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Best Cuban Restaurant

The Black Beans Café

If you're an epicure, you probably yen for that yuppie Cuban cuisine, maduro soufflés and the like. We hate that stuff. What we like is Black Beans. What we like is Felix Pereira, who arrived from the island in 1956 and has run restaurants virtually since the first day. What we like is lamb stew with savory raisins, succulent pork roast, and enormous, whole, fried snapper that comes with the head on. What we really like is the prices at this nondescript but scrupulously clean joint of 14 tables that opened the day after Christmas in 1993. At lunch, there's almost nothing that costs more than six dollars. Breakfast is similarly cheap. Two eggs, toast, and potatoes go for $1.55. Dinner's cheap too. Pereira, you see, followed the path of others in Broward County's community of exiles from el exilio. He and his wife, Herenia, spent almost three decades running a small restaurant in Miami, bought a bigger one in North Miami, then moved even further north to Hollywood "because Miami was getting really bad, and Hollywood is a nice, small town." This guy is dedicated. He raised his three kids in his restaurants and still works at Black Beans seven days a week from 8:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. He's 72 years old, so he needs a little more sleep than he used to -- and there's an air-conditioned room in the back. But he expects to be serving up moros, batidos, and tres leches for a very long time. So, hey, stop in, sip a cortadito, and tell him how you like real food cooked by a real macho!

Best Kosher Restaurant

Eilat Cafe

If your idea of kosher consists of that deli down the street or food made by Hebrew National, it's time to try the upscale cuisine at Eilat Cafe, which calls itself the best kosher restaurant in the country. The Boca Raton eatery has an eclectic menu spiced with Middle Eastern dishes including baba ghanouj and Turkish salad but also features a range from Oriental stir-fry to Cajun linguine. Best of all, the rabbi's blessing won't cost you 10 percent of your salary. Most lunch items are under $10. At dinner, pasta dishes are less than $15, and the seafood dishes, all below $20, include medallions of salmon and dolphin in a spicy banana rum sauce.

Best Neighborhood Restaurant in Palm Beach

Ambrosia Restaurant

If you don't live near Ambrosia, it might be time to move, because this Italian pizza joint doesn't deliver outside of about a mile radius. It's not that the 26-year-old restaurant is snobby. Its spot south of downtown West Palm Beach used to be in a pretty ratty neighborhood before yuppies started rehabbing houses in Flamingo Park and El Cid. It's just that Ambrosia's business is good enough to make customers come to it. The novel-length menu has all the Italian standards, plus some signature items like the spicy chicken fra diavolo in a tomato basil sauce. With dim lights and old wood tables, the décor is somewhat GoodFellas-esque, which goes with the restaurant's slogan, "Where you're only a stranger once." And the pizza is anchored by a stuffed 14-incher with a buttery crust across the top. It puts the pie back into pizza.

Best Restaurant to Die in the Past Year

Burt & Jack's

Last year, this treasured restaurant took two Readers' Choice categories -- Best Restaurant in Broward and Best Restaurant When Someone Else Is Paying. This year, the venerable spot became a victim of unsettled times. Citing heightened security that kept diners from easily accessing Port Everglades -- a direct response to terrorist actions and threats around the world -- the owners decided to disband the 18-year-old establishment. The last supper was served in June, and as the eatery's been gone-and-departed for almost a year now, no doubt this will be its last tribute.

Best German Restaurant

Old Heidelberg

Candace West
With so many Europeans living, breeding, and cooking in our midst, South Florida eaters expect ethnic authenticity at our ethnic restaurants. In this regard, Old Heidelberg exceeds on every front. From the voice and smile of the hausfrau hostess, the spaetzle that tickles going down, frost-rimmed glasses of Tucher Weissbier or Diebels Alt, to the dark pine and leather interior, Old Heidelberg's old-country charm is far from forced. The owners' names are Dieter and Heidi, for crying out loud. Almost every night, Ingo Froehlich transforms the accordion from the second-most-hated instrument into an oompah-pah sine qua non. Bavarian comfort food is succulent and sizably portioned, so this means you'll leave completely stuffed, possibly from the pork tenderloin with a crisp layer of fat just as crunchy as a chicharron. Maybe from roast suckling pig or the bratwurst platter. Maybe from that final, ill-advised bit of Black Forest cake. But at least your indigestion will be well-earned.

