Charlie Bird

The proprietors of this jaunty Soho restaurant managed to transform one of the city’s most awkward dining spaces — a strange two-level design with a tight narrow taper on the southern end — into a truly popular modern trattoria where the opening buzz has yet to wear off, even years later. Chef Ryan Hardy’s menu manages to hit almost all of the New York–Italianate dining trends of the last decade and his kitchen turns out commendable renditions of uni pasta, burrata, hulking bisteccas for two, and the like. The real draw here for most diners is the restaurant’s wine list, which is like a fever dream of big-money, old-world bottlings, all served (of course) in the restaurant’s impossibly thin-stemmed Zaltos.