Featured in Restaurant Guide 2009

Perhaps 20 years spent in Genoa’s shotgun kitchen left Cathy Whims with a crippling case of claustrophobia; how else can we explain the staggering enormousness of Nostrana? The restaurant, which Whims co-founded in 2006, resembles a homey aircraft hangar. Dozens of small tables sprawl across the barnyard-kitsch dining room (a tree grows near the two-story bar, which is home to several taxidermied chickens), and the kitchen seems to go on without end. If the space is a little too Old Spaghetti Factory for your taste, grab a seat on the garden patio—it’s lovely. The food is farmhouse Italian: pizza, pasta, salads and a handful of meat and fish, much of it cooked in the restaurant’s enormous wood-fired oven. It’s great, modest fare with modest prices, prepared to Whims’ exacting standards of freshness, worth tolerating the crowds and occasional service snafus for.
Order this: Whims makes gnocchi on Thursdays, and it is divine: sweet, viscous pillows that melt on the tongue.
Best deal: Pizzas, made in the same style if not quite to the same standard as Ken’s, are quite large for one, and start at $9 for a marinara.
I’ll pass: The butterscotch budino, a layered cup of caramel, custard and whipped cream, is too much fat for one man, or two. You’d better share it.