If you know your Louboutins from your Jimmy Choos and your quattro formaggi and your stagioni too, then this is the Italian spot for you. With his trademark bright colored shoes, Bono-style sunglasses and designer suits, owner Bruno Abate, who's funkier than a batch of old Limburger cheese, believes a restaurant is really a boutique or a fashion week stroll in Milan disguised with a touch of food.

As such, he's outfitted his latest creation, Tocco, with an armada of spacey white plastic chairs, giant pendant lamps that look like upside-down timpani drums, and an espresso machine tricked out with more neon than your local diner. Inside those chairs you’ll find an army of black-sweatered, floppy blond-haired J Crew model-worthy dudes alongside Prada-clad beauties nursing expensive purses and colorful cocktails.

Ironically, the food choices here – rustic trattoria style eats like handmade pasta, wood-fired flatbreads, and a broad selection of antipasti – are as old as the roots of Italian cuisine itself. Standouts include smoky wood-fired radicchio dripping in Taleggio cheese, the stagioni pizza topped with a delightfully runny fried egg, and that '80s classic, flourless chocolate cake.

Average cost: $10-$20

Centerstage Reviewer: Michael Nagrant