First Taste

Press critic Katharine Shilcutt tries lunch at downtown patio hotspot Batanga and likes it quite a bit. "At Batanga, there's a marriage of dishes such as co-owner Maya Fasthoff's family recipe for empanadas -- which she says, as a perfectionist, is 98 percent of the way there after months of tweaking -- and executive chef Ben McPherson's juicy duck confit in a sweet, dusky-colored sour cherry mole atop pert arepas." [Eating Our Words]