Sportello

It's a puzzle, how Barbara Lynch can manage to launch four restaurants, a bar, and two retail operations, all in different genres, while preserving the quality and essential Lynchness of each. And so we come to her most casual spot, Sportello, a minimalist midprice Italian diner—only here, the line cooks sling hiramasa crudo, chicken with dates and pine nuts, and mustard leaf agnolotti. It's a testament to the power of the gnocchi alone that the place is bouncing, despite the surrounding Fort Point Channel neighborhood's still-delayed gentrification. No other startup exhibited so much polish out of the gate, or such a pitch-perfect sense of the way we're eating now. RUNNERS-UP: Bina Osteria, Sensing LAST YEAR: L'Andana