Da Silvano (CLOSED)

As is the case at too many of New York’s see-and-be-seen hotspots, the food at this West Village mainstay takes a back seat to the scene. The fashion and media elite regularly feast on a lineup of pastas and Tuscan staples like an oddly flavorless osso buco, all listed on a sanctimonious (“no cheese served on seafood at any time”) menu—groundbreaking when the restaurant opened in a sea of red sauce joints in 1975, but not enough to lure latterday diners away from nearby Morandi. One redeeming dish: The lobster gnocchi features sweet, plump shellfish dispersed among exquisitely doughy dumplings. If weather permits, queue up for a table in the sprawling sidewalk café, still presided over by the restaurant’s ebullient owner, Silvano Marchetto.