Contorno Meaning: What Contorni Are on an Italian Menu

A contorno (plural contorni) is the vegetable side dish served alongside the secondo, the meat or fish main course of an Italian meal, on its own plate. The word a menu uses for its vegetable section — contorni, verdure or plain English “sides” — and where that section sits on the page tell you whether the kitchen treats vegetables as an accompaniment or as a course in their own right. It is the most revealing part of an Italian menu and the part almost nobody reads. I read seven Manhattan Italian menus in August 2026, and rechecked five of them on each restaurant’s own site in October 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, two print Contorni as a heading, three use Verdure, one uses the English word Sides, and one has no vegetable section at all on its main menu. Read the position, not just the word.

Seven vegetable sections at a glance

Read on each restaurant’s own site in October 2026, except where marked August 2026. Prices change.

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. How that main-course section is built, and what its size tells you, is its own subject: see what secondi are and how to read them.

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. As of October 2026 the list is short and $15 a plate: crispy potatoes with salsa bianca, charred caulilini tonnato with preserved lemon and dill, Brussels sprouts with pecorino and lemon, and heirloom sweet potatoes with pearl onion, cherries and sage. A house-made focaccia at $12 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. As of October 2026 it is down to two plates, broccolini with garlic and lemon and polenta with mascarpone and Parmigiano, both $15. Babbo also uses the word as an ordinary noun rather than only a heading. Its tasting menu 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 heading and fifteen dishes, more than any other section on its menu, and places it ahead of both the pasta and the mains. As of October 2026 prices run $22 to $24: Tuscan kale with garlic, charred leeks with sheep’s curd, broccoli rabe with garlic and chilies, raw artichokes with avocado and Parmigiano, grilled artichokes with aioli, Brussels sprouts with Castelmagno, apple and walnut, grilled mushrooms with smoked scamorza. That is a kitchen telling you where to spend your order.

Osteria 57 on West 10th Street put Verdure second in August 2026, 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. As of October 2026: 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, and nardello peppers with pine nuts and arugula 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. 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: at Isabelle’s the entrées already list an accompaniment — charred broccoli rabe with the brick-pressed chicken, swiss chard with the branzino, crispy potatoes with the strip steak — so the sides are an optional extra rather than the way to complete the plate, which is exactly what the English word signals. 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. In August 2026 its main menu had no vegetable side section of any kind. The sections ran Pane, Antipasti, Insalate, Secondi, Pasta, then the two pizza lists. Vegetables had 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 reappeared, once, in an unexpected place. The $25 fixed lunch was built as “choose one Piatti and one Contorni,” with caponata, pappa al pomodoro alla toscana or the fried potatoes as the contorno. The category had 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 contorni

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 it is the longest section on 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 on L’Artusi’s antipasti list.

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.

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 before you go.

Frequently asked questions

What does contorno mean on an Italian menu?

A contorno is a vegetable side dish served alongside the secondo, the meat or fish main course, on its own plate. Contorni is the plural and the usual heading for the vegetable section, which traditional menus place after the mains.

Is a contorno a side dish?

Yes. A contorno is the Italian side dish, usually built around a single vegetable, ordered to go with the secondo because in the traditional structure the meat or fish arrives unaccompanied. It is not a garnish or a salad course but a separate plate.

What is the difference between contorni and antipasti?

Antipasti come before the meal and contorni come with the main course. An antipasto is a starter eaten on its own at the beginning, often something cured, raw or fried, while a contorno is a vegetable plate served alongside the secondo. In New York a vegetable dish can appear under either heading, so look at where the section sits relative to the mains.

What is the difference between contorni and verdure?

Contorni are side dishes meant for the main course, while verdure simply means vegetables. Menus that use verdure often move the section ahead of the pasta and treat it as a course in its own right, as Via Carota does. Rezdôra is the exception, nesting its verdure under the secondi, which is the contorno relationship under the other word.

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