nancy Silverton at Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles, and honed his craft under Massimo Bottura at the Michelin-starred Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy, before opening his own restaurants in New York. It was earlier, under the tutelage of Nonna Laura Morandi at Hosteria Giusti, that he perfected the handmade pasta that would later take centre stage at his Flatiron restaurants.

Insider tip

Reservations release 30 days ahead via DoorDash; the dining room seats up to six per direct booking.

Secchi's first project, Rezdôra, opened in the spring of 2019 to celebrate the cooking of Emilia-Romagna; five years later, in June 2024, he and Switzer turned south, opening Massara to showcase the cuisine of Campania through wood-fired cooking instead.

03The cooking

Everything at Massara runs through fire. The pizzette are shaped from a sourdough starter, a lievito madre nurtured for years from wild yeast that Secchi brought back from a family trip to Campania as a boy, and baked in a wood-burning oven sourced from the region. After the fire and the year-long hiatus, the dough itself changed: the kitchen now works with a longer-fermented sourdough, giving the pizzette a crust that is at once chewier and crisper, and they remain, by most accounts, the showstoppers of the menu.

Pasta is made largely in-house, and the secondi lean on the restaurant's grill and the dry-aging programme behind its ribeye. Alongside the fire cooking, the kitchen draws on market vegetables, Southern Italian seafood and the kind of produce — mozzarella, citrus, Jimmy Nardello peppers — that defines Campania's farms and coastline.

04What to order

From the current dinner menu: pizzette Crudo, with stracciatella, arugula and prosciutto; Polpo, octopus with slow-cooked beans and saba; and Capesante, scallops with smoked hazelnuts and bergamot, to start. Among the pastas, Candele with ragù genovese and parmigiano and the Cheesemakers Raviolini, filled with bufala D.O.P., datterini tomato and basil, are the house staples, alongside Mezzaluna, crab tossed with Calabrian chilli.

For the table, there is Costata "Ribeye Modo Campana," a 60-day dry-aged cut from the grill, or the whole grilled branzino, served simply with Maldon salt and charred lemon. Lunch is offered as a two- or three-course prix fixe, drawing on the same pizzette, pasta and secondi list.

05When to go and booking

Massara opens Monday from 5pm to 10.30pm, Tuesday to Friday for lunch from noon to 2.30pm and dinner from 5pm to 10.30pm, and weekends from 11.30am to 2.30pm and 5pm to 10.30pm. Reservations, including holidays, are released thirty days ahead at midnight via DoorDash, and the dining room can accommodate parties of up to six directly; larger groups should use the Chef's Table or private-dining inquiry forms.

Guests may bring their own wine if it isn't already on the list, with corkage set at two bottles per reservation. Cancellations are requested by noon on the day of the booking. Given the size of the room and its two bars, walking in for a seat at the counter is possible but worth checking ahead, especially since the kitchen is still rebuilding its following after the long closure.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.