Best Steakhouse

Hugue Dufour and wife Sarah Obraitis have a knack for creating urban oases, first with their ambitious diner (which ultimately succumbed to a rent increase) and then with M. Wells Dinette inside cultural center MOMA P.S.1. Their latest, a steakhouse built into the industrial husk of a former auto-body shop, is a rollicking good time that channels the “excess” theme of most beef palaces and doubles down with tanks of live trout, pickled-tongue cocktails, and characteristically colossal desserts. The renovated mechanic’s lair also houses a catamaran-building operation, and the duo plans to host meals at sea. Meanwhile, the wood-fired steaks at M. Wells Steakhouse bear enviable char and buttery centers with that familiar, beguiling Montreal-style black pepperiness. Few cities could support a restaurant this idiosyncratic; thank your favorite higher power ours does.