Best Vietnamese Restaurant

Pho Nam Do

Judging by the dearth of Vietnamese restaurants in these parts, it seems that South Florida hasn't been the first choice for emigrants from that Southeast Asian nation. At the very least, that's a culinary pity. Maybe it's the French influence, but Viet cuisine is a refreshing, light affair compared to, say, its Thai cousin, which usually comes slathered with rich sauces and big hunks o' meat. Take, for instance, Pho Nam's house specialty, the Vietnamese pancake: a thin, crispy crepe stuffed with onion, yellow beans, bean sprouts, and finely minced bits of shrimp and pork. At $7.50, it's about the most expensive thing on a menu of meals that average about $6. The spicy beef salad, a $7 specialty that won't leave you feeling bogged down after dinner, is made of thinly sliced beef, tomato, cucumber, basil, and ground peanuts over lettuce. You won't find fancy décor at Pho Nam, which lies just south of Commercial Boulevard, but you will see a steady stream of Vietnamese customers.

Best Indian Restaurant

The Palace

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Aptly named, indeed. You don't have to dress like royalty or haul around bodyguards, but the kingly fare will make you feel as if you've got the right to consider hiring some robes and rogues. Or at least a personal trainer. Along with standard chutneys, pakoras, and naan, you can feast on zesty crab masala, creamy butter chicken, and tandoori salad, a combo of onions, peppers, and mushrooms marinated in rock salt and vinegar and then roasted. Among the pleasant elements here include a nicely appointed dining room, bistro-chic and contemporary; a decent list of wines and beers; and a party room where princes and princesses of all ethnicities can get their ghee on.

Best Service in a Restaurant

Galanga Thai Kitchen and Sushi Bar

Photo courtesy of Thai Me Up.
Given the crowd you're likely to see gathered around the entrance of Galanga on any given night, you might not expect much attentiveness once seated. But the energized waitstaff at this stylish establishment seems to thrive on its patrons' food lust. They bob and weave about the tables -- and around one another -- at a healthy gait. Like Siamese royalty, you'll likely have two or more servers waiting on you during any given meal and another troupe of young men whisking away dirty dishes with military precision. The service bonus: a tiki bar outside the front entrance that makes any wait for a table a bit more palatable.

Best Restaurant for a Power Lunch

Mancini's

Tabatha Mudra
Mancini's has a voguish-looking interior with a huge, bristling chandelier, like a cluster of giant pods. But it's on the broad sidewalk outside, where the restaurant has staked out an impressive chunk of Las Olas Boulevard with a couple of dozen linen-swathed tables, that you'll see the deals being made. All the usual suspects are there, the same folks who used to frequent Mark's on Las Olas (which has decided not to serve lunch during the off-season): politicians, developers, well-heeled tourists, the yacht crowd, and the occasional celebrity. The ambiance has a certain European feel to it, including the service, which is, oh, a half-step slower than that in some of the clattering establishments a block or two farther south. (I mean, are you here to suck down food or to eat?) For their epicurean indulgence, patrons get savory, steamy food with all the requisite olive oil and garlic. A caesar salad goes for $7, a tasty linguine alle vongole, $14, a slice of fresh grilled salmon adorned with greens, $16. Good and somehow entrepreneurially satisfying. As the waiter serves the cappuccinos, that condo tower project you've been talking about with the guy across the table should really start coming into focus.

Best Spanish Restaurant

La Barraca

The focus on Spanish food these days seems to be all about the avant-garde gelatins and foams with which the young chefs, many from the Basque region, are playing. Imagination has its place, but so does tradition, which is why we're grateful to chef-proprietor Jorge Luis Fernandez. Where other Spanish chefs are taking paella and putting it in the blender, Fernandez is serving the rice dish as it should be, though he is hardly ignorant of progress and process -- the vegetarian paella, for example, is made up of organic roots and vegetables with the rice and saffron. Fernandez has as firm a handle on international flavors as he does on his classic mustache. Thus, you can get anything from Australian lamb chops to French cuts of meat. But keep in mind that the tapas, including sautéed cuttlefish or pickled white anchovies, are generally so good that it's all too easy to fill up on the first wave.

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