Food & Drink

You know when you’re in high school and you’re taking a quiz and the teacher has put three really simple questions at the beginning so that even the dumbest kid gets some points? That’s how we feel about this category. It’s like… duh. Where else would you find the best burger? Although we’re partial to Mary’s modest offerings like the avocado burger or the Big Kahuna (pineapple, teriyaki, sautéed onions, Jack cheese), this place also serves up “Buffy the Hamburger Slayer” (marinated in red wine and caramelized garlic and topped with Swiss cheese), the Queen Mary (cheddar, grilled onions, bacon), and the QM2, which is a Queen Mary with “a split of hoity-toity French champagne and a mint for your pillow… but you have to tuck yourself in!” as the menu puts it. Mary’s uses only certified Angus beef, and only the top 8 percent of all beef qualifies. It’s never frozen, and you can order medium-rare. You can also sub out the meat for a turkey burger or Gardenburger. When you get your check, it comes in a high-heeled shoe, and best of all, the fine-lookin’ wait staff will sweet-talk you throughout the meal. When you’re sitting at the bar or on the patio of Mary’s, you just somehow feel better. So whenever you need a quick pick-me-up, you have a choice: Drugs? Therapy? Or Mary’s? The answer is easy, friends.

“This is spicy,” the waitress says, indicating the swarthier of the two bowls of salsa she places on a booth table along with a basket of unsalted corn chips. First, then, the milder salsa. It’s a cool mash of tomatoes and onions, with a distinct but not overpowering blast of cilantro along for the ride. Something else too — maybe basil stirred into the sex-red condiment. The second salsa is earthier in color, with visible jalapeno slices and seeds scattered within. It has a curious sweetness that tingles on the tip of the tongue before giving way to a rush of heat that dashes back in the mouth and up the sinuses like sparks up a chimney. Before the stomach fills with these sauces, the lunch special arrives. It’s a $6 chicken burrito surrounded by beans and rice and contains nothing more than chicken meat. The only flavoring agent in sight is the orange cheese piled on and around it. Luckily, an ordinary fork stands ready to act as a ladle. Salsas to the rescue!

No one should ever feel guilty about eating dessert. What’s the point of ordering a hot fudge sundae if you’re worried what’ll happen to your waist? So if you want to pile on the cookie crumbs and caramel without worry, you’d better skip Baskin-Robbins and head over to Nonna’s Café for some of its fresh-made gelato. Yeah, that’s right — fresh-made, as in churned out on a daily basis, not stored in a freezer. Ditto for the fresh fruit that goes into (or on top of) all that creamy goodness. Nonna’s 36 flavors range from strawberry, mango, and passion fruit to the really desserty stuff like peanut butter cup. The four sizes of cups ($2.95 to $5.65) and three sizes of cones ($1.85 to $5.10) are good for straight-up, topping-free helpings. But for $6.95, you can get one of the three combination dishes: Passion (three fruit flavors topped with fresh fruit and fruit toppings), Paradise (three milk flavors with cookies, coffee, or caramel toppings), or Amore (a Passion-Paradise hybrid). Afterward, you can ruminate on the age-old philosophical debate: tastes great or less filling?

At the risk of repeating ourselves, have you been to Jaxson’s? Like about 20 million times since it opened 50 years ago? As a toddler, as a teen, as a dad, as a grandpa, and now as a great granpadoodle? Such is the life cycle of South Florida Man: centered around visits to the oldest, most authentic, and still the greatest homemade, hand-batched ice cream parlor on this sun-blasted peninsula, where, God knows, we need 80 flavors of ice cream! To say nothing of several tons of antique memorabilia and license plates! Most of us can chart the major transitions of our existence by the way our favorite frozen dessert has changed over the years. At 2, we were mashing our mugs into the Jr. Sampler (three scoops, whipped cream, and a cherry); in youth, we spooned up banana fudge sundaes with the only girl we’d ever love; returning with our own tots in tow, we were ready for — in fact, we required for our mental health — the whole Kitchen Sink; now old age has sharpened our palate so we finally appreciate a good peach melba goblet. We look forward to moving on to a Chocolate Suicide (chocolate ice cream, brownie, fudge, chocolate chips) in our waning years — what a way to go! Our eyesight may fade, our wallets may grow thin, but Jaxson’s never changes. Octogenarian owner Monroe Udell’s still churning out the sweetest deal in town.

The problem with your raw food diet is that you have to eat many pounds of shredded carrots and arugula patties per day to meet your caloric needs. You find yourself pretty much giving up your hobbies, your social life, your volunteer work, so you can spend the bulk of your time foraging for tubers and poring over the instruction manual on your state-of-the-art nut grinder. You begin to wonder if perhaps life might be passing you by. Meanwhile, everybody over at La Granja is having one great big party. There are mountains of Peruvian-style spit-roasted chicken on every table — $12 for a whole bird — tender and scrumptious, fragrant with spices, crisp of skin, and melting of meat. There are also big plates of roast pork (with black beans and plantains) and onion and jalapeño salads and salsas and many different bottles of hot sauce to shake all over everything. There are Latin beers and cheap bottles of wine and fruit shake batidas and many kinds of juices and homemade ice cream and tres leches. People are laughing; they’re fooling around; young couples are making out a little; they’re getting a day’s worth of nutrition in a single meal. And the furthest thing from their thoughts is whether they just got fleeced on the price of that fancy juicer.

If you’ve never had a good black-and-white cookie, you won’t understand why anyone would want to eat one. We’ve all been tempted by the two-tone discs the size of UFOs topped with dark-brown and white icing that call to us from behind the counter at every diner. But what’s to like about a powdery, crumbly dome topped with a tasteless sugar glaze? Family Bakery, an outpost of Jewish Brooklyn and Queens circa 1965, produces a wonderfully moist, spongy marble cake, sweet and toothsome rainbow petits fours, and flaky bearclaws. Snowbirds who haven’t seen a proper corn rye bread in years find it here. And the place has the best black-and-white cookies south of Sheepshead Bay. The icing’s chocolate hemisphere is rich with cocoa, the white hemisphere a creamy vanilla. The big cookie underneath is a little lemony, a little cakey, but firm enough to hold up to a glass of milk. Take a number, take your place at the back of the line, and salivate in anticipation.

Given the ubiquity of the bagel nowadays, the self-esteem of its fellow Polish-Jewish baked goods might be suffering. Though West Boynton’s Bagels & produces a good version of its namesake, let’s get one thing clear: Pletzl! Bialy! We love you too! The bialy is the Jan Brady of Polish-Jewish personal breads, flour-dusted things without holes. When made right, as these are, these flat-bottomed cousins of the bagel have a softer crust where a bagel has crunch and an airy rather than dense inside, but they still manage to be chewy. They’re best heated and slathered with butter. Better still are the pletzls. The brainchild of some bygone bagel baker with a serious case of the munchies, the pletzl, another import from 19th-century Poland, takes the characteristics of the ideal bagel — chewy, crunchy, dense — and amps them up. Covered in toasted garlic, poppy seeds, onion, rock salt, and whatever else, the flattened discs are not sandwich bread. Don’t even try splitting a pletzl open. Tear it apart, or cut it into strips or something. Or go ahead and just gnaw on it.

“Ah, now that’s a bagel! It’s just like New York!” Why is it that every favorable bagel review, whether from a food critic or just the chump next door, has to reference New York? It’s always Manhattan this, Brooklyn that. Try peddling that line at the Boston Bagel Café. Sure, the name says New England, but the café is pure Fort Lauderdale, locally owned and operated; there’s actually not an original location in Boston. The bistro has no shortage of bagel flavors — 21 in total, from the standards (poppy seed, pumpernickel, onion) to the more gourmet varieties (spinach quiche, jalapeno cheddar, wild berry). A single bagel costs 79 cents plain and 85 cents toasted; three-packs cost $2.35; a baker’s dozen (that’s 13, you know) costs $6.99. Of course, plain bagels are no fun — not when cream cheese ($1.88) comes in flavors like honey walnut raisin and Dutch apple cinnamon. Either way, if your order’s more than seven bucks, there’s free delivery. Just think, you could have your newspaper and breakfast delivered to your door. Maybe then you’ll stop thinking of Boston as Beantown.

If you’ve never eaten falafel, you’re missing an entire world. Literally. Falafel, a fried ball of spiced fava beans or chickpeas, is arguably the number-one food in the Middle East, sold everywhere from street vendors to fancy restaurants. Mandoah “Manny” Ebaid, a tireless, friendly, Egyptian-born restaurateur who runs Hollywood’s popular Exotic Bites, provides a menu that highlights the versatility and healthiness of falafel. “This is healthy food that tastes great,” Ebaid explains. “It’s also a way to introduce people to my Egyptian culture.” At Exotic Bites, you can eat falafel as an appetizer with toppings and pita bread ($4.95); as a main course served with hummus, tabouleh, and pita ($7.25); or as a sandwich in a pita wrap with the falafel broken into pieces and mixed with salad and sauce ($5.25). “A lot of people have tried falafel here for the first time, and I will bet that every single one came back a second time,” Ebaid says. Chances are, considering how good the falafel is at Exotic Bites, you will too.

Like drag racers whose extreme speed sustains yet may destroy them, chicken wings live and die by grease. What are wings without it? Scalding orange lipids turn ordinary chicken into one of the great blessings our world has to offer. Yet who among us has not winced upon being served a plate of wings whose drippings could be mistaken for those in his oil pan? The wing should spark, the wing should burn, the wing should sting. The wing, however, should not pop like a boil between your teeth. The wings at Tarpon Bend, on their best days, hit this chord precisely. While they’re not spicy enough to truly warrant the label “hot” (which rightly ought to mean “unpleasant”), they are crisp without oozing grease, fleshy without getting bland. They confer all the joy of spicy, buttery fowl fat without choking you on it. Bonus points for unusually flavorful celery sticks on the side.

