The vegetable section is the most revealing part of an Italian menu and the part almost nobody reads. Two words do most of the work. A menu that says contorni is telling you the vegetables arrive with or after the main course, on their own plate, as an accompaniment. A menu that says verdure is often telling you something different: that vegetables are a course in their own right, ordered and eaten on their own terms. Where the section sits on the page confirms which one the kitchen means. I read seven Manhattan Italian menus in August 2026 to see how the category is actually handled here, and the split is sharper than I expected.

Quick Answer

Contorno means a side dish served alongside the secondo, and menus that use it place the section after the mains. Verdure simply means vegetables, and the kitchens using it tend to move the section up the page, ahead of pasta, which changes it from a side into a course. Of the seven menus read, four use Contorni, three use Verdure, and one uses the English word Sides. Read the position, not just the word.

Contorni: the vegetables come with the main

This is the traditional structure. The contorno is not a garnish and not a salad course; it is a separate plate that lands next to the secondo, which in Italy is usually a piece of protein served on its own.

L’Artusi on West 10th Street runs the textbook version. Its dinner sections go Crudo, Antipasti, Pasta, Pesce, Carne, Contorni, Dolci. The contorni sit after both fish and meat, exactly where the structure says they should. The list is short and mostly $14: crispy potatoes with salsa bianca, broccoli rabe with peppers, garlic and breadcrumbs, corn with scallion and ricotta di ginepro, eggplant with yellow tomato and whipped ricotta. A house-made focaccia at $10 sits in the same section, which is a small liberty but a common one.

Babbo on Waverly Place does the same, with the section last on the dinner menu after Primi and Secondi: broccolini with garlic and lemon, escarole with olives, raisins and breadcrumbs, arugula with vinaigrette, and polenta with mascarpone and Parmigiano, all at $15. Babbo also uses the word as an ordinary noun rather than only a heading. Its family-style option instructs you to “finish with one entrée and accompanying contorni,” which is the clearest statement of the category’s job that I have seen printed on a New York menu.

Notice what both lists have in common: they are short, they are cheap relative to everything above them, and they are built around one vegetable each. That is what a contorno is supposed to be. If a section labelled contorni runs to twelve items with three ingredients apiece, the label is decorative.

Verdure: the vegetables are the course

The other word moves the section, and the move is the whole point.

Via Carota on Grove Street gives Verdure a full centred heading and fifteen dishes, which is more than any other section on its menu, and places it ahead of both the pasta and the mains. Prices run in three tiers at 24, 25 and 26. Panzanella, charred leeks with sheep’s curd, broccoli rabe with garlic and chillies, raw artichokes with avocado and Parmigiano, grilled artichokes with aioli, fried zucchini with sea salt, a grilled mixed plate of eggplant, peppers and zucchini. The menu has no heading for pasta at all and none for dessert; those run as unlabelled bands. Verdure gets the typography. That is a kitchen telling you where to spend your order.

Osteria 57 on West 10th Street puts Verdure second, between Antipasti and Pasta: summer squash carpaccio with pickled Jimmy Nardello peppers and whipped ricotta at 18, charred corn with pecorino and Calabrian chilli at 16, heirloom carrots with green herb dressing and hazelnut at 16, romano beans braised with tomatoes, cumin and sumac at 18, charred peppers with stracciatella at 18. Sitting ahead of the pasta, it functions as a course rather than an accompaniment. Worth noticing too that the section headings are Italian while every dish name is English, which is its own small piece of menu translation.

Rezdôra on East 20th Street does something in between and, I think, more precise than either. Its Verdure is not a top-level section at all; it is nested underneath the Secondi heading, alongside Padella and Per Due. Warm seasonal greens with garlic and olive oil at $12, cipollini roasted with balsamic at $12, roasted maitake with parsley and garlic at $16, romano beans agrodolce alla Parma at $16, cucumber with eggplant and mint at $16. The nesting is the argument: these are vegetables, and they belong with the main course. It is the traditional contorno relationship expressed with the other word.

