Ristorante Paoletti
Ristorante Paoletti Has Been Perfecting the Same Family Recipes for More Than 70 Years
Very few restaurants across the Southeast still manage to be surprising. Sometimes there's an expensive buildout to make it "Instagrammable." Maybe the service is excellent. But more often than not, especially in small mountain towns, restaurants are usually competent, often pleasant, but rarely can they hold their own against iconic staples in NYC and LA. Even less frequently do they actually impress you, but that's why Ristorante Paoletti stands out.
The restaurant sits on Main Street in Highlands, a town of just over 1,000 year-round residents perched at 4,110 feet in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a few miles from the Georgia line. But the story of how a family Italian restaurant ended up here starts nowhere near North Carolina.
The story begins in 1930, long before anyone could photograph a dish for strangers to see, when Arturo and Rita Paoletti arrived from Trisungo, Italy, carrying recipes passed down through generations. They eventually settled in Miami, where Rita opened the first Paoletti's in 1953 with her children, Luigi and Maria, working alongside her. The restaurant outgrew its space within seven years, and in 1960 Luigi bought a historic building in Coral Gables to house it, running things there with his wife, Gina.
In 1976, Luigi moved the restaurant to Delray Beach, hoping to spend more time with his six kids. Two years later, he died of a heart attack, leaving Gina a widow at 43 with six children and a restaurant to run alone. She didn't sell, and she didn't scale back. In 1984, she opened a location on Main Street in a small mountain town called Highlands, and told the regulars who'd made the drive: "To see people that have dined with us for nearly 25 years, continue to support and travel hundreds of miles to do so is the most humbling experience of my life. Grazie, from the bottom of my heart, grazie mille."
Forty-two years later, that same restaurant is still standing, now run by Rita's grandson Arthur as the third generation and his daughter Gina as the fourth. It has outlasted recessions and thirteen U.S. presidents, Richard Nixon among the regulars who once walked through its doors. None of that staying power came from a marketing team or a viral moment. It didn’t come from chasing trends or innovating new dishes. What's kept people driving hundreds of miles for more than seventy years is the food, made the same way, by the same family, every single night, alongside outstanding hospitality.
The prices might come as a shock at first, but as each dish arrives at the table, you'll quickly see the value. This isn't a place for a quick bite. The staff can speak to every dish without missing a beat, and nobody will rush the pacing between courses. Settle in for a full night of dining, starting with warm bread their warm bread service.
The Lasagna That Sells Out Every Night
Some dishes are so iconic that if they were ever taken off the menu, the restaurant might close. Carbone is famous for their Spicy Rigatoni. Jon & Vinny's makes a Spicy Fusilli. Torrisi has their signature Tortellini Pomodoro. Misi is known for their Occhi. At Ristorante Paoletti, the signature dish is a Lasagna alla Vodka that sells out even on a Tuesday. It's built from more than twenty sheets of house-made pasta layered with ricotta and mozzarella, and finished tableside with a generous pour of the family's vodka sauce. That many layers should add up to something heavy and dense, but it doesn't eat that way. Each bite is tender enough to nearly melt in your mouth, but there's still enough resistance left to give it a satisfying chew. The vodka sauce carries the "bite" the tomato-cream sauce is named for without tipping sweet or flat. It's $55, but the portion is enormous — easily split between two people, especially if you're ordering an appetizer or dessert. Just know it's made in limited quantity every night, so an early reservation is the only way to guarantee a slice.
Servers here will steer you toward pairing it with the Polpetta di Ricotta, which is a wagyu and ricotta meatball roughly the size of a baseball, and you should absolutely take their advice. A heavy hand of basil gives the dish a distinctly herbaceous, Italian flavor, which pairs nicely with the lasagna. That said, don't expect the meatball to be decadent in the way Japanese A5 wagyu typically would be. It is delicious, but the wagyu doesn't do much. Texturally and flavor-wise, it reads closer to a well-built 80/20 blend rather than the richness that wagyu usually promises. Instead, it is just a tender meatball, similar to one made with a large ratio of egg, which is the secret to a tender meatball. It's certainly worth ordering alongside the lasagna though.