Two amazing facts regarding the chicken fried steak served at Lester’s Diner: One, its 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week availability; and two, its sheer size. As long as something as inherently unhealthy as a battered and deep-fried piece of pounded meat is permitted to exist, it only seems right and fair to have it hot and ready for you at 2:30 a.m. after a night of binge-drinking. The voluminous mass of creamy, gravy-draped cow is so large, it handily chases away any uncomforting thoughts, as comfort food is wont to do. That you will also receive a pair of slightly-better-for-you vegetables means little at that point, as your bleary eyes adjust to the fluorescent lights, you settle deep into your Naugahyde booth, and you start devouring the one thing that you know stands between you and an Olympic-sized hangover the next morning.

The legendary 1985 cult film Tampopo searches for the perfect bowl of soup. A contemporary remake could easily find heaven in a bowl of pho at this tiny eatery that’s staffed by a superfriendly, always-smiling family. The liquor-license-less joint serves a few other dishes besides pho, but we haven’t sampled them in years — once we became addicted to Pho Nam Do’s perfectly appointed Vietnamese beef noodle soup, there was no reason to. A few other Vietnamese restaurants specialize in this radical meal-in-itself, popular as a hearty breakfast back home, but none does it better. The hearty beef stock with just a hint of star anise is unbelievably yummy, the flat, chewy noodles are never sticky, and the thin slices of beef (or tripe and tendon if you’re an adventurous sort) are only-just-barely cooked to perfection by the boiling broth. Bean sprouts, culantro, basil leaves, and chili peppers go on top, and then you’re set with the most nourishing bowl of goodness imaginable. Our climate doesn’t always make hot soup a first-thought favorite, but pho fans are everywhere. Hear that slurping sound?

Your temptation, when you enter this teensy shop downtown, will be to order everything on the sprawling palette of ingredients, but try to restrain yourself. Thing is, if you cram banana peppers and cherry peppers and pickles and olives and capers and jalapeños into the same wrap, all you’ll taste is hot tang. Instead, go mild. Start with turkey or chicken or salmon or tuna. Then add sun-dried tomatoes, roasted red peppers, bell peppers, spinach, lettuce, fresh tomatoes, onions, sprouts, artichoke hearts, feta cheese, carrots, avocados. (Last year, the shop began stocking avocados after the owner, who works behind the counter, asked a patron whether his was the best salad ever. The patron hesitated, pondered, and replied that it needed avocado. So now you can get organic avocados on your wrap.) Top it all with a dash of oil and balsamic vinegar, for a bit of squish, and you’re ready to roll. The whole mess will run you eight bucks, chips and a drink included. Save half for dinner in lieu of grocery shopping.

There are a few other victual options in the 1950s time warp that is the Riverland Shopping Center — a Cuban cafeteria and a time-honored greasy spoon, for instance — but Sassano’s always has the perfect cure for midday hunger pangs. It’s not just the superb, thin cracker-crust and home-made sauce at this family-run joint that make it so noteworthy, nor is it the pocket-change price ($1.60 a slice, ingredients only 35 cents more) but its location. Easy to find? Not unless you’re lost and on foot. No bigger than a coat closet, with a painfully cramped kitchen and a counter barely large enough for two stools, Sassano’s sits way back in an odd little cul-de-sac that’s nearly invisible. It houses obscure oddities like a shoe repair shop and a tiny insurance agency. Howling winds get caught up in this weird little alleyway, spiraling and spinning leaves like that scene in American Beauty, beckoning you toward a well-kept secret that’s perfect for that day you want to keep lunch under $5. Just like in the olden days.

Better men than we have come to blows over the definition of good pizza — the question of whether shellfish belongs anywhere near an authentic pie, the composition and thickness of the crust, the shape of the slice, the list of acceptable toppings and the proportions of each, the origin of the species. So unless you want to find yourself nursing a black eye, you might just want to shut up and eat. Still, it’s not impossible that a jury of 12 of our impartial brethren might agree that the thing served at Red Rock — that entity called “Pizza Salsiccia” ($9.50 for a ten-inch, $19.50 for a 16-inch) that comes to the table on a raised metal stand, riddled with airy, blackened bubbles, gritty with semolina, exuding the scent of slow-cooked tomatoes, roasted garlic, and peppery sausages — might conceivably be the real deal. We’re just putting that out there.

You’re not cheap; you’re just smart. And far-seeing. You know how to stretch a nickel till it howls for mercy. Let the grasshopper detonate his wad on some so-called “prime” or “kobe,” along with the $9 sides of creamed spinach and the $15 martinis and crme bržlées. Come winter, that overgrown cricket’ll have his frozen jaws fused together anyway — you can bet he’s not going to be chowing down on steak — he’ll be lucky to be sucking ice water through a straw! While you, my precious, my practical ant, will be crawling in a straight line right to Beef Eater, with all your little buddies, for another plate of $16 skirt steak doused in chimichuri sauce, and maybe a couple of fried eggs on top — a piece of meat easily enough for two meals… and damned delicious too! And that $15 bottle of wine waiting for you on the table — go ahead and open it. Open two, in fact, and keep ’em coming. Nothing goes down with a bottle of red better than a little schadenfreude.

“Give me a pigfoot and a bottle of beer,” blues great Bessie Smith used to sing. Local blues legend Juanita Dixon is after more up-to-date fare. Give her a mixed green salad and a grilled fillet of tilapia. Maybe it doesn’t have the old roadhouse resonance, but it fits the healthful lifestyle Dixon has been pursuing since a doctor told her she was in danger of becoming a full-fledged diabetic. Her medical plight naturally led Dixon, who was born in the Bahamas but grew up in Fort Lauderdale, to Whole Foods on Federal Highway. And sooo glad it did. “You find more of the natural foods there, without the preservative crap in it,” she says. Dixon’s gospel-tinged singing (she learned it all, she says, at Fort Lauderdale’s Mount Herman AME Church, where she has been a member and, off and on, a choir singer since she was a girl) has been a beloved fixture in the South Florida club scene for decades. Nowadays, you can catch her at Sushi Blues in Hollywood and O’Hara’s on Las Olas in Fort Lauderdale, though she makes time every summer for a Northern European tour, where she has a loyal fan base. Ask Dixon what her favorite Whole Foods items are and she expounds on a particular kind of vinegar. “It’s got some herbal something that’s supposed to cleanse the body,” she says. Take that, hamhock eaters.

Shore scores points for getting a very basic premise of dessert: If ever a course deserved the full dog-and-pony show, it’s not the apps and the entrées. When it comes to those early dishes, we’re still ravenous; we couldn’t care less if our escargots are wearing rolled-basil-leaf hats or if the waitron wants to turn our steak poivre into a major conflagration — we just want to eat, man. But by the time we’ve made it to the sweets, let’s have a little showmanship, a touch of the bump and grind, maybe a laugh or two, thank you very much! That plain knob of vanilla ice cream just doesn’t cut it. So you have to appreciate Shore’s panache: You don’t so much eat dessert at Shore as marvel at it, giggle over it, trade pieces of it across the table like edible marbles or party favors. A “Three Ring Circus” ($9) of electric-blue cotton candy, a caramel apple, and a bag of homemade donut holes is a corny carnival; “banana cheesecake lollipops” ($9) arrive swinging like burlesque dancers from a tree decorated with cotton candy fluffs; the “Shake and Cake” ($8) turns that drab old diner pairing into an exotic joke with Tahitian vanilla and a racy Kahlua cupcake. These are desserts to rev your engines. The night is young. And so, for the moment, are you.

Surrounded by the hubbub of Himmarshee Street saloons and Las Olas Riverfront tourist traps, Brew is an oasis of calm and caffeine. Its Seattle-style ambiance and fastidiously prepared drinks have won over the following of a large group of regulars who chat together in half-moon booths, lofty tables, and plush chairs. It’s wi-fi friendly for the bring-your-own types, but several laptops are available for online access for a small fee. Brew’s outstanding drinks, however, are what turn a first-timer into a regular. Coffee this good doesn’t need the assistance of milk or sugar, so you can’t go wrong with the double-shot espresso for $2. Lattes run from $2.95 for a small to $4.45 for large drinks such as a mocha or an Electric Shock, a latte made with espresso, natural vanilla, cinnamon, and caramel glaze. Open Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. and Sunday from
8 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Forget Sbarro’s, Starbucks, and Ben and Jerry’s. Every food court in every two-bit mall in the nation holds out those same few fast-food chains to their captive audiences of weary shoppers. Only in the chaotic, Third World atmosphere of the Swap Shop do the conformist food pods give way to something different. The main food court floor in the center of the sprawling flea market empire is given over entirely to homegrown chrome-and-neon-plated eateries with unfamiliar and slightly suspect names like “Grecian Delight” and “Fish ‘n’ Things.” At the beat-up tables that line the floor, you can munch on a conch fritter and nurse a Bud while ogling owner Preston Henn’s exotic cars on display in the center of the court. Down the hallway, you can pick up an ice cream cone and a Coke from freezers while browsing for just the right black-market cologne. And outside, you can chase down your empanada with some farm-fresh produce — or bring it all right back up on one of the carnival rides. And the only place to get Starbucks coffee is from a van near the entrance that also sells snow-globes and Hebrew National hot dogs. That’s how it was meant to be.

