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• Personal Best
  Chef Jean-Pierre
  Jean-Pierre Brehier's mother was a Cordon Bleu chef, so by the time he was five years old, the French-born chef/cooking school maestro could make a cake from scratch. At 12 he began his professional career, first learning to trim zee lambchops in a butcher shop, then braiding dough in a bread... More >>
• Best Hamburger
  Prime 707
  We remained stoic through the mad cow scare. We refused to buckle to e. coli hysteria, and we snickered through Super Size Me. We'd never turn our back on the hamburger, our comfort food through many a dark night of the soul. But when the $100 burger arrived in South Florida (at the Boca Raton... More >>
• Best Hot Dog
  Michael's Chicago-Style Red Hots
  The downtown lunch crowd packs the tiny parking lot on weekday afternoons like a parched pack of bison at a watering hole, randomly wedging their oversized SUVs between yellow lines and racing in to place orders. A few Windy City-themed hot dog joints flourish in Florida, but Michael's is the... More >>
• Best Pizza
  Coal Mine Pizza
  The South Florida pizza wars are hereby declared officially over, and to the victor — chef/owner Demetrio "Big Dog" Zavala — go the spoils. Kudos are due any tomato pie emporium that not only fires up a coal oven every day (you really can't get those charred bubbles in your crust... More >>
• Best Pizza by the Slice
  Johnny's New York Pizza
  Sometimes you just need a piece of pizza. Not a deep dish Sicilian or something coal-fired with broccoli rabe. Just a good, old-fashioned, thin-crust New York-style slice. In such times of need, there's Johnny's, where $2.25 gets you a plain wedge of heaven and 50 cents more sweetens the deal... More >>
• Best Organic Pizza
  Pizza Fusion
  Started in 2006 by two Fort Lauderdale school buddies, Vaughn Lazar and Michael Gordon, Pizza Fusion opened in Deerfield purveying organic pizza. But the guys pushed their concept right to the cutting edge: delivering those organic pizzas in Prius hybrids, powering their website with wind,... More >>
• Best Fried Chicken
  Fran's Chicken Haven
  Trying to tell the difference between one fried chicken or another is as tough as trying to tell one live chicken from another. Can you really discern if your leg came from Publix or KFC? At Fran's, the difference is noticeable and tasteable. Fran's opened in 1964 in a depressing Boca Raton... More >>
• Best Sub
  La Porta Via Pasta Deli
  First, let's define our terms. What, exactly, is a sub? Does it resemble a hoagie, a hero, an Italian sandwich? And is the phrase meatball sub, for example, a contradiction in terms? The submarine sandwich has generated many a lively and plausible origin story in dozens of American cities, so... More >>
• Best Cuban Sandwich
  Crazy Cuban
  There are half a million Cubans in South Florida and something like four decent Cuban restaurants. OK, maybe five. Evidently, the ex-pats have far better things to do than to open cafés where everything on the menu costs less than $15 — like manage gargantuan sugar farms, run for... More >>
• Best Philly Cheese Steak
  Big Al's Steaks
  Everyone knows necessity is the mother of invention. It's also the mother of Big Al's Steaks, a recently opened Philly cheese-steak joint that gives a damned good reason to visit otherwise lame Coconut Creek. Big Al Costillo and his son Adam migrated from Philly to South Florida expecting to... More >>
• Best Sandwiches
  My Market
  If aliens invade our planet tomorrow, the odds of our having anything they haven't already thought of are slim-to-none. Our one saving grace, ace in the hole, and lone olive branch to extend might be the sandwich. Because, when properly executed, the perfect sandwich represents centuries of... More >>
• Best French Fries
  Lake Worth Rum Shack
  French fries are like air: all around you and important as hell but never given a second thought. Most eateries just open the bag of freezer-burned potato lumps and dump them in the fryer. But not the Rum Shack. This indoor tiki bar (with a real thatched roof) offers big, wedge-cut fries... More >>
• Best Guacamole
  Anita's Guacamole
