The Bib Day 1: Choire Sicha on M. Wells vs. Fatty Cue

The Bib is here! food52 and Eater's first ever restaurant competition, where notable New Yorkers whittle down a list of New York's best new restaurants, launches today with our first face off. Every day during the Bib, one of 15 chosen judges will explain why one restaurant, narrowed down from a giant list of '09 and '10 openings by our Bib Panel, defeated the other in a comparative tasting. And to start things off Choire Sicha, co-editor and founder of news/humor/politics/everything in between site The Awl, reveals his thoughts on two dinners at outer borough hipster hotspots M. Wells in Long Island City and Fatty 'Cue in Williamsburg.

From Choire's review:

Fatty 'Cue and M. Wells have in common, for one thing, that they have sensible, start-up-friendly ideas about real estate. Fatty 'Cue is essentially under the Williamsburg Bridge, in a strange three-level storefront with a bottleneck from the front room to the back rooms. M. Wells is at the second stop on the 7 train as you go into Queens, in the diner-style former home of the Hunter's Point Cafeteria & Restaurant. You try to get your non-G-train-adjacent friends to go there, I can't....They also have an impressively non-troubling and non-offensive interest in "the ethnic." And they both have a strong interest in pleasure. They want to delight you, like a girl band assembled by Prince.

But only one will come out victorious. The Decision.>>