by John Mariani

Tweaking is as important to a serious new restaurant as tuning is to a violin. So, after an opening two years, Costata is now a better restaurant for the changes that have been made to the three-story premises, which include better lighting, more colorful artwork, and a far more affable service staff.

Costata is very much in the tradition of the New York Italian Steakhouse, a genre pioneered in 1926 at the first Palm (now undergoing a "major facelift"), whose raffish atmosphere, barebones look, and menu of steaks, lobsters, tomato salad, a few pastas, and cheesecake defined the idea, replicated at its nearby competitors Christ Cella, Colombo's, Pietro's, Joe & Rose's, and Bruno's Pen & Pencil. That template is still in effect on scores of contemporary steakhouses, although these days new entries tend to be far more swank, and Costata falls into that category.

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