You won’t find greasy-spoon fare at this charming bistro, whose calm, Old Country interior seems a world away from the snarling street outside. One particular item on the petit dejéuner menu has been dubbed “rustic,” but the breakfast campagnard is fit more for a prince than a farmer. The meal comes with scrambled eggs, bacon, sautéed potatoes, and a fresh-baked croissant for $6.75. If you want to get down to the real basics, go with two eggs and a half baguette for $3.30. More likely, however, you’ll lay out the $7.50 for the egg forestiere, which is a poached egg dipped in wild mushroom sauce, or perhaps the salmon platter, served with toast, tomato, red onions, capers, and sauce vierge. Espresso drinks are available, and breakfast is served from 7 to 11:30 a.m.

It’s not like you need a reason to visit happenin’ Hollywood these days, but Spice Resto-Lounge makes a hell of a good one. You can park your fanny at a table at 8 p.m. for dinner (with a reservation, friend!) and not have to worry about going anywhere for another eight hours or so — except up to the dance floor once in a while to salsa off the filet mignon and potatoes and the latest round of designer martinis. It’s a rare thing to find a club that serves terrific food or a restaurant that can handle the mayhem, nakedness, glad-handing, and bootyshaking that goes on between tables here. But the help remains sunny, unflustered, and indescribably gorgeous, bearing trays loaded down with coxinhas, tilapia, caesar salads, empanadas one moment — and whipping up to the raised dance platforms to perform a merengue the next. In between, a bossa nova singer croons and a house band tunes up, and the total effect is a party as effervescent and coolly addictive as a well-blended mojito.

Used to be there were three, not two, certainties in life. There was death. There were taxes. And there was Sunday sauce. If you were Italian and it was Sunday, your mother would most definitely be up to her elbows in breadcrumbs, raw egg, and pounded meat, putting together the veal or pork meatballs, rolling up the braciole, separating the spareribs, divvying up the hot sausage, and slow-cooking the whole caboodle in her secret tomato gravy recipe. If you were not Italian, you had wisely cultivated many friends who were, and you had secured invitations for dinner — preferably into infinity. Sadly, the Sunday-sauce-cooking mama is as rare now as the speckled booby. Restaurants have been forced to assume the necessary burden of our desires. Some do it well, some passably, but none with the panache or generosity of Ruggero’s, where the resident myth goes that no customer has yet been able to finish a plate of “Mama’s Everyday Gravy.” That gravy is indeed served daily at Ruggero’s. Spongy meatballs, chunks of pork, sweet sausage in a tart sauce laden with onions and tomato chunks, al dente rigatoni, and a sprinkling of fresh Parmesan — it’s enough to make every day a holy day.

If we’re going to sin, let’s sin extravagantly. By all means, let’s precede the sin with a boat trip down the New River past the glittering manses of even fatter and richer sinners. Let’s indulge our sin — an “All You Wish to Eat” barbecue of ribs, chicken, and shrimp ($32.95 per person!) including piles of potatoes, cole slaw, bread, and chocolate cake — on a “private tropical island” with a 360-degree view of the water. And could we just follow up our sin with an All New Hilarious Variety Revue, including some magic tricks, perhaps? If we’re going to be sentenced to an eternity of eating rats, snakes, and toads, we’d like to condemn ourselves during four hours afloat with a bit of “humorous commentary” from the captain, and, of course, a pleasantly plump tropical moon rising in the background.

Turn-of-the-century foodie buzzwords: locally grown, organic, sustainable, cuisine de terroire. If you live in Santa Monica, California, you merely throw on your yoga pants and traipse down to the daily farmer’s market. But eco-friendly virtue is hard to come by in South Florida, unless you happen to live near Boynton Beach. There, the tiny but thriving family-run Woolbright Farmer’s Market is selling the kinds of local products that usually get shipped north before we can lay our mitts on them. Like multiple varieties of Florida oranges and grapefruits picked from local trees: You can tell you’re getting the real thing because they’re plumb ugly on the outside — pitted, spotty, misshapen — and heavenly sweet when you cut them open. You’ll also want to buy a bucket of giant, locally grown beefsteak tomatoes, sweet Florida corn, organic kale, all kinds of melons, blue and fingerling and new and sweet potatoes, organic pink-lady apples, big bags of fresh basil, and locally bottled lemonades. A Boynton pastry chef provides yummy homemade cornbread, banana cake, raisin and nut loaf, lemon poppyseed pound cake; nutritious (and delicious) giant cookies made from spelt, oatmeal, carrot, and chocolate chips, plus sugar-free and wheat-free muffins. There’s organic milk to wash them down with. Plus McCoy’s honey from Loxahatchee, millet and flax lavash flatbread made at Tampa’s Sami’s Bakery, stacks of freshly baked pies from the Upper Crust in Lake Worth, and dried fruit from Nutty Brothers in Pompano Beach. Who knew the examined life was so worth living?

Take in a key-lime-flavored double feature at Aruba Beach Café: The key lime pie martini ($8.50) is a smooth, decadent cocktail for folks who like their desserts in liquid form, created to match a late-afternoon mood. It’s made with Licor 43 (a potent Spanish citrus vanilla liqueur), Rose’s lime juice, and cream and served in a tall martini glass — raise a toast for Day One of the rest of your newly laid-back life. This excellent medicine pairs nicely with a classic slice of key lime pie ($5.95), made exactly the way God intended, with lime juice, condensed milk, and fresh eggs on a buttery graham cracker crust. Meanwhile, the view from an outdoor table three sandy footsteps from Lauderdale beach is pink sky over turquoise seas, tan limbs under microscopic bikinis. Live reggae music is the whipped cream on your sweet.

Many people can catch a conch — after all, these shellfish don’t move so quick — but rare is the soul who can cook one. At Calypso, the kitchen staff takes what looks like a shred of blown tire (the ones you’re always swerving to avoid on I-95) and turns it into something not only edible but unforgettable. Here, you can have your conch grilled (seasoned and lightly charred) or cracked (pounded and fried) or marinated and tossed in a salad or spiced up and served in a stew — but for an old-fashioned Florida treat, there’s nothing like having it frittered. Frittering is an individual art, but anybody who’s ever had the bread-heavy, greasy, conchless Ping-Pong balls that pass for the real thing in most joints will be agreeably confounded by Calypso’s version. They come to the table hot and crisp, not oily, with a soft, pudding-like, melt-in-the-mouth interior that tells you you’re getting the real deal — studded with minutely minced green onion, red pepper, and carrot, and, of course, toothsome, bite-sized pieces of the giant sea slug you’ve learned to love at last.

Yeah, yeah, the only way to buy fresh fish is to get it whole, take it home, and fillet it yourself. Or better yet, put a worm on a hook, cast the hook in the water, blah blah blah. Here’s another idea: Find a fishmonger you trust and let him deal with the smelly fish guts. Then you won’t have to mess up your pretty party dress. At Palm Beach Fish Market, the pompano and the dolphin have likely been made decent before you get there, the mussels debearded, the shrimp peeled and deveined. But because you trust that big burly hunk behind the counter (he’s one of the owners) and because this market is attached to a hopping local seafood restaurant, no fish ever gets past its prime. The selection isn’t vast, but it’s convincing: enough Florida and local catch, like Florida hog, spiny lobster, stone crabs, and Key West shrimp, to keep home cooks happy. Also bay and sea scallops, clams, oysters, triple tail, flounder, and daily specials. If your recipe calls for something hard to find or you need your fish whole, just call in your order ahead of time — you can manage that, can’t you, Princess? PB Fish Market also makes entertaining easy with a selection of good wines, condiments, caviar, homemade crab cakes, conch salad, remoulade sauce, and a cheese-crumb crust for pan frying.

It’s a minefield, buying fish these days. Almost daily, headline news trumpets that the seafood we thought we were virtuously buying (our morally incorrupt, farm-raised, Omega 3-loaded friends) is actually radioactive Godzillas simultaneously decimating the entire food chain and wrecking our immune systems, giving our unborn babies brain damage, and, yes — killing dolphins! And all you wanted to do was put together a simple little fish stew — maybe with a crusty loaf of bread. That’s good reason to put yourself between the capable fins of the owners of Fish Peddler East (long since severed from Fish Peddler West). Because even if every single fish they carry isn’t entirely baggage-free (the swordfish, the grouper, the sea bass), it looks so vibrantly, glisteningly fresh, you simply can’t believe it could possibly be bad for you. As for the beautiful pink Key West shrimp in all different sizes, the fresh Florida blue, stone, king, snow, and dungeness crab in season, the fist-sized to fingernail-sized clams, the Florida and Maine lobsters, the flounder, lemon and gray sole, hybrid striped bass and rainbow trout from North Carolina, you can stuff yourself silly and still get to heaven. Fish Peddler also carries a fantastic array of bottled, frozen, and prepared foods, including yummy pickled vegetables, frozen squid rings, conch, tobiko, crawfish, smoked eel and salmon, fish dips, and jumbo squid steaks — enough to keep that fish-eating grin on your face for a long, long time.