  You probably thought we'd pick one of those fancy Mexican restaurants with tableside guacamole engineers. Nope. Have you seen the price tag on that shiiiiiit? Like $10 plus tax plus tip for a bowl that's gone before the Sangria even arrives. For guac that's just as fresh and delicious, why not... More >>
• Best Milkshake
  Banana Batido at the Tropical Cafe
  Does a milkshake have to contain ice cream? Not always. Cuban batidos are beyond sweet (that's what you get from a country running on sugar cane) and invariably swing on a fulcrum of tropical fruit. At the Tropical Cafe, they serve tamarind, mamey, mango, papaya, cherimoya, guanabana (or... More >>
• Best Ice Cream Parlor
  Dairy Belle Ice Cream
  It's not common to find stellar ice cream in places that specialize in gravy and cheese curd, but after spending a few minutes at Dairy Belle Ice Cream, you'll quickly realize there's nothing common about this establishment at all. Friendly owners Gilles and Ritane Grenier are famous for serving... More >>
• Best Gelato
  Sonny's Gelato Café
  We'll be honest. We went for the gelato but stayed for the accordion player, and when that beautiful septuagenarian belted "That's Amore," we had to wipe a tear from the corner of our eye. On Wednesday nights at Sonny's Gelato Café in Boca Raton, you too can be serenaded while relaxing... More >>
• Best Cold Treat on a Summer Day
  Birthday Cake Gelati Richie's Gourmet Italian Ices
  If you haven't visited the little ice hut on the southwest corner of Dixie and Commercial, you must be a moron. We are serious about this. How fucking stupid do you have to be to miss out on the birthday cake gelati — a combination of ice cream and yellow cake-flavored Italian ice, complete... More >>
• Best Crepe
  Rendez-Vous Bakery & Bistro
  There aren't many crepes on the menu at Rendez-Vous, because it's not a creperie. If you were to chat up a chef, he'd probably wax poetic about the place's desserts and breads, because Rendez-Vous is, in fact, a bakery. No matter: The place's four crepe offerings will inspire flowery... More >>
• Best Key Lime Pie
  Le Tub
  In South Florida, few things are taken seriously. Even most hurricane rations are turned into sensible dinners after enough uneventful months slip by. But true Sunshine Staters will go toe-to-toe with any Yankee scoundrel who's trying to pass off store-bought key lime pie as homemade. In fact,... More >>
• Best Cookie
  Oatmeal Raisin Cookies at Charcuterie Too
  Cookies are like magic. A mom was the first one to discover that; she realized that any child could easily be turned into an indentured servant so long as she kept enough of the crumbly, homemade bargaining chips on hand. Now fast-forward into adulthood — that feeling of reward has been... More >>
• Best Coffee
  Stork's Café and Bakery
  Opened by former Wilton Manors Mayor Jim Stork, the elder of these two independently owned coffee shops is a place of simple but deep charm: A bright and clean interior, a spacious outdoor seating area insulated from the traffic on Wilton Drive by high hedges, a crowd of familiar Manors folk who... More >>
• Best Bagels
  Sara's Kosher Restaurant
  It's small and nestled in a strip mall just off Stirling Road, yet you can't help but feel like the Empire State Building might just be a few blocks away when you're inside Sara's. Maybe that's because, like so much that's good in South Florida, Sara's began in one of the five boroughs in 1966.... More >>
• Best Bread
  Paul
  The Paul bakery chain — which began in Lille, France, in 1889 and has since morphed into a yeasty empire that spans the globe (think Starbucks with Camembert sandwiches) — decided to test U.S. waters by sailing into Miami (2005) and Palm Beach Gardens (2006), with plans to open at... More >>
• Best Chinese Takeout
  Christina Wan's Mandarin House
  The Wan family has been serving wok creations to South Florida since 1966. Its takeout service leans upscale — with prices to match — but placing an order is a breeze, and delivery is fast. Lunch specials (starting at $7.95) come with a vegetable spring roll rather than the... More >>
• Best Raw Bar
  Southport Raw Bar
