Today Frank Bruni at the Times bestows two out of four stars on the Upper West Side Fatty Crab (photos/menu), an impressive rating for a casual restaurant. But Bruni just can't get enough of "the Fatty spirit, the culinary equivalent of a stoner’s foggy contentment...Are its flavors in fact too big, too unrelenting? What qualifies as a bold deployment of chilies and aiolis, and what’s just indiscriminate overkill? Many a meal at Fatty Crab raises those questions and walks a fine line, but pretty much every time I began to doubt the kitchen’s care and skill, something came along to restore my belief." more ›

Keste Pizza and Vino: Just because everyone's broke doesn't mean restaurateurs are pulling the plug on their new projects. But it does mean we're seeing more mid-range eateries popping up, and three new pizza restaurants are open for business this week. Let's call it a trend! The most hotly anticipated is the Neapolitan-style Keste, co-owned by Roberto Caporuscio, a former mozzarella-maker who trained in Naples at the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana school, which sounds like a big deal. more ›