When a wealthy Palm Beach matron throws a party — which she does pretty often — you can bet you won’t find her in her kitchen six hours before the big night rolling hundreds of tiny pigs into hundreds of tiny blankets. More likely, she’ll be perusing the flats of refrigerated finger foods in the cooler at C’est Si Bon (mini quiches, fig and cheese flatbreads, Palm Beach cheese balls, bite-sized beef Wellingtons). And when it’s the cook’s day off and Milady wants a no-fuss lunch — something like roast tenderloin of beef with horseradish Dijon sauce and potatoes boulangre — she isn’t going to Albertson’s deli for her prepared foods. That’s why this tiny gourmet shop in the Bradley House Hotel has triumphed through many decades, several changes of management, and the vicissitudes of fortune — the owners have learned to satisfy a clientele a bit on the demanding (they’d call it “discerning”) side. Well, there’s no law saying we all can’t take picky advantage of lunch specials like jumbo lump crab cakes with remoulade sauce; or red pepper meatloaf with mushrooms, or braised lamb shanks, curried new potatoes, and pea salad; or roulade of turkey, peppers, spinach, and mushrooms. In fact, a trip to C’est Si Bon on a Saturday morning to fill the picnic hamper with cream of watercress soup, maple Dijon-glazed corn beef, dilled chicken salad, and orzo primavera is an ideal first step for a trip to the beach, a pleasantly strollable three blocks up the street.

Somehow during each year’s Best Of search, we find ourselves inexorably drawn by the scents of baking brioche, cardamom coffee cakes, and fruit tartelettes, the mixed berry custard strips, the lovingly handmade baguettes and loaves of country and Vienna and dark sourdough, the chocolate mousse cakes and the cream horns — as we were saying, we’re drawn by a mysterious, magnetic force back to Le Petit Pain, as if someone (perhaps the movie-star-gorgeous, 30-something proprietress, her equally delicious husband, and their adorable baby) had cast a spell on us. And the main ingredient of that wicked spell is quite evidently… butter. There is butter in the soft, rolled crepes, stacked like expensive Cuban cigars and filled with chocolate and raspberry sauce. There’s yet more butter in the brioche, which begs to be taken home and dipped in egg, grilled, and showered with powdered sugar. There’s butter in the butter cookies. As for the butter croissants, and even the chocolate croissants, which traditionally are composed by rolling a big block of butter between layers of pastry dough, let’s just say that they’re made in the grand old French tradition — with lots and lots of butter. The rugalach and the biscottis, the brownies and the Dutch apple pies are also full of it, and so is the princess cake, the Swedish pizza, and the cheesecake. As you slide out the door, don’t say we didn’t warn you.

When it comes to the staff of life, Europe rocks. If you’re looking for something awesome with which to mop up your gravy, go straight to the Italians, the French, and the Germans. While the first two favor a crusty, airy loaf, the German version is typically too heavy to carry one-handed. It’s also lugubrious in mood, slightly sour in flavor, and best when heavily buttered — much, come to think of it, like the national character. Deiter and Norma Dauer, who’ve owned the German Bread Haus for 20 years — that tiny gingerbread-looking concoction you’ve passed a thousand times on Commercial Boulevard — import some of their flours from Germany and offer several entirely organic loaves studded with seeds and nuts (like their popular Jogger’s Loaf, Survival Power, and other multigrains also sold at Whole Foods) in addition to classic German wheat-rye mixes, sourdough, sweet raisin-inflected stuten, Christmas stollen, and a cornucopia of rolls to fill Little Red Ridinghood’s basket. They’ll let you stand and taste (heavily buttered) samples for as long as it takes you to make up your mind. And by that time, you’ll be packing up cherry strudels and bags of ginger and pepper nut cookies too.

Let us school you on the croissant. The best ones are covered with a thin, tan crust that’s hard enough so that it resonates a little if you tap it with your fingernail but thin enough to “break” when it’s given a little squeeze, like the shell of a robin’s egg. Inside, the bready material should be slightly moist, with enough body so that it shreds rather than breaking or balling up when it’s pulled apart. It should have a scent of butter, and it should taste like a morning in Provence. All right, maybe we’re getting too subjective with that last bit. We must be under the influence of EuroBread & Café, the French bakery in Coral Ridge (there’s another one at 6847 Stirling Rd., Davie), where the walls are painted an earthy yellow, like Provence clay, and the croissants are always fresh. There’s a buttery smell in the air, as well as the scent of baking bread. Try all of their croissants — the chocolate croissant, with its schmeer of bittersweet chocolate inside, or the almond, which is sweet-toastier, with a sprinkling of crisp almond slices. We’ll settle for the croissant plain, warm from the oven, maybe daubed with a little strawberry preserves or English marmalade.

You make a submarine for 20 years, you get to know what you’re doing. The current owners of Colombino took over the decades-old business just five years ago, but the family’s carrying on a serious tradition to exacting specifications — while Taco Bells and Subways have sprung up around this tiny deli and bakery like pokeweeds around a violet, nothing can stop the hot ovens from churning out dozens of warm loaves of Italian bread six days a week (the deli is closed Monday) or the “upstate N.Y. style” pizzas or the buttered steak, sausage, and veal parmigiana sandwiches or the stuffed breads bulging with pepperoni and cheese. It’s the “Italian assorted” sub (six, nine, or 12 inches from $3.19 to $5.39), though, that defines the genre. Stuffed into one of those warm, crusty rolls, a mound of salami, Italian ham, capiccola, and provolone is drizzled with olive oil and vinegar, given a shake of oregano and a handful of tomato, sliced onion, and torn romaine lettuce leaves. The art of the sandwich is indeed a living art.

Bikers, boaters, and bobos rub beer bellies under the thatched roofs of Tiki’s upper- and lower-story bars at the Riviera Beach marina, shaking booty to live music on sunny Sunday afternoons. It’s Old Florida meets Eastern Europe: luscious Romanian girls, wearing last-decades’ gold eyeshadow and hot pants, maneuver baskets of peel ‘n’ eat shrimp, hot blue crab dip, and Bahamian conch salad through the throngs. But it’s Tiki’s crunchy grouper sandwich that keeps reeling you back: a glistening slab of prime catch rolled in panko breadcrumbs, deep fried, and tucked into a pillowy Kaiser roll with tomato, onion, lettuce, and a lemon-struck tartar sauce along with a heap of crisp shoestring fries — all of it as ideally proportioned as the maiden who serves it to you.

Those scary written warnings that accompany servings of un-cooked shellfish are so uninviting, it’s a wonder anyone eats raw oysters or clams. Risking hepatitis or vibrio just to swallow something salty and slimy takes a particular breed of cat (or kitten). But raw oysters are, in fact, a delicacy and reputed aphrodisiac, and South Florida’s a prime spot for both Gulf and Atlantic varieties. Unlike many other restaurants — even shacks right on the water — Southport always shucks oysters to order, instead of letting them sit refrigerated on the half-shell until they develop the texture of rubber cement, the way some establishments do. Observe as plastic milk-crates packed full of the bivalves make their way from coolers in back to tubs of ice at the shucking station. At $9 a dozen (cheaper during happy hour), the oysters fit in well with Southport’s no-frills, slightly divey setup. The smoked fish dip and fried offerings (clams, oysters, catfish, scallops, etc.) consistently cost about half as much as you’d find elsewhere but are invariably twice as good; its Philly cheesesteak is enormous and authentic, and beer and wine flow freely (and cheaply). Besides, after more than six years of swallowing those sea-salty little items, we’re still alive, healthy, and ready for more.

Wilton Drive got a bit classier when Brian BeCraft opened this well-designed store last year. Wines here are grouped by characteristics, such as fruity, earthy, etc., with more than 200 choices for under $25. Helpful placards accompany each selection and describe the wine’s origin, flavors, and compatibility with particular foods. That’s the kind of detail that makes winetastings at the Naked Grape both enjoyable and enlightening. About twice a month, BeCraft pours samples of 12 to 20 wines related by theme. In January, there were a variety of cabernet sauvignons, and February showcased wines from South America. Shortly before Thanksgiving last year, the tasting focused on wines compatible with turkey, ham, and, for the Pilgrim-inspired, game meats. Tastings cost $10 to $15, depending upon the number of wines offered, and hors d’oeuvres are ample and tasty enough to clear and satisfy any palate.

Truly transcendent deli, the ultimate comfort food, is all about trust. Some will quibble over details — the altitude of the sandwich, the sourness of the pickle, the correct brand of house mustard. Those elements are important; at the deli altar of Pomperdale, they’re implicit. Step inside the Lauderdale landmark and take a look at the grinning, crinkled mugs working the counter, and you simply trust the 60-something grandpa with your corned beef on rye. He’s made it a thousand times before today, and, God willing, will make it a thousand times after. Blessedly nonkosher, Pomperdale will gladly slap a slab of Swiss on top of your house-cured pastrami, but they also excel in the more esoteric selections of Jewish culinary tradition: the sublime knish, the curative chicken soup, and the enigmatic kugel. Their smoked fish selection swims with the stuff bubbeh adores, nova and lox and whitefish and even pickled herring. Owned by Larry and Joyce Vogel for more than 25 years, Pomperdale has the kind of relaxed, homey atmosphere perfect for a leisurely Sunday brunch (including free refills of homemade iced tea), which of course is the best possible prelude to the inevitable Sunday nap. Trust us on that.

Forty-four years ago, Joan and Dale Jesus parked their truck full of locally grown fruits and vegetables on Sunrise Avenue and opened for business. They soon moved to an empty lot on the west side of NW 27th Avenue, put up signs that said, “You are entering Tater Town,” and watched as their brightly colored umbrellas and tarps attracted a steady stream of neighborhood shoppers in search of fresh produce. Today, Tater Town is a throwback, one of only a handful of daily outdoor farmers markets’ still operating in Broward County, and fiercely proud of it. Until Wilma, an enormous Banyan tree planted by the family was the market’s icon, its green bulk overshadowing everything on the small lot. The regulars, most of whom have been around as long as the market itself, are still shaken by its loss. But Tater Town is soldiering on, doing battle with Broward County code enforcers over the right to park a farm tractor-trailer while providing its flock of customers, most of whom visit daily from the surrounding neighborhood, fresh produce at remarkably cheap prices. Though Dale has passed on, Joan Jesus still counts out change despite her 71 years, and her son, Randy, plans to keep the Tater Town alive long enough for another banyan tree to grow.

