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Super-niche single-item restaurants are nothing new in these parts, but the Best Chocolate Cake in the World just might take the award for sheer chutzpah in naming. This tiny Nolita storefront is the first American outlet of a São Paolo, Brazil-based mini-chain (where it goes by the similarly direct name O Melhor Bolo de Chocolate de Mundo); chef Carlos Bras Lopes's hopes his cake recipe, which he brought to Brazil after emigrating from Portugal, will enrapture New Yorkers just as much as it has South Americans.

Bras's "best chocolate cake in the world" is actually three cakes of varying sweetness: a sugary cake made with 53 percent cocoa, a semisweet made with 70 percent, and — for those adventurous of palate — a bitter, zero-sugar version that's touted as being lower in calories. All are variations on a meringue-esque recipe made without flour or baking powder, leading some complaints that it's not true chocolate cake of the ooey-gooey variety. In Brazil, you can get your slice of cake with a glass of port; at the American iteration wash it down with Counter Culture coffee and cold treats from Il Laboratorio del Gelato. — Helen Rosner