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Astoria restaurant puts cork in wine bar

Astoria restaurant puts cork in wine bar
Photo by Christina Santucci
By Bill Parry

One of Astoria’s finest Italian restaurants is scaling back.

The owner of Trattoria L’incontro, at 21-76 31st St., has decided to close the wine bar he operated next door. Vino di Vino was a spot where the restaurant’s dinner guests could relax and mingle before settling in for some of the city’s fabled Italian meals, chosen by the Zagat Survey as the best place to eat Italian food in the five boroughs in 2010.

“We’ve been the best ever since,” general manager Vinny Bizati said. “We’re still going strong, nothing has changed at the restaurant. We just closed the wine bar because the lease expired.”

Owner and Chef Rocco Sacramone, who moved to the United States at the age of 14 from Abruzzo, Italy, and worked his was up from a dishwasher, said, “We’re just concentrating on the restaurant business. We were never really happy with the rent for the wine bar anyway.”

Vino di Vino was able to accommodate 100 customers at a time.

Reach reporter Bill Parry by e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at 718.260.4538.