There are 43 varieties of crepe to dither over at La Creperie (32 dinner, 11 dessert) — to say nothing of the duck, frog legs, fillet of sole, and pepper steak — all of them fashioned in the traditional Breton style from buckwheat flour and served steaming from the griddle. Dinner crepes, priced from $9 to $13, are crisp and sweet as a lacy cookie at the edges and gradually move toward a melting, savory, pudding-like interior — stuffed with ratatouille, sausage and spinach, blue cheese and apples, eggs and bacon, chicken livers, tuna fish, tomato, broccoli and mushrooms, or any combination you can dream up and ask for. An inexpensive carafe of house wine and maybe a plate of steamed mussels and you really start to get, in a concrete way, why the French are such annoying food snobs. Because they have every right to be! Make like a Bretonne farmer and order the simple ham and Swiss cheese crepe ($9.75) for a lesson in how so very much can be made from so very little.

No surprise that the best coffee in South Florida, with apologies to the Cubans, comes from Italy. Everything from the clean, polished design of Bacio’s little shops to its kiss-inspired logo to the snowy peaks of gelato in ball-gown colors and textures of silk tulle to the dark-eyed girls and boys answering questions in halting English is as suave and sensual as a Roman holiday. But it’s those fragrant roasted beans, their every gram of caffeinated goodness forced out under immense pressure, that turn regular coffee freaks into zombified groupies. Served in clear glasses (rather than mugs, or, God forbid, cardboard), the Bacio geloso (chocolate, coffee, foamed milk, and whipped cream, $3) or espresso shakerato (iced espresso frothed in a shaker, $3) or a double espresso made with foamed heavy cream and a dusting of cocoa ($3), so thick a spoon comes with it, are enough to make you believe there may be a better, richer life after Starbucks.

When you’ve been raised on Hershey’s kisses, European chocolate may be an acquired taste, like graduating from applesauce to apple martinis. But Belgian candy wizard Jean Geller is betting that the American palate is educable, and his flagship store on Las Olas, opened last Thanksgiving, will test whether Geller can make Floridians googly-eyed over his little mouthfuls of bliss. Geller’s products — handmade chocolates priced at around $1 each — have the texture of liquid silk and a way of causing very pleasurable hormonal imbalances. These candies are for mature audiences only: The meister sees sugar as an “adulterant” and uses no preservatives. Milk chocolates are 30 percent cocoa, and the darks top out at 85. Instead of gummy sweetness, you’ll bite into flavors like gin, curry, mango, kirsch, gingerbread, angelica, pistachios, Arabica, Earl Grey tea, or salted butter caramel — and it’s not out of the question that someone might finish an entire 150-gram tin of chocolate-dipped candied orange peels in a single sitting (a New Times staffer holds this record). Pick your treats by the piece, the pound, or by the box — an assortment of 24 runs around $25. The effect is rapturous, decadent, addictive.

The 1950s — a time when most 12-year-olds were virgins, rock music was as wholesome as Wonder Bread, and the frothy drinks Americans sucked down were not lattes or frappucinos (BlackBerry flavored to match their PDAs) but milkshakes. It’s hard to imagine such a time unless you were there. Doc’s All American remembers. It was there, serving milkshakes before most of its current customers were even born. That fact alone should answer any doubts about the quality of its shakes. The only question that should remain is which flavor to choose. But first, is it a soft-serve shake from the fountain or one made from hand-dipped ice cream you crave? The former (which costs $2.80 small, $3.45 large) is obviously more limited in its flavorings… but not by much. You’re not likely to find pineapple, caramel, and hot fudge at Wendy’s anytime soon. But if you’re up for the really rich stuff, try a hard shake ($2.95 small, $3.85 large), which comes in flavors like pistachio, cookie dough, toasted coconut, Snickers, and double-fudge brownie. Doc’s is open every day. Closing time varies, though it’s typically 8:30 p.m. Sunday; 10 to 11 p.m. Monday through Thursday; and 11 p.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday.

For out-of-the-ordinary desserts, it’s hard to beat the creations at Nirala, the first American outpost of an Indo-Pak sweets maker with locations in Pakistan and the Middle East. Indian sweets, as they’re commonly called, come in spirals, balls, and dense fudge-like squares. From simple orbs of lightly sweetened cheese curds to halwas scented with carrot, cardamom, and saffron, everything is freshly made on the premises. For the uninitiated, proprietor Muhammad Shabbir and the staff offer enthusiastic guidance and maybe a little taste to help you along. Past the sweetshop counter is a dining room offering Pakistani food, from kebabs to fish curries, and a weekend breakfast of halwa puri, flatbread served with spiced chickpeas and a sweet semolina paste.

The world is aflutter with waffle fries, crinkle-cut fries, sweet potato fries, and parmesan truffle fries. But sometimes a fry is just a fry… and it’s all you need. At Hot Dog Heaven, you get your straight-cut fries placed lovingly on a sheet of tissue paper in an old-fashioned red-and-white checkered cardboard basket. It’s comforting to know that, if you want, the attentive staff will ladle on a hefty spoonful of cheese and/or chili. The only downfall: You might have to wait in line for a minute, since the little roadside pit stop is jammed, even at, say, 3:30 on a Tuesday afternoon.

One caveat comes with this hot dog haven: The service is usually slow. Perhaps that’s part of the shtick, though: Much of Fat Lou’s appeal is in its big-city ambience and the high-minded way it has elevated itself above the mundane, no-frills hot dog stands that dot our suburbs. By contrast, Fat Lou’s is a bona fide hot dog restaurant, with booths, tables, beer on tap, TVs all over the place tuned to the Cubs, White Sox, Bears, or Bulls, and plenty of room to stretch out. Though Fat Lou’s does a stellar job of presenting its Chicago dog — a steamed red-hot with relish, yellow mustard, peppers, celery salt, and tomatoes, it also offers a decent take on a classic New Yawk hot dog, with grilled red onions, sauerkraut, and brown mustard. Do not, under any circumstances, miss out on the Italian roast beef sandwich, a Chicago tradition that’s served au jus and with giardiniera (pickled veggies) on a huge roll that’s as messy as it is satisfying. You may have to rest your elbows for a while as your order is prepared, but the rewards are ample, and at least you won’t be bumping elbows with the lunch crowd in some cramped stool ‘n’ counter joint.

Bubbling bowls of soup are a mainstay of Korean cooking born of cold, harsh winters, and the chigae, wherein a fiery red broth meets some combination of clams, shrimp, pickled vegetables, and marinated meat, is about as extreme as a bowl of soup can get: tangy, sweet, sour, fishy, and hot-pepper spicy all at once. Which makes Myung Ga’s own freshly made tofu all the more impressive. At this unassuming Korean eatery in Weston, you can taste the tofu even in a scalding chigae. Fluffy, savory, and a little sweet, it demonstrates how important tofu is to a dish in which mass-produced tofu so often provides nothing more than flavorless texture.

Even in cities with large Chinatowns, shopping for Asian groceries is seldom a one-stop endeavor. One place may have the best selection of dried mushrooms, another the best prices on bottles of fish sauce and sriracha. Which makes A Dong in Lauderdale Lakes so useful. Though a Vietnamese market in name and orientation, it carries a worthy selection of Chinese, Thai, and Filipino products, Japanese snack food, and housewares for putting that tom yum together and ladling it out. In back, there’s a modest in-house meat and fish counter near the (alas, usually bagged) fresh produce, and up-front, shrink-wrapped banana cakes, various jelly concoctions, and staff who will happily lead you to the jars of shrimp paste. If you don’t find that one special thing there, the store is superconveniently located in a strip mall that also boasts a fine Chinese bakery, an herbalist, and a great Chinese BBQ takeout shop.

Sure, there’s some decent General Tso’s chicken and moo goo gai pan at the hundreds of identical, stark white, fluorescent-lit Chinese-takeout storefronts that dot the land, but why settle for merely good? Pepper’s has a full menu of the dishes you know and love, plus a second menu featuring some of the best, most diverse regional Chinese cooking in the area, including authentically prepared Taiwanese and Szechuan cooking. Unlike other area places that cater to Chinese tastes, they do a good job with both menus. Indulge in frog legs with pickled peppers and a fiery Szechuan noodle soup loaded with tendon and tripe one night and a pint of chow mein and a couple of egg rolls the next. Or mix and match. And instead of standing at a dingy counter, there’s a nice bar where you can sit and enjoy a bubble tea while you wait.

Fifty years is a good age for a diner. That’s about the time it takes to burnish the plastic of the booths to a gentle glow and for the waitresses’ “honeys” and “What’ll y’all haves” to attain a practiced verbal caress. At that age, the menu contains delightful fossils like liverwurst and forgets itself only in fits of trendiness with one or two items such as the “Mexican” burger, which, thankfully, is nothing more exotic than a chilidog. Nobody is ever in a rush. The walls have had time to collect the bric-a-brac of half a century, from photographs of the owners’ epic hunt for a black marlin to a collection of ceramic roosters. The regulars have had time to perfect their routines, some sidling up to the long counter for a meal of meatloaf and mashed potatoes, others staking out small fiefdoms in corner booths with newspapers. The hum of Federal Highway long ago became more lullaby than annoyance. And the name — well, only a diner that was christened in 1956 could get away with a name like the Egg ‘N’ You, which even the waitstaff doesn’t know the meaning behind. “I don’t know,” they say when asked about it. “It’s been around for 50 years — that’s what it’s always been called.”

