The NYC restaurant no one can get into is opening on Miami Beach. Can you get a table?

If you are one of the celebrated few to have scored a table at the original Rao’s Italian restaurant in New York — though you probably weren’t, because you’re not Leo DiCaprio or Billy Crystal — you have not forgotten the experience. In fact, you’ve almost certainly bragged about it. The iconic 10-seat restaurant, which opened on the corner of 114th Street and Pleasant Avenue in Harlem in 1896 and is a magnet for the hungry and famous, has long been considered the hardest reservation to score in New York and the wider world.

Now, Rao’s is ready to open its first restaurant in Florida at the glamorous Loews Miami Beach Hotel, and while getting a table will not necessarily be easy, you actually have a shot at getting in.

Pronounced Ray-oh’s, the Miami Beach version of the restaurant opens its stylish red doors on Oct. 25 with space for around 130 diners and a slightly tweaked menu. Reservations open via Resy starting Oct. 13, and slots are certain to fill quickly. You may not get that coveted table at 8 p.m. Saturday, but you won’t need to know an insider with a standing weekly or monthly reservation in order to get in, like you would in New York.

Still, despite the restaurant’s larger size and the fact that New Yorkers have to go home at some point, competition for reservations during the season might be harder than crossing the causeways during Art Basel. Dino Gatto, corporate and executive chef for Rao’s, knows more than a few New Yorkers ready to head south.

“A lot of our regulars, they’re looking already to come down and eat here,” he says.

Gatto, who has been training staff and will travel back and forth between the New York Rao’s and Miami Beach, describes the Southern Italian cuisine at Rao’s as comfort food: “It’s the food my grandparents cooked that I grew up on — real homey, down to earth, and authentic.”

He has worked for Rao’s, which also has a restaurant in Los Angeles and a sauce brand you can find at local grocery stores, for 28 years. That longevity is something common to almost all of the staff at the New York restaurant; one of the kitchen employees, he says, has worked for Rao’s for 48 years.

Co-owners Ron Straci and Frank Pellegrino Jr., the third and fourth generation of the original owners, have also spent their lives at the restaurant, he says.

“Ronnie started sweeping the floors in there when he was seven years old,” Gatto says. “Now he’s 87. Everyone’s from the neighborhood. It’s family. We all take it to heart.”

That sense of neighborhood solidarity is what inspired Rao’s to feed hospital workers, police officers and firefighters and to start a takeout service for the first time during the 2020 pandemic. The endeavor proved so popular that the usual 15 pounds of meat used during the restaurant’s traditional Monday-through-Friday operations increased to 75 pounds a week. One guy was so desperate for Rao’s takeout he drove all the way from Boston to get some.

“He said, ‘I’ve been home with my wife and four kids under 11 — I have no problem driving to New York,’ ” Gatto recalls, laughing.

When Gatto returns to New York, Chef Michael Wesley, who has been working at the Los Angeles Rao’s, will run the kitchen. The menu in Miami Beach includes about 80 percent of what you’ll find at the original and most of its signature dishes: The meatballs. The lemon chicken. The roasted red peppers and seafood salad. Lobster fra diavolo and veal ragout, which Gatto says is his favorite dish after a little consideration.

VIPs and VVIPS, of course, will have their own space to revel in this Italian bounty. In addition to a lounge and the main dining room, the new restaurant has created the exclusive Rao’s Room for celebrities and high-rolling regulars that mimics the look and feel of the New York original, with its own little bar and celebrity photos on the wall. If Pat Riley desires meatballs, that’s where he’ll be sitting.

Naturally, there have been challenges in recreating Rao’s in Miami. The restaurant is located in the hotel’s historic St. Moritz tower, which meant limitations on what could be changed in the design of the restaurant (the space used to hold Lure Fishbar). The nuances of what Gatto calls “kitchen Spanish” are more complicated in Miami, where many kitchen workers aren’t bilingual and regional accents and inflections are more varied and complex.

But the opening thrills the Tisch family, which owns Loews Hotels & Co. Executive chairman Jonathan Tisch and president and CEO Alex Tisch said in a statement that the brand is a perfect fit for their property.

“When thinking about the ideal restaurant for our South Beach location, we had to look no further than to our dear friends at the iconic Harlem institution, Rao’s,” they said. “Like Loews Hotels & Co., they understand what it takes to give customers a memorable, authentic experience, treating them like family.”

Rao’s

Where: Loew’s Miami Beach Hotel, 1601 Collins Ave., Miami Beach

Opening: Oct. 25

Reservations: Available starting Oct. 13 at Resy