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Best Takeout Chinese

Dragon Gate

Dragon Gate Chinese Restaurant
So your sizzling Latin mate is in the mood for a spicy dinner, the couple on the couch across from you are vegetarians, and your visiting sister and brother-in-law won't try anything they haven't eaten a thousand times before. Give Dragon Gate a call and order piquant beef in garlic sauce and Szechuan soft-shell crabs for your better half, vegetable egg foo young and fried tofu with red pepper sauce for the noncarnivores, subgum chicken chop suey for the in-laws. Add some hot-and-sour soup, the meatiest of barbecue pork ribs, and moo shoo pork for yourself. The bill will be outrageously affordable, the food fresh and delectable, the guests occupying your living room sated so that hopefully they will merely thank you profusely and leave you alone with your grateful mate. Just pray they don't return an hour later for more.

Best Dim Sum

Toa Toa

Toa Toa Chinese Restaurant
It's a good thing when you go out for authentic ethnic food and the restaurant is packed with families of that ethnicity who are laughing and eating happily together. This is what you should expect when you arrive at Toa Toa, home to a genuine Hong Kong-style dim sum since 1989. Translated as "to touch your heart," dim sum is the Chinese equivalent to 'round-the-clock brunch, just without the mimosas. Toa Toa has a full menu complete with pictures to guide the novice. There is a variety of small plates of appetizers including sticky shrimp dumplings, fried scallop cutlets, a number of different rice pastes, and even marinated chicken feet -- scrawny, bent-pipe-cleaner-shaped things covered with red gelatinous goop. Brave virgins should just close their eyes and point their fingers at the menu, a good way to ensure variety. Top off whatever you land on with a baked custard bun and a pot or two of tea. Toa Toa is inexpensive (from $2.85 for a small dim sum to $6.95 for silver noodles) and tasty too, a bona fide culinary field trip. Even better, you can get dim sum there all day every day but Wednesday.

Best Result of Gentrification

Shizen

Diss the oncoming condo parades if you must, but if saturating downtown with monied, sushi-hungry aristocracy allows more restaurants like Shizen to open, then sunsets be damned. Bring on the noblesse and their concomitant garish high-rises. How else are you going to find a proper rainbow roll ($9) at 1:30 a.m. served in a stylish and chill joint? The servers at this 6-month-old restaurant are gracious, and the owner, Tom Kamioka, sometimes makes the rounds, even quite late, to introduce himself and welcome diners. Consider it fine Japanese dining without snobbery. Heck, after midnight, some morsels are two-for-one. Now who's feeling conspicuously wealthy, eh? Another round of spicy tuna rolls and sake already!

Best Sushi

Sushi n Thai

Sushi N' Thai
At first, it seems that very little about this unassuming, pedestrian, but perennially popular strip-mall eatery is outstanding. The Thai dishes are good if unspectacular, and most of the cooked Japanese fare is just perfectly... adequate. However, the raw fish served at Sushi Thai is unbeatable. No fancy places, no jam-packed out-the-door place, not even your favorite tried-and-true neighborhood standbys can possibly match the simply spectacular off-the-boat freshness of S-T's sushi and sashimi. Artsy presentations, innovative preparations, and obscure oddities are available all over South Florida. Go ahead, knock yourself out at the conveyor-belt place where the sushi travels to you on a plastic boat and the chefs wear silly hats (and the fish tastes like dry cat food). But raw-fish eaters who demand a consistently perfect product will not find better than Sushi Thai. Master Sushi Chef Sevee Mongkolsin is adept at the most crucial aspect of the sushi trade -- selecting the very finest fish available from wholesalers. Years of studying the sashimic arts have proven that the salmon, tuna, yellowtail, and scallop (did we say salmon?) sold here beat the competition fins down. Best times to visit are Monday and Tuesday nights (5 to 10:30 p.m.), when dollar specials on sushi and items like gyoza make it fun to indulge.

Personal Best

John Zieba & Cliff Mulcahy

Ages: 36; 35

Hometown: College Park, Maryland; Weymouth, Massachusetts

Claim to fame: Co-owners of Hamburger Mary's Fort Lauderdale, a premier hangout in Wilton Manors for the gay community.

What they've done for us lately: The restaurant, which opened in 2002, seats 225 but regularly has a wait.

What it takes: "A tremendous amount of teamwork, all different backgrounds and age groups. We have a great mix of gay and straight, old, and young. We both work 60 to 70 hours a week. We try to make a lot of changes. It takes a lot of patience. The most fun thing we've done was a Hamburger Mary look-alike contest... She really is a trashier Dolly Parton... Dolly out of a trailer park."