There are places that make a more authentic jerk or bake their fish in banana leaves or boast a grandmother who cooks from secret recipes passed down through generations of African slaves. But for the slow-time pace of a summer evening on a remote island, it’s hard to find a restaurant as redolent of Caribbean airs as Sugar Reef, the 12-year-old bistro on the Hollywood Broadwalk that never seems to close its doors against the salt breeze. The fare is mildly spiced French Caribbean, grilled fish with mango salsa, fish stew with coconut milk and green curry, plus flickers of French-Vietnamese, like the seafood and chicken pho, a clear broth laden with shrimp, tender bird, and spices. But Sugar Reef is 100 percent Caribbean in spirit, a place where you can watch the full moon rise over the waves, slip off your shoes under the table, order another bottle of wine, and get to know your neighbors at the next table. No worries.

If the authentic food and Spanish-speaking staff and clientele aren’t enough to convince you that Che, Pibe offers an authentic Argentine experience, then simply take a look around this charming Miramar restaurant. In one corner, you’ll find the local newspapers from Buenos Aires. In the other corner, the television broadcasts fœtbol live from stadiums throughout Latin America. And for Argentines seeking a taste of home or gringos hoping to broaden the palette, Che, Pibe — which translates loosely to “Hey, Man” — is the place to come. Located in a strip mall in western Miramar, Che, Pibe takes seriously the art of the Argentine grill and with prices that will please even the most budget-conscious diners. House specials, including the delicious Milanesa Napolitana de Carne and homemade lasagna, range from just $9.99 to $13.99. As most world travelers know, Argentines are known for their steaks — and here, Che, Pibe doesn’t disappoint. Grilled dinner items include “The Argentine Grill,” a collection of grilled meats for one ($14.99) or two people ($29.50); the “Top Sirloin” ($12.99); and “Center Cut Pork” ($11.99). Finish off the meal with “Flan With Caramel” ($4.50) or “Sweet Potato With Cheese” ($4.50) and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a finer Argentine experience this side of the equator.

Steak houses are like people. Well, not really. But sometimes like our human kin, some are unpretentious old money, solid as a duchess in a pair of Wellies. Others haven’t given up the checkered tablecloths and celebrity photos after 60 years of business, but the cuts are still prime and dry-aged — the Andy Rooneys of the steak world. And then there are those shiny, vacant newcomers, interchangeable as Hollywood starlets. Occasionally, a true palace of meat comes along, a place of glamorous mystery and first-quality beef, and when you find one, it rules your heart and invades your dreams. Such a thing is Gotham, as fantastic a place as the mythic city it was named for, shimmering with dark woods and amber lamps, with sheer platinum curtains and walls of candlelight. Gotham bakes golden flatbreads in its wood-burning oven and sends out “silver pot” black Canadian mussels in wine and saffron, wooing the appetite with Dry Sack lobster bisque and chilled Maine lobster cocktails. But all this is foreplay for the main event: dry-aged meats imported from Chicago and cooked over hardwood coals — center-cut fillet, New York strip, chopped steak with caramelized onions, and that studliest of steaks, the cowboy bone-in rib eye. You’d have to travel many a mile, pardner, to find a rival for your carnivorous affections.

If you are not happy, they are not happy. Signor and Signora Monegatti, originally from the island of Elba, serve a mind-boggling menu of Tuscan classics — rabbit soaked in wine and chocolate, venison osso buco, cuttlefish with pasta in black ink, parpardelle with wild-boar sauce, quails cooked in a casserole, wild duck, fish so fresh it’s practically still flopping — and just about anything else your romantic heart desires. Got a special request? Just call ahead. They want you to eat! Because to eat well is to live well, eh? With no more than a couple of dark-eyed Roman boys for help, the Monegattis turn their shabby-chic couple of rooms in an old Boca house into a place customers never, ever want to leave — and then dream of coming back to forever. From Signor Monegatti’s handshake of greeting to his recitation of the night’s specials in charmingly broken English through the pasta courses and the Roman boys circulating with fluffy bowls of freshly grated Parmesan through the second piatti of superlative veal Marsala and elk chop drenched in truffle sauce, right up to the fine old Tuscan desserts and the wobbly cart laden with afterdinner liqueurs, you’re revered, jollied, treated with an unforgettable, hearty bonhomie. It’s the gustatory equivalent of dining inside a hearty Tuscan bear hug.

When Michael di Bella took over Romantico from his mentor, Tonino Tizzano, a few years ago, he didn’t hire an interior designer from Miami to hang glittery curtains and space-age uplighting or take on a bevy of PR ladies to spin his “concept” or set up a website with thumping house music and graphic close-ups of dewy basil leaves; he didn’t even retrofit his kitchen with subzero coolers. He just went merrily along doing what Tizzano had taught him to do: a simple and silky fettuccini mixed in a parmesan wheel; veal Marsala textured like suede; pristinely fresh poached snapper with olives and tomatoes. And because he hadn’t installed those subzero coolers and had so little storage space, di Bella had to keep running out every day to buy each night’s ingredients — which meant, by default, that he was always picking out the freshest fish and the prettiest vegetables. And then too, he’d kept in touch with Tizzano, who’d gone back to Italy (Tizzano was always sending him new ideas, so the menu at Romantico stayed as fresh as the fish). At length, this put him in a place he’d probably never expected to be, as chef-owner of the best restaurant in North Lauderdale. But to look at this tiny place with its handful of tables and to judge from the warm, friendly, and unpretentious way these lovely dishes are served — from the Sicilian caponata right down to the blissful furls of cannoli — you’d almost think the idea of di Bella’s culinary superiority had never entered his mind.

It’s time we admitted we’ve been scooped: New Times readers last year voted 3030 Ocean as Fort Lauderdale’s best restaurant. Let us shout it loud: Readers, you were totally on top of it! You had the savoir faire and gastronomical chops to know a mean plate of Australian butterfish when you tasted it. But we’ve spent the past year catching up, and while we were at it, we sampled milk-fed veal loin with wild mushrooms and wine truffle broth; we inhaled sweet plates of roasted coach farm goat cheese with baby beets and balsamic vinegar. There was a memorable meal of wahoo sashimi, a symphony of black grouper with jewel-toned vegetables. We learned that Chef Dean James Max, a homegrown Florida boy, is one amazing dude, devoted to seafood, committed to simplicity, effortlessly elegant in idea and presentation — a modern master at the top of his game. We sampled his carpaccio of fluke with gribiche-stuffed Spanish pepper, the Maine lobster bisque, the smoked duck breast with baby greens and sour cranberries, the bouchot mussels. Our ignorance, we’re happy to report, yielded hours of bliss. We ate, along with our crow, enough jumbo gulf shrimp and whitewater clams to choke a whale.

This divine, romantic brasserie is the kind of place visitors to Florida — or, at least, French Canadian visitors to Florida — dream of and rarely find. And who’d think to run across it crammed among T-shirt, ice cream, and souvenir shops on the Broadwalk? Chez Andrée’s superb oceanfront location offers stunning panoramic views from either the wraparound outdoor patio, strung with cheerful lights and bussed by salty breezes, or indoors from cozy padded booths and the casual bar, ideal for cooler nights. A bilingual French staff provides elegant service to match classic fare prepared from scratch by owner Bruno Barnagaud, who hails from Bordeaux, and his small team of French chefs: soupe á l’oignon, escargots drenched in butter and white wine, mussels marinire with crisp and steaming pommes frites, trout meunire, chicken breast with champagne sauce, and specials like beef Bourguignon and buttery sweetbreads cooked with mushrooms and white raisins and served with cream-laced potatoes gratin. Tropically influenced dishes rely on locally caught fish paired with Southern fruits and citrus. This is stellar food without snobbery or pretense, purveyed in a handsomely casual setting and accompanied by a strong wine list that includes half-bottles and good French wines by the glass. Best of all, your bill, even with a bottle of wine and a warm slice of an unsurpassed apple tarte, is almost embarrassingly reasonable — another gentle surprise from a restaurant of so many serendipitous pleasures.

Even the superrich need comforting sometimes, and restaurateur Paul Darrow, whose experience combines the sublime with the ridiculous — Cordon Bleu training on the one hand, a chain of Cheeburger Cheeburgers on the other — seems to have put his finger on a lineup of American recipes guaranteed to soothe fretful old aristocrats and picky arrivistes. At Deco’s swank Sunrise Avenue locale, a plate of fried chicken ($16) comes sizzling from the kitchen ensconced on paper napkins to soak up the juices; servers wheel around carving carts of roast turkey with all the fixings ($22); a bubbling dish of macaroni and cheese ($13) made with real cheddar and cream bubbles quietly beneath a perfectly browned crust; and chunky crab cakes ($23) are partnered with a creamy mustard sauce and wilted garlic spinach. The family-style sides, like a big bowl of creamed spinach, melting mashed potatoes, and hunks of corn bread with butter, are throwbacks to an era when the fat cats could have their cream and eat it too.