  Southport is probably the most rustic locale in South Florida to sport free wi-fi, but nobody cares: A computer would only serve to distract you from the eye-popping menu served by Jack, Pat, and Buddy — a marvel of freshness, generosity, and kinky economics. Raw-barring folks will want to... More >>
• Best Beachside Breakfast
  Latitudes Ocean Grill
  It should be a crime to draw attention to such a serene spot, but were gonna do it. The Atlantic Coast line just north of Boca Raton has an odd mix of condo villages, luxury beachfront homes, and public parks with seemingly no beachfront commerce in sight. But hidden behind the Holiday Inn in... More >>
• Best Meal for Cheapskates
  Bucky's Grill
  Bucky's doesn't purvey the cheapest eats in the county, but the ratio of pennies out to pounds of pork in is a fine one. Were Bucky's take-out window a slot machine, any gambler who moseyed up would be an instant winner — at least between 4:30 and 10:30 p.m. A Texas beef brisket sandwich,... More >>
• Best Reason to Renounce Vegetarianism
  Gol! The Taste of Brazil
  Being a vegetarian is so, well, 2005, isn't it? Your prissy, eco-friendly diet has lost a bit of its luster in the past year or so — what with the poisoned spinach, tainted onions, and deadly peanut butter. Isn't it time you started rockin' with the rest of us? The party's in full swing at... More >>
• Best Fresh Seafood
  Pop's Fish Market
  South Florida's fish markets can't compete with Seattle's Pike Place or San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, but they can be just as inviting. Inside the Cape Cod-style building known as Pop's, the friendly folks behind the counter aren't showmen, but they are more than willing to help you find... More >>
• Best Asian Market
  Phuong Nam Market
  The foods of Asia are as varied as the languages spoken among Asians themselves, and when it comes to culinary delights, the best local markets are often bona fide ethnic enclaves that cater to specific cultures and nationalities. At Phuong Nam, a Vietnamese-owned market in Plantation, all... More >>
• Best Farmers' Market in Broward County
  Festival Marketplace
  The quest for a bona fide New York pickle will take connoisseurs to the Festival Marketplace, but that's not all they'll find in the 30,000-square-foot farmers' market. Bins overflow with fresh artichokes and asparagus. Apples and bananas look freshly picked, their colors brighter even than they... More >>
• Best Farmers' Market in Palm Beach County
  The Boys
  If you can navigate the crush inside these tiny aisles — where cans of Italian tomatoes and olive oil from Sicily and red wine vinegar are balanced acrobat-style, ascending to the ceiling — and if you can get past the cheese counter — with its hundreds of pounds of brie and... More >>
• Best Butcher
  La Reina Carniceria
  Midmorning on Sundays, you'll find them in clean uniforms (white shirts, red aprons, green hats) brandishing cleavers and shears over hard surfaces — a universe composed of sharp, shining edges and vulnerable flesh. They're the dozen or so men and women of La Reina Carniceria, and they're... More >>
• Best Winetastings
  WineStyles Various South Florida locations
  Let's be honest here. Winetastings are not really about tasting wine. They're about getting wasted. In that spirit, New Times would like to take this opportunity to announce a new holiday. It's a sort of Halloween for adults, a little something we like to call Hallowine. We'd like to thank... More >>
• Best Chocolate Shop
  Chocolada Bakery & Cafe
  Until recently, like the common cold, there was little hope of discovering a cure for "Insufram Chocaladus," known more generally by its street name, "The Sweet Tooth." The infliction is often diagnosed through a bevy of accompanying symptoms: excessive drooling when olfaction detects sugary... More >>
• Best Candy Store
  To the Moon
  It's midnight, you're half-drunk, and your similarly half-drunk friends have decided they absolutely must have some dark chocolate with wasabi right now. For such half-drunk people, there's To the Moon. Its exhaustive array of gourmet chocolate bars, oddities (the original Dentyne! Skybars! Valo... More >>