More Than Just The Lasagna
The lasagna might be what put Ristorante Paoletti on the map, but it's just one of many dishes on the menu. The menu lists five antipasti, with beef carpaccio and oysters leading the way, along with four salads, including a classic Caesar, with prices ranging from $13-$30. The pasta list picks up from there — seven dishes beyond the lasagna, like a mushroom tortelloni finished in black truffle cream, cacio e pepe, and gnocchi in pomodoro with prices ranging from $34-$66. Any of those, except the lasagna, can be ordered as a primi piatti if you’d rather start with a pasta before ordering an entree too. Under Frutti di Mare, they also offer two additional pastas.
In the mountains, menus tend to lean on local ingredients like freshwater fish, and proteins that can survive a freezer or a long drive, but Ristorante Paoletti refuses to compromise. Their fish is flown in fresh every morning to ensure what you’re eating is fresh and high quality. They offer Faroe Island salmon, N.C. rainbow trout, Gulf black grouper, and red snapper, each available as Francese or Piccata. But the dish worth a reservation is their Linguine Pescatore: scallops, shrimp, calamari, mussels, and clams, sautéed in white wine, fish stock, garlic, olive oil, a touch of crushed red pepper and oregano, and finished with basil and a hint of cream. It's an incredibly fragrant, classic preparation. It’s light where it could easily go heavy, rich where it needs to be, and loaded enough with shellfish that every bite earns its keep. The sauce is silky and clings to the noodles instead of pooling underneath them. It's one of the better versions of this dish found anywhere in the Southeast, including coastal cities like Charleston.
Then comes the secondi list, which are the more traditional, non-pasta entrees. It’s tight, but offers plenty to choose from with eight options like pollo al limone, Ossobuco Milanese, and steak tenderloin, with prices ranging from $38–$72. The Spiced Cervena Elk Rib Chop is the most unique item in this section. A lean meat, closest in texture to a filet, but with a touch more bite to it, like venison; however, it has none of the gaminess that can turn diners away from similar cuts. It's cooked exactingly, too, arriving at precisely the temperature ordered. It's finished with a port wine-cassis reduction that brings sweetness to the plate without ever becoming cloying.
By the time the secondi plates clear, you're stuffed. It seems impossible to take another bite, but you can't fathom not ordering something. That's where the tiramisu comes in. It closes the meal the way a proper tiramisu should: creamy, light, full of coffee and mascarpone flavor without leaning too hard into either booze or chocolate. Nothing about it is reinvented, but it’s executed flawlessly.
106 Pages of Proof
The food is the main reason to spend a night at Ristorante Paoletti, but the wine list is certainly an added incentive. It’s massive: 106 pages, and over 2,000 bottles, starting around $50 and climbing past $5,000. The bulk of the list sitting comfortably in the $100–$300 range, there is something for everyone — and their in-house sommelier will help you find it. This isn't the over-distributed, big-name filler padding most restaurant lists carry: it's stacked with coveted bottles, DRC and Selosse among them, priced fairly for what they are, organized cleanly by region and varietal. A list this serious, in a town this small, is its own kind of statement.
For guests who prefer cocktails, those hold up well too. For guests who prefer cocktails, those hold up well too. Six signature cocktails make up the list, though you're not limited to those: order any classic you like, and if they can make it, they will. The dirty martini sticks to the classic formula (gin or vodka, dry vermouth, a measured splash of olive brine) and arrives ice cold, exactly as it should.
Final Verdict
Ristorante Paoletti isn't trying to be clever, and it doesn't need to be. There's no foam, no dehydrated anything, no plate engineered for a photo, just four generations and seventy-three years of the same family recipes, cooked by hand, in a mountain town of barely over a thousand people that has no business holding a wine list this serious. The prices will make you pause before the first course even arrives, and the lasagna will make you understand why regulars still drive for hours to get it. The service matches the kitchen: warm, attentive, and never rushed. That consistency, done this well, makes Ristorante Paoletti the best restaurant in Highlands, hands down.