Although there’s a delicious new high-end barbecue emporium in Broward out west of 441, there’s something about the shack-on-the-side-of-the-road feel of Texas Hold ‘Em that gives it the edge. This year-old spot is the kind of place where you can watch the dude out front manning the massive, oak-fired smoker, and when he walks inside to hand-chop your half chicken or pulled pork, the tiny dining room takes on the primal scent of slow-cooked meat. It’s the kind of place where someone will be sure to stop by your high top to ask if you need more of that “good ole souse” or secret-recipe lemonade, and you’ll have a hard time answering with your mouth full of savory, succulent collard greens or tangy baked beans. This stuff is all ridiculously tasty, especially that near-perfect homemade sauce, which balances spice and sweetness in the rich, tomato-y Texas tradition. It’s kinda kitschy, but the theme décor — all sorts of gambling memorabilia lining the walls — is kinda fun too. Grab a slab of baby backs at Texas Hold ‘Em and you’re guaranteed to come up with a winning hand.

They want to go to McDonald’s for lunch. Or Burger King. Or some pizza arcade with jet-engine-like decibel levels of noise. But the choice ain’t theirs. They’re going to sit and listen to the withered old men at the bar riffle The Mail and call out to the flatscreens showing English Premier League: “Tha’s how we yoost to play football, lads!” They can get a burger for about eight bucks or some chicken fingers for six. Pretty soon, though, they’re going to graduate to the bangers and mash or the fish and chips. And you’re going to nurse your pint of Kronenberg 1664 and tell them about a land where pubs are a meeting place for an entire town, where strangers mingle and learn about people from other walks of life. You’ll show them that the world isn’t a scary place. Then, when they cross their knees, you’ll show them to the refreshingly clean restrooms, to prove it.

If you’d rather cook your own spam ‘n’ eggs than have to queue at an omelet station at some overrated brunch emporium, make a reservation at Victoria Park, where you can sit down like a civilized person and let Gary Boylan serve you his Benedict di Parma. Or his potato pancakes with poached eggs, sour cream, and a side of applewood bacon. But make that reservation early (say, by Wednesday or Thursday), because the luscious cuisine of Boylan and his wife, Patricia McDonnell, is guaranteed to fill all the tables in this tiny restaurant during brunch hours on any given Sunday. Their French toast has by now become a local legend: Tuscan bread dipped in egg batter and baked in a sweet, gooey custard. Order it served simply with confectioners’ sugar and syrup ($5.95), or push the envelope with a topping of Granny Smith apple compote, toasty walnuts, and cinnamon sugar ($6.95), or go all the way with bananas, strawberries, and Grand Marnier sauce ($8.95). If you savor the savory, an alluring potato pancake topped with smoked Norwegian salmon, poached eggs, mustard sauce, caviar, and chives will keep you happy until dinner — even, maybe, until next Sunday.

St. Bart’s Coffee Co. is kind of like the bar in the TV show Cheers… where everybody knows your name, if you’re one of the regulars. This joint, however, gets going at sunrise, when cooks start turning the day sunny-side-up inside the cozy spot on Fort Lauderdale Beach. Crowds jam in here to check their e-mail for free or spill out onto the sidewalk tables to do the newspaper crossword puzzle over a cup of fresh coffee. (The fact that you have to get up and pour it yourself makes you feel at home; besides, you then get to choose from ten flavors.) The Farmers Favorite — two eggs, bacon, potato, fruit cup, and a bagel — is a lot of grub for $4.95, and most other dishes — like French toast or a piping-hot egg sandwich on a fresh croissant — come with sides of ultrafresh, melt-in-your-mouth fruit (strawberries, oranges, pineapple). Healthy alternatives include smoothies or granola with bananas and yogurt. The store owes much of its success to former owner Jill, who got it off the ground and greeted all her customers with a huge smile. But Rote Hamburger, who took it over in March, says that the only thing he plans to change is an upgrade for the Internet connection. Stop by, and tell him we sent you. And call him by his nickname. As everybody knows, it’s “Totti.”

Hong Kong City isn’t the fanciest Chinese restaurant around, though the small, simple room is warm and inviting enough. With the arrival of some more ambitious and diverse Chinese eateries in the area, their Hong Kong and Cantonese cooking is no longer as exotic as it once may have seemed either. But Hong Kong City is like a river, flowing along steadily as the latest trends come and go. It’s nigh impossible to have a bad meal here, with impeccably fresh seafood, perfectly cooked vegetables, a light touch with frying, and just-right sauces. You’ll go back for the sublime casseroles, the pan-fried noodles, the scallops in black pepper sauce that melt in the mouth, the sautéed greens. And though they have the usual lunch combo specials, dim sum is available daily too.

If Daddy’s buying, baby, make him take you to La Sirena. But remind him to make the reservation two weeks in advance, because securing a table here at a reasonable dinner hour is impossible. Easier to persuade a Palm Beach socialite to give up her Lilly pedal-pushers or a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven! (But Daddy loves challenges, doesn’t he? That’s why he’s got the moolah.) Marcello’s is older than God, it’s the size of a matchbox, it’s stuffed to the rafters with polo players and Mafiosi, with golf pros and minor celebrities, with helmet-haired ladies who regularly appear in the columns of the Shiny Sheet for the size of their settlements. Everybody is shouting at the top of his lungs; it’s a madhouse! But the food is often excellent, and the wine list is a tome as formidable as a volume on divorce law. Recommended: a perfectly executed caesar salad with chopped anchovies and chunks of fried bread. Fat escargots perched on a croute sodden with butter and wine. Homemade ravioli stuffed with chunks of fresh lobster. A superbly sautéed yellowtail snapper for two. The giant scampi Marcello. And of course, since money is no object, the impossibly alcoholic and ethereal zabaglione with raspberries, and a plate of biscotti with Vin Santo. Here’s to living large.

Your Northern cousins arrive on your doorstep with four kids, 14 bags, and their heads full of dated, nostalgic drivel about discovering the “real Florida.” It’s no use explaining that “real Florida” is that line of hotels blocking their view of the beach, the 12 hours they just spent bumper-to-bumper on 1-95, the highest restaurant prices in the country, and a property-tax bill you’d be all too willing to split with them. Just suck it up and take them over to Joe’s Grille for dinner. Somehow, Chef Joe Cascio and his wife, Erica, have managed to spin the fantasy, even after Hurricane Wilma wrecked the place last year, that we Floridians spend the bulk of our time sitting outside under jaunty umbrellas, forking up grouper cheeks, slurping from big bowls of fish chowder, and watching pleasure boats chug placidly by. Let the cousins keep their illusions; we all have so few left. Send them home loaded up with stories about how the line-caught swordfish in rum sauce was the best they’ve ever tasted and how the view of the harbor lit up under a full moon was the prettiest thing their sore eyes have ever beheld.

Red is the rose that in yonder garden grows… but my love is fairer than any. In the soft downlighting at this chic eatery, your paramour will compare favorably with the gigantic floral portraits lining the walls. Lovers both gay and straight rely on Flowers for its cozy, pillow-strewn booths, the respectable distance between tables, and its perfect balance between lively babble and subdued buzz. Which means you can pretty much say anything, between spoonfuls of your Longchamp sweet pea soup or crab chowder, without being heard by your neighbors — and you don’t have to shout your terms of endearment (so unsuave). The menu at Flowers is sophisticated enough to inspire the kind of relaxed, intelligent conversation that leads to other things, but what’s your hurry? You’ll want to bide your time over house specialties like smoked salmon blinis and pasta moneybags filled with pears and cheese, and luscious desserts served with mini-tumblers of liqueur.

Here’s a fad we hope lasts longer than celebrity knitting and mood rings: small plates. Because if ever we Americans needed anything badly, it’s limited portion sizes. Never mind that you can get around the problem of “never enough” by simply ordering a lot of them — you’ll have a hard time limiting yourself to just one at the Cottage. The atmosphere here, a breezy outdoor patio jammed with cute people, is ultraconducive to downing many novelty cocktails while noshing on sirloin sliders with horseradish and chive jack cheese (served with smiley face fries), grilled eggplant salad with salty capers and olives, kung pao calamari salad, and beggar’s pouches filled with pear and gouda and drizzled with brown butter. Even better, most of these minuscule delicacies are priced at or under a tenner. You’d have to sit for a long, long time to eat or spend too much. Still, it’s not outside the realm of probability.

Anyone who’s ever dissed British food has never sat down to an English cream tea, an entity exactly as decadent as it sounds, in a very proper way, of course. Or put it this way: An English cream tea makes you want to plunge your face directly into the dish of clotted cream, strawberry jam, lemon curd, and scones (a biscuity cookie-cake) and sort of, well, roll around in it. But you and the ladies who lunch at Serenity Gardens Tea House will have to keep your lascivious thoughts to yourselves, because the delicate frippery that decorates this old Florida house (the rosebud swags, the tea cozies, the demur, unmatched cups, the upholstered ball-and-claw chairs) would never stand for it. Nor would proprietor Sylvia Price, who has put together a sophisticated luncheon menu that ranges from Waldorf chicken salad and stuffed tomatoes to the full tea service ($17.75 per person, and you have to make a reservation) of petits fours, nibbles, and cucumber sammies. Price’s array of teas, including organic greens and Earl Grey, is mind-boggling, but the one to try first is her homemade Chai, a wake-up call of a drink redolent of spices and orange rind.

