Recente, a new coastal Italian restaurant and aperitivo bar, has opened at 182 Second Avenue in New York City’s East Village. The restaurant is the first standalone concept from managing partners Willem Hock and Lukas Canan, whose hospitality careers have included some of New York’s best-known bars and restaurants, including Dante, The Surf Lodge and The Nines. In the kitchen, Australian chef Monty Koludrovic, the former executive chef of Sydney’s Icebergs Dining Room & Bar, serves as culinary consultant.
Koludrovic describes the menu as “New World Italian,” an approach that uses Italian cooking as a foundation while drawing on the produce, seafood and flavors of Australia and the broader Asia-Pacific region. Recente also boasts an aperitivo and spritz program, Italian and low-intervention wines, signature martinis and a late-night “Discoteca” menu inspired by 1990s cocktails. Weekend brunch is expected to launch in September.
Appetito talked with the Recente team about choosing the East Village and what they hope guests discover when they walk through the doors.
What does “New World Italian” mean to you, and how does that come through in the dishes?
Chef Monty Koludrovic:
For me, it's about not being too bound by tradition. I like cooking food that's genuinely delicious and fun rather than sticking rigidly to what's “correct.” Italian food has this incredible depth of history, and I don't want to lose that, but I also think it should represent where you actually are, not just where the tradition came from.
You might recognize the technique or the spirit of a dish as Italian, but the produce, the seasoning, sometimes the whole idea behind it is pulled from somewhere else entirely. That's really the heart of it, too: when Italian food and culture travels to a new part of the world, it doesn't stay the same — it grows into something completely new. Australian Italian and American Italian are totally different from each other, and both are different from Italian food in Italy.
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What makes the East Village feel like the right home?
Willem Hock, Managing Partner:
The East Village has always been a melting pot of cultures, and that diversity comes through in its food and beverage scene. It's also a neighborhood with real energy after dark, where people linger and places stay open late. It felt like exactly the kind of neighborhood we wanted to be part of.
How has your time cooking in Australia influenced the way you approach Italian food?
Chef Monty Koludrovic:
Australia taught me to let the produce lead. Sydney gave me access to incredible seafood and produce, and that shapes how I think about a menu. It's Italian in technique and spirit, but built around what's actually good and fresh in front of me, not a fixed idea of what a dish is supposed to be. I also picked up habits from cooking in a place with a strong Asia-Pacific influence. The dishes I'm proudest of are the ones where an unexpected influence ends up feeling like something a nonna would recognize, even if she'd never have made it herself.
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Are there a few dishes on the opening menu that you think best represent Recente?
Chef Monty Koludrovic:
A few jump out for me. The Tomato and Peach Salad with Shiso and Verbena Vinaigrette is a good example of how we think. It's a simple, seasonal salad, but the shiso pulls it somewhere unexpected. The Skull Island Tiger Prawn Saltimbocca is also a favorite because it takes a beautiful Asia-Pacific ingredient and puts it through a classic Italian technique, so it respects both traditions instead of picking one. Lastly, the Pappardelle with XO Oxtail Ragù is probably the clearest statement of what we're doing here: XO is a Hong Kong condiment, oxtail ragù is deeply Italian, and somehow the two just make sense together — rich, savory, a little funky in the best way.
That dish is actually tied to a moment that's stuck with me for years, back at Icebergs, when I was making an XO with dried, preserved seafood. In my head it was purely a Hong Kong recipe. But one of my Italian cooks, Donato, saw it completely differently. For him it connected straight back to his own family and home, to the tradition of preserving seafood in Puglia, a region that's either blessed with incredible fishing or gets completely blown out and has to make do. That was the moment it really clicked for me: cultures all over the world have faced the same challenges and landed on strikingly similar solutions, just by totally different paths. That's the joy of food, and of people traveling the world.
What do you hope guests take away from their first meal at Recente?
Lukas Canan, Managing Partner:
There's no one right way to do Recente. Come for a full dinner, come for a few rounds at the bar, swing by for aperitivo, or show up late when the Discoteca menu kicks in. We wanted a place that could be all of those things at once.
Recente is open Tuesday through Sunday for dinner, with late-night service Thursday through Saturday. Weekend brunch is scheduled to begin in September. Reservations are recommended.
182 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10003 @recentenyc
