From left to right: Jennifer Vitagliano, Mary Attea, and Nicole Vitagliano. (Photo by Agence Pancake.)

J ennifer and Nicole Vitagliano can’t agree on anything. But they’re making progress. The 30-something year-old identical twin sisters behind Raf’s, the NoHo restaurant beloved by fashion editors and celebrities, and The Musket Room, their once-Michelin-starred fine dining restaurant in Nolita, have just gotten back from Italy, and found something they can agree on: You’re not going to get better hospitality anywhere in the world outside of Sicily. But they’re trying to change that.

Most other things, they disagree about. They disagree with each other—constantly. “I’m very right, like, all the time,” Nicole says about herself. “It’s exhausting. You don’t know when a small detail is making a difference, but I do.” They disagree with their surroundings, and the choices that others make about those surroundings. “Wait, did you see they switched out the cocktail trio?” Jennifer points out to Nicole in the middle of our interview on the deck of Raffles hotel in Boston, where they’re hosting a pop-up of Raf’s. “Yeah, because I made them switch the cocktail trio,” retorts Nicole. “What, did you want cashews with, like, nori?” They often disagree with the behavior of their patrons—in the first year it opened, Raf’s had a list of 86’d guests that was 275 people deep. “We dealt with an asshole like every other day,” said Jennifer. 

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