Scott Sartiano — the hospitality figure behind the members-only Zero Bond and, earlier, Butter and 1Oak — built his namesake Italian room inside The Mercer in SoHo, taking over the subterranean space that Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Mercer Kitchen held for some two decades. Culinary direction comes from Alfred Portale, the three-time James Beard Award winner who defined inventive luxury dining at Gotham Bar & Grill, with Chris Lewnes as executive chef. The menu reads as elevated red-sauce: homemade pastas and breads, crudo, a steak program, an olive-fed Wagyu porterhouse. The brick-clad dining room centers on a 20-foot Carrara-marble bar, interiors nodding to Tuscan villas and the Borghese in Rome. A dress code and a phone-line reservation system police the door. For a SoHo scene where the kitchen is more serious than the crowd suggests.