When the menu says Sides

Isabelle’s Osteria, at 245 Park Avenue South, was the one menu in this group that uses the English heading. Both its lunch and dinner menus label the section Sides, and both lists are the same four vegetables at $14: crispy potatoes with parmesan, rosemary and garlic mayonnaise; polenta with anson mills corn; charred broccoli rabe with castelvetrano olive and pepper; swiss chard with garlic and chilli flake. Lunch adds french fries at $13; weekend brunch runs a different list and prices the potatoes at $13.

The English word is not a downgrade, and it would be lazy to read it as one. The list itself is a contorni list in every respect that matters: four single-vegetable plates, one price, positioned after the entrées, and three of the four are the exact dishes you would find under Contorni at L’Artusi or Babbo. What the word changes is the instruction to the diner. “Sides” tells an American table that these are optional accompaniments; “contorni” tells them these are how the main course is supposed to be eaten. Same food, different expectation.

The practical read: if you are ordering a secondo at Isabelle’s — the brick-pressed chicken, the branzino, the strip steak — the plate arrives without vegetables and the sides list is how you complete it. That is worth knowing before the food comes rather than after. The current menus publish both services side by side, so you can see how the section carries across lunch and dinner.

When the category disappears

Eataly’s La Pizza & La Pasta at 200 Fifth Avenue is the outlier and the most interesting case. Its main menu has no vegetable side section of any kind. The sections run Pane, Antipasti, Insalate, Secondi, Pasta, then the two pizza lists. Vegetables have been redistributed upward into the antipasti and salads: a Sicilian caponata with toasted almonds and ricotta salata at 14, hand-torn fried potatoes at 10, four salads at 18 and 19.

Then the word reappears, once, in an unexpected place. The $25 fixed lunch is built as “choose one Piatti and one Contorni,” with caponata, pappa al pomodoro alla toscana or the fried potatoes as the contorno. The category has been dissolved on the à la carte menu and resurrected as a mechanic on the set one, which is a fair summary of what has happened to the contorno in New York generally.

How to order from the section

Three things I would actually do with this.

If the section is labelled Contorni or Sides and sits after the mains, order from it whenever you order a secondo, and expect one vegetable per plate. Two contorni for a table of two is usually right; four is a lot of food.

If the section is labelled Verdure and sits before the pasta, treat it as a course and order from it first. At Via Carota that is genuinely the strongest part of the menu, and skipping it to get to the pasta is the common mistake.

If there is no vegetable section at all, look in the antipasti and the insalate before concluding the kitchen does not cook vegetables. Eataly’s caponata is a vegetable dish sitting under a different heading, and so are the roasted beets and the panzanella at several rooms here.

Reading a menu’s structure is the same skill as working out which part of Italy a kitchen is cooking from, and it is more reliable than reading the descriptions. What a menu chooses to name, and where it puts it, is a decision someone made on purpose. The disappearance of a category is worth noticing too, which is what happened with risotto on New York Italian menus.

Frequently Asked Question

What is the difference between contorni and antipasti on an Italian menu?

Antipasti come before the meal and contorni come with the main course. An antipasto is a starter eaten on its own, at the beginning, and is often something cured, raw or fried. A contorno is a vegetable plate served alongside the secondo, because in the traditional structure the meat or fish arrives unaccompanied and the vegetables come separately. The confusion is understandable in New York, where a vegetable dish can appear under either heading depending on the kitchen. If you are unsure which the plate is meant to be, look at where the section sits relative to the mains.

Where to start

Read the heading and then read its position. Those two facts together tell you more about how a kitchen thinks than the entire description of any single dish.

If the pasta is what you came for, what house-made actually means and which shapes have to be fresh is the more useful section to be reading closely. Menus in this part of Manhattan turn over with the season, so check the current one on the restaurant’s own site; every price above came off one in August 2026.

Editor’s note: Isabelle’s Osteria is affiliated with this publication. Restaurants were selected using the criteria described above.