Food importers Vincenzo and Maria Lamanna opened Isle of Capri in 1955 on the corner of Third Avenue and 61st Street, and the family has held the room ever since — a rare line of continuity on an Upper East Side that has lost stalwarts like Gino, Bravo Gianni, and Elaine's. Maria, the Calabria-born matriarch regulars knew as Mamma, set the southern Italian template the kitchen still follows: vitello tonnato, the antipasto tower, veal piccata, rigatoni alla vodka in pink sauce. The split-level dining room is dim, close, and tuxedo-formal in the old manner. In 1976 Craig Claiborne called it the best small Italian restaurant in New York; Gael Greene, the same year, dubbed it a hideaway for prudent lovers. For an Italian-American institution that has refused to change.