It used to be the glamourous uptown block for Italian restaurants — 10 all told — on 58th Street between Second and Third avenues. But this hotbed of such eateries is no more. The number has shrunk to four, and at least two are said to be teetering.

Other parts of the city saturated with Italian restaurants have undergone similar experiences, all part of a that has seen a rising number of Italian dining spots — the city’s second most popular cuisine after Asian fare — fall by the wayside.

A captain at one prominent West Side Italian restaurant, bemoaning the increasing difficulty of surviving in one of the city’s most intensely competitive businesses because of soaring competition and rising costs, seemed to sum it all up.

“There are too many warring pasta and pizza places in the city, and in wars people die,” he said. You can’t expect Rocky Balboa to keep getting up from the canvas.”

Precise numbers of failures are difficult to come by, but some industry estimates say about 300 of the city’s Italian restaurants shut their doors during the past year. All told, there are roughly 5,500 such restaurants, including pizza joints, spread through the five boroughs, according to the New York Restaurant Association.

One Italian restaurateur who expects the death rate to accelerate among such restaurants, given their ballooning costs, is Orlando Fratta, who through the years has worked as a manager of such popularly priced Upper East Side Italian dining spots as Elio’s, Nicola’s, Parma, and the recently shuttered Il Monello.

In 1986, with the assistance of a couple of partners, he opened Petaluma, a moderately priced Italian eatery, also on the Upper East Side, at 73rd Street and First Avenue, that has developed a strong neighborhood following.

I stopped in about a week ago on a weekday evening, and the 3,000 square-foot restaurant, which seats 150 people and an additional 30 in its outdoor café, was nearly full, with some people waiting at the bar to be seated.

I figured the always amiable and friendly Mr. Fratta, 54, born in Torino, Italy, had to be happy with the brisk business. I was wrong. “I’m busy, but it’s much tougher to survive, and you have to be an acrobat to stay profitable,” he complained.

The big problem, he says, is that “fixed expenses are growing faster than sales and we don’t have the pricing power to offset the increases.”

In particular, he points to such financial heartaches as higher payroll expenses, especially for chefs; much higher medical and energy costs; an increase in the minimum wage; rising taxes; and more costly permits (usually, a minimum of 10 are needed to operate a restaurant). Last year, the restaurant’s Con Edison bill was up 30%, and insurance has risen 20% in the past two years.

Adding to Petaluma’s woes, it has about 20 rival Italian restaurants within a 10-block radius.

The owner of Primavera, another Upper East Side dining spot and one of the city’s premier Italian power restaurants, Nicola Civetta, recently offered similar concerns. In particular, he’s worried about surging competition, higher rental and insurance costs, the consumer’s flight to newer restaurants in the city’s hot new areas, such as Chelsea and SoHo, and the rapidly growing trend to more casual Asian-fusion dining.

An estimated 70 to 90 Italian restaurants go belly up for each one that makes it and Mr. Civetta figures that perhaps 10% to 20% of the city’s Italian eateries at the beginning of the year will close before year end.

Petaluma, named after a city close to San Francisco where one of the restaurant’s owners resides, posted sales last year of about $3 million, up between 3% and 5% from the year before, and netting a minimal profit.

Petaluma, which has about 50 employees and is open seven days a week, currently serves around 400 people a day.

“If I don’t draw 230 people a day, I’ll go broke,” Mr. Fratta said. The average check runs $25 for lunch and $35 for dinner. Among the most popular dishes are linguini al pesto at $17 and thin crust pizzas (which some customers say are among the best in the city) at between $15 and $17.

Mr. Fratta, who frequently wanders around the restaurant, greeting new and old patrons, largely attributes Petaluma’s survival to a dual strategy of offering a steady diet of reasonably priced good food and consistent service; also, one of his partners owns the building that houses the restaurant, which gives it more staying power and enables Petaluma, Mr. Fratta said, “to avoid some of those greedy landlords who always want to raise your rent whenever they see you’re doing well.”

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