Marie's

In a dining scene with constant new openings, it’s easy to resort to gimmicks to get people through the door. At Marie’s in Bushwick, it’s a chopped cheese raviolo, a phones-eat-first dish that eclipses the fact that they’re mostly serving regular, serviceable enough Italian food. Don’t fall for it—the raviolo has a thin cheese sauce and tastes like an ill-advised Kraft product. Instead, go for the standard pastas (we like the spicy vodka rigatoni), and the 100-layer eggplant parm. There’s a shiny bar, spacious back dining room, and enough raviolo buzz to fill the place up, so it is a fun place to meet neighborhood friends for pasta and wine.

photo credit: Maxwell Brown