Augustine’s Salumeria

Pasta discipline at the pass

The mafalda ribbons are made one by one before Chef Marc Taxiera sends them into service at Augustine’s Salumeria in Mamaroneck. His station here carries a long kitchen education: formal training at the Institute of Culinary Education in 1998, an externship at Felidia, work at Baldoria, and the pressure of the Russian Tea Room, where he became Executive Chef in 2007. At Augustine’s, the register narrows around Tuscan and Livornese cooking, less as a label than as a discipline of sauces, seafood, cured meat, and pasta structure. Taxiera’s own description of service is about orchestration: getting the elements to come together through the organized chaos of a busy night. That is a practical philosophy, not a mood. It shows in dishes that ask for timing at the bench and control at the pass: pappardelle with duck ragu, linguine nero, guanciale, cacio e pepe zeppole, and pistachio cannoli. The cooking does not lean on nostalgia alone. It uses regional memory as a working method.

Handmade ribbons and a salumeria counter

The kitchen’s strongest signature is its pasta craft, held alongside a salumeria counter that gives the room its name and part of its rhythm. Mafalda comes as handmade ribbons with Walking R Farm grass-fed longhorn beef, red wine, tomato, and whipped ricotta. Linguini nero brings black ink pasta together with Manila clams, garlic, Calabrian chili, roasted tomato, nduja, and bread crumbs, a dish regulars return to for its dark salinity and heat. The cannoli depend on fresh-pressed pizzelle, a small piece of technique that changes the bite before the filling enters the conversation. Around those anchors, the menu moves through tempura-battered zucchini flowers with ricotta, marjoram, mozzarella, and Calabrian chili aioli; grilled polipo with gigante beans, potato, salsa verde, and squid ink aioli; and farro cooked risotto-style with shrimp, Westchester mushrooms, and blistered cherry tomato. The approach is seasonal and local where it can be, with Italian materials and Westchester sourcing sharing the same pass.

The front bar and the back room

The room shifts as service deepens. The front bar is brighter, with the salumeria energy close to the counter, the craft cocktails, local beer, and the first plates of cured meat and cheese. Further back, the dining room settles into a quieter register, more intimate but still neighborhood in its ease. Augustine’s is small in scale, and that matters: the pass does not feel distant from the room, and the room does not feel staged around the pass. Warm lighting, polished wood, and modern Italian restraint give the food enough space to land without turning the setting into theater. The wine program is curated to sit beside the cooking rather than announce itself over it, with the list shaped for salumi, pasta, fish, and meat. Conversation stays part of the texture.

Recognition without changing the work

The house has drawn Michelin recognition and wine-list attention, including a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence and a White Star from Star Wine List. Those markers sit outside the craft, but they help explain why a neighborhood Italian restaurant in Westchester now carries a wider pull. Taxiera also holds the Executive Chef role at Vida Restaurant in Thornwood, a parallel station that extends the same appetite for control, adaptation, and regional expression. At Augustine’s, handmade mafalda, linguine nero, and the salumeria counter return nightly.