Best French Fries

Ronnie B's Taste of the '50s Diner

Within the pink walls of this 1950s-style diner, it's not just about the French fries themselves (although those are available in straight-cut or crinkle-cut and get sliced up in the kitchen from fresh potatoes). It's also about what you can get on them. Gravy! Chili! Cheese! Chili and cheese! Cheese and gravy! Prices begin at $2.95 for plain fries and are a bit more with chili and cheese. The waitresses -- costumed in old-fashioned pink dresses -- can also serve you fries in a waffle cut or cut from a sweet potato (those types arrive frozen but get cooked to crispy perfection). The staff also whips up a mean mashed potato, for which there's a secret recipe. So, settle onto a stool at the old-fashioned ice cream counter, put some doo-wop on the jukebox, and hope the buttons don't pop off your poodle skirt as you scarf down fries beneath the omnipresent pictures of Elvis and James Dean. Readers' Choice: McDonald's

Best Barbecue

Georgia Pig

Georgia Pig
C. Stiles
Georgia Pig has been around for more than half a century, which says a lot in restaurant-fickle South Florida. And not much seems to have changed except the jukebox, which now runs on CDs, and the parking lot, which was expanded a few years ago at this always-busy little eatery. The Pig still doesn't accept credit cards, and it retains its '50s-style atmosphere, which relies heavily on what can only be described as retro swine chic: ceramic pigs, carved-wood pigs, plastic pigs, etc. There's still a big heap of oak piled out back, and as you make your way to the restaurant, you can smell the smokiness provided by that wood. You get the picture. But the best thing that hasn't changed is the barbecue that dominates the small menu (in the form of a paper placemat). Sure, you can get breakfast and even burgers, shrimp, Brunswick stew, and daily $5.75 specials. But why would you want to when you can have some of the most succulent Deep South barbecue in South Florida? It comes in almost every imaginable variety: sliced pork and beef platters, spare-rib and chicken combos, even "small fry" portions. The standout, however, is the good, old-fashioned chopped pork (or beef) sandwich, which comes overstuffed with lean, tender meat you can enhance with a house barbecue sauce or hot sauce. There are a dozen or so tables and booths, but treat yourself and sit at the counter, where you can watch as the guy at the pit digs in deep to shuffle big chunks of meat around as they slowly cook, occasionally pulling one out to chop... and chop... and chop. Try not to drool. Readers' Choice: Tom Jenkins Bar-B-Q

Best Hamburger

Jack's Old Fashion Hamburger House

Jack's Old Fashion Hamburger House
Chelsea Scholler
This place, Jughead's idea of heaven, is so good that you'll overlook the missing "ed" after "fashion" in its name. The atmosphere is starker than Ellsworth Kelly's tomb. Sink your teeth into a half pound's worth of ground-fresh-daily-from-whole-briskets-of-USDA-inspected-beef burgers. Why not? They're individually pattied on the premises, grilled to order, and traditionally seasoned. Then they're stuck between buns large enough to soak up some of the drippings but small enough that you don't feel like you've put your mouth around Hawaii. Jack's offers no nostalgia besides what you'll find in the get-real menu, which is happily bereft of fad-burgers and silly dressings. This place offers homemade relishes and keeps the prices regular ($3 to $4 for burgers) and stays focused on the beef (though a few sandwiches and hot dogs are offered). Cute capper: You can get a Cherry Coke here. Now, what about a Green River? Readers' Choice: Cheeburger Cheeburger

Best Hot Dog

Costco Wholesale Inc.

Yes, there's a lot of local competition in this category -- from specialty spots to chains that play with your memories of ballpark dogs of yore. But forget those ghosts of ballpark 'furters past -- and the circle-of-hell crowds in the parking lot. Right here, right now, you can have it all -- if all means a mouthful of a quarter-pound, plump, steaming beef-a-plenty kosher dog that is juicier than the young Sophia Loren in a peasant blouse. And -- natch -- it's cheaper than the competition: $1.59 for a dog, a 20-ounce drink, and your choice of trimmings, including mustard, deli mustard, onions, sauerkraut, and ketchup. You don't even need to be a Costco member to sit down at one of the tables and chow down. Sound implausible? Believe Millie Goldstein of Davie, who sat next to us on our last visit. Says Millie: "Dad was from Coney Island. He knew from hot dogs and said these were the best." Go know.

Best Coffeehouse

Java Boys

Java Boys Coffee House
Chris Bellus
Hiyeee! And, like, so totally welcome to the 8-month-old baby bean, Java Boys in Wilton Manors. Oh my God, like, what should you get? The regular coffee ($1.50 to $1.90) is supposed to be pretty killer -- not like that corporate diarrhea, eww -- but bore your taste buds to death! Come on, so at least get a frothy latte ($2.50 to $3) or one of their iced lattes and mochas ($2.75 to $3.25). Seriously, speak truth: Do you feel the munch? Break that starvation diet for, like, ten seconds and take a bite of this carrot cake ($3.95). Fine, go get your own crème brulée cheesecake ($4.25). You know you're just going up there to flirt with (owners) Ly and Steve. OK, OK, just kidding. But tell them about your pink faux fur handcuffs, 'cause precoffee-shop leisure life, they were both law enforcement studs. Such a major turn-on. Faux fur, tell them. Dare you. OK, meet you on the plush couches, where we can watch videos of Kylie Minogue sunbathing and Madonna and Britney almost making out until superlate (midnight on weekdays and 1 a.m. on Friday and Saturdays) when they throw us out with their big, muscular arms. Readers' Choice: Starbucks

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