Carbone

Founded by Mario Carbone, Rich Torrisi, and Jeff Zalaznick, Carbone is one of the most celebrated Italian restaurants of the last decade. The New York Times probably put it best: “It is a fancy red-sauce joint as directed by Quentin Tarantino, bringing back the punch-in-the-guts thrills of a genre that everybody else sees as uncultured and a little embarrassing, while exposing the sophistication that was always lurking there. The restaurant has a technical prowess that can make you giddy and an instinct for sheer entertainment that makes a lot of other restaurants seem like earnest, unimaginative drones.