Marco Polo

Marco Polo Restaurant Review:

This Carroll Gardens restaurant first fired up its burners in 1983, and for about three decades was a red sauce joint through and through. But starting in 2012, and with the owner's son, Marco Chirico, in the kitchen, the place fine-tuned the menu, making the food more palatable for a changing, younger neighborhood. There's now more of an emphasis on Italian cuisine, versus Italian-American. Stand-out dishes include gnocchi with buttery lobster; agnolotti stuffed with juicy veal; and well-executed grilled octopus. The experienced waitstaff are adept at helping with wine pairings, and a number of options are available by the glass. End the meal with the restaurant's homemade "orange-cino," a slightly different take on limoncello.