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With two Italian restaurants under his belt, John LaFemina was starting to feel constrained. "The more I experimented with different foods," says the Peasant partner and ápizz owner, "the more I got excited about ingredients that weren't, strictly speaking, Italian." So he's opened the Orchard, where, besides agnolotti and cavatelli, there's also whisper-thin flat bread with braised short rib. The self-taught chef also practically built the entire restaurant from scratch. Was he ever a carpenter? "No, just a control freak," he says. — Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld