I like the little bowl of sweet ricotta cheese served gratis to all the rowdy food scholars at Peasant on Elizabeth Street, and I'm also partial to the brick-oven-baked rabbit, stewed in cannellini beans with salty strips of pancetta, and the perfectly oval pizza bianca pooled with olive oil. A chaste bowl of gran farro soup (made with a sweet leavening of squash) was the best thing I ate at Beppe, in the Flatiron district, although my other fatso friends couldn't keep their hands off chef Cesare Casella's aggressively rustic Tuscan ribs (pork ribs braised in tomatoes and rosemary) and the pleasingly greasy lemon fried chicken, served fritto misto-style over a mound of fried green tomatoes.

Margherita Aloi, formerly of Le Madri, offers a more decorous take on Tuscan cuisine at the newly opened Arezzo, in Chelsea: creamy broccoli-flavored cavatelli with crumblings of sausage, little cones of fritto misto wrapped like popcorn in a twirl of paper, and salty slices of Tuscan steak, strewn with bits of crinkled dandelion and herb-covered Tuscan fries.

For pure strangeness, Pino Luongo's new Upper East Side establishment, Centolire, has a see-through elevator to transport diners all the way to the second floor, plus a curiously edible dessert composed of chocolate mousse bound in strips of caramelized eggplant. For a less radical form of sweetness, follow the Italian purists across the river to Al Di Là, in Park Slope, where, after an invariably satisfying dinner, you'll find glasses of the gooey Venetian ice-cream dessert called gianduiotto and fresh baked ricotta tarts flecked with orange and lemon zest.

For comforting pasta, I like the spinach-and-ricotta ravioli at Baldoria, the lasagna della nonna at Campagna, and the lemon spaghettini at Sandro's, laced with a confectioner's touch of cream and pecorino cheese. For everything else (chewy bucatini alla amatriciana, plump ricotta gnocchi with sausage and fennel), there's Lupa — at lunchtime, of course, before the dinnertime hordes elbow in.