There’s an etiquette to drinking tea that one absorbs by osmosis, which is why you won’t generally find tea house customers fiddling over laptops or screaming into cell phones. More likely, they’re conversing in hushed tones over cups of liquid that smell like new-mown hay and jasmine blossoms. Or reading. Or just staring into space. Coffee hops you up, tea slows you down, and the Vietnamese proprietors at One Tea Lounge, Hoan Dang and Roger Tran, have made all the right moves to induce beta waves and belly breathing. The dozens of tea varieties purveyed here, from India, China, and Japan — Chunme and Lucky Dragon, Russian caravan and Moroccan madness, Orange Blossom, Lichee, Rose, and Lapsang — are good for body (full of antioxidants) and soul (tea rituals restore balance and equanimity). And then too, the stuff just tastes so good. Lap it up in surroundings conducive to cognitive breakthroughs.

An unscientific New Times survey has revealed that a liqueur-infused strawberry sundae ($12.95) just tastes better when the nosher is curled up inside the cushiony interior of an exorbitantly pricey Eero Aarnio ball chair. The same survey has also found that it’s far more exciting, a real adrenaline rush, to spoon up the last crumbs of a piece of red velvet cake ($4.95) when you’re sprawled like a goddess on a $3,000, pristine, white-leather ’50s-style sofa, preferably balancing an indelible cocktail in your other hand, something like Jetsetter’s notorious Carnival in Rio ($8.95), made with grenadine and Pepsi. To really live, you have to risk it all! And if you fail, if it happens that you accidentally dump an entire plate of kosher pigs in a blanket with deli mustard ($4.95) all over the elegantly slipcovered cushion of your Knoll chair, not to mention on your vintage Mary Quant miniskirt, well — at least you tried, right? Nobody will ever say you wimped out, least of all Mike Jones, the man who has gone to quite a lot of trouble to find the retro atomic lamps that shed the exact light under which you will always look unusual and interesting, even when splattered with sauce from your pizza di Roma ($5.95).

Good service doesn’t have to mean a ma”tre d’ with an accent, waiters dressed in dinner jackets, or a sommelier with a silver cup. You don’t always have to shell out the shillings to be treated well either. At SukhoThai, owner Susie and her son Eddie hand out their smiles for free, hailing new and old customers at the door with familial warmth. Eighty percent of the clientele at the 16-year-old restaurant are regular customers — people keep coming back to see Murphy’s Law confounded: For one meal, at least, nothing that can go wrong will go wrong. Drinks, appetizers, entrées, and desserts arrive on an immutable, predictable schedule. Dirty plates are unobtrusively whisked away. There’s never a meal auction: Your server knows who gets the Masaman curry and the pad Thai. Water glasses seem to refill themselves. And the cheerful, modest Thai staff has perfected the art of being there without seeming to be there — always within sight, never hovering. “We’re not perfect,” Eddie says. “Servers have good and bad days like anybody else. But we tell our staff, treat everybody like a VIP. You never know who you’re waiting on.”

Forget it. You can’t get in anyway. There are 150 guys ahead of you, and they’re all a lot better-looking. Call right now and maybe the girl who answers the phone will put you down for a 5:30 p.m. reservation some Tuesday next month. Of course, you can always try just loafing around outside those elegant doors, pressing your nose to the glass, eyeballing the passing plates of “nuevo Italian” veal meatballs in brodo, the wood-oven-baked foccacia, the golden rotisserie chickens, and the hand-cut pastas, along with the artesian well waters and the hundred-dollar-plus bottles of Amarone. Maybe somebody at the front desk will take pity on your poor pathetic self and squeeze you into a single seat at the bar. And by the way, make a stop at the bank first to check that balance, because this is going to cost you. You’ll be paying in frozen pizzas and TV dinners for weeks to come. Actually, come to think of it, you might as well go ahead and put that engagement ring on layaway, because chances are, you’ll never get another shot. You’ve done nothing to warrant an experience this rich, sublime, and delicious — any more than you’ve earned the love of a good woman or deserve to have her say yes. But you’ve always been a lucky son of a bitch, haven’t you? It looks like your table is ready.

Short of having an actual band of winged seraphim fluttering over that perfect plate of risotto while strumming harps and singing hymns, it’s hard to imagine how a meal at Serafina could be any more heavenly. This delicious, romantic retreat in Victoria Park, settled down by a glimmering harbor on the Middle River with jaunty candlelit tables on the outdoor deck and a series of warm, intimate nooks inside, is technically an Italian restaurant. But you’d never know it from the menu. Owner/chef Shari Woods’ palate is so imaginative, so all over the map, drawing on influences from the American Southwest (smoked corn soup), the South of France (foie gras paté), the coasts of Spain (rich seafood paella), and the distant deserts of the East (spicy Moroccan tagine), that it’s probably safer to call this cuisine Worldly Wise. And then there’s the way the menu keeps changing depending on whim and season. Still, you’ll have other issues to ponder besides how to classify those luxurious boneless, slow-cooked short ribs in their caramelized wine reduction. You’re more likely to be fretting over which wine to choose from Woods’ interesting list or frantically calculating what percentage of your annual income you can absolutely afford, if you give up the Netflix subscription and the chess club membership, to devote to return visits.

If you want to hustle through your huaraches, thick, fried tortillas stuffed with barbecued goat (two for $7.99), forget it. Be prepared to linger over chips still sizzling from the fryer with two kinds of fresh salsa (green tomatillo and tomato) while — on weekends, anyway — a roving band of trumpet players and guitarists serenades your table. Kick back with a beer (you don’t really need to go back to work, do you?), reset your watch to slow time, and sample from a foodie’s dream menu of delicious if challenging meats to pack into your tacos. Roast pork, fried beef tripe, pork stomach, beef tongue, spicy pork sausage, beef head, stuffed green peppers, pork in red pepper sauce, fish, shrimp, and vegetarian fillings are priced from $1.69 for a single soft taco to $6.99 for the fanciest burrito — to eat with the seven different bottles of hot sauce on every table and your choice of corn or flour tortillas. Heartier appetites will warm to seven kinds of dinner soups (sieta mares is $13.99), chicken in mole ($8.99), roast quail ($10.99), enchiladas ($9.99), chimichangas ($8.99), and fajitas ($10.99). Cactus and eggs ($3.99) and huevos rancheros ($3.99) are served all day from the breakfast menu. Nobody speaks a word of English, so if you’re linguistically challenged, break out your high school Spanish or be prepared to grunt and point.

Scruffy single types, guys in suits, and a local chef or two are bellied up to the bar here at odd hours, like old barflies with the DTs. But it’s the wahoo, not the whiskey, they’re hankering for, and they’ll have it straight, no chaser. Sushi Bon is a secret we’d really rather not share; this place tucked into a corner on sleepy Ocean Avenue has a total of four tables inside and a handful out — it can’t handle the masses. So if it’s California and J.B. rolls you’re after, please, go elsewhere. Serious sushi junkies turn up almost exclusively for the blackboard specials, fresh locally caught stuff and the pricey imports. You might find triggerfish sashimi, wild salmon roll, fresh toro, tilefish grilled with miso, grilled hog snapper, or that same hog stuffed into a fried tempura roll with mayonnaise — the Japanese take on the Florida fish sandwich, priced from $7.50 to $13.95. The chef here also makes a beautiful tamago, a big, sweet slab of dense egg custard, and, occasionally, a hearty beef miso soup laden with exotic vegetables. Keep your eye on the board as you stake out your personal stool. This is going to be a tough habit to shake.

Jesse’s bills itself as “a fine soul food restaurant.” No argument here. This spacious strip-mall café cooks up soul food with a twist of Caribbean and a dash of Haitian. There are, of course, the hardcore dishes: fried chicken livers and gizzards with fries for $4.99 and side dishes, such as collards, speckled butter beans, and okra/tomato, for $1.50 each. Breakfast includes the usual fare along with the soul standards of catfish, grits, and pork chops. Weekday lunch specials cost $4.99, with a revolving menu of catfish, meatloaf, turkey wings, and stewed chicken, along with two sides. You can get the works for dinner with $10.99 Jesse’s Plates, which come with a choice of smothered or fried pork chops or fried chicken, along with five sides. But it’s the dinners of oxtail stew, curried chicken or goat, and jerk pork that really prove Jesse’s is a step above the average soul food eatery. And those dinners come in two sizes at nice prices: small for $7.59 and large for $8.99.

Joining Wine Living’s Wine of the Month Club is like hiring a personal organizer at a fraction of the cost. Owners Giancarlo and Mary de Falco will let you keep the junk in your closets and file cabinets, but they’ll streamline your wine profile into something chic and sophisticated, clear your head of unnecessary wine factoids, and help you focus on the good stuff. For $35 a month, members get two bottles of far-ranging, interesting vino — some of it downright eccentric — a red and a white from boutique wineries across the globe: like a fizzy, celebratory Giacomo Vico Birbet, or a dignified Cabernet Merlot blend from West Cape Howe. Plus a couple of descriptive paragraphs detailing grape, region, and vinification — down to descriptions of the boxes your precious grapes were transported in. Because the de Falcos are ordering for members in bulk, you’ll inhale the bouquet of some excellent bargains. And never drink Mad Dog again.

If the late Edward Hopper were around to re-create Night Hawks — his celebrity-filled ode to late-night dining — he’d probably put his four famous faces at the Floridian (AKA, the Flo’). With the sort of retro diner look that befits a 24-hour joint, the Floridian takes on a surreal, time-in-reverse quality during the wee after hours. And yet, the menu is extensive enough to quell any peculiar cravings (whether it’s a burger or a banana split, this is some good eatin’). Try finding a western wrap at Denny’s or one of the Flo’s tasty veggie burgers. Granted, at 3 a.m., you’re probably not too concerned with counting your carbs and calories. The first priority is to stay awake for the drive home, and yes, the Flo’ has the joe. Unlike the watered-down coffee at most diners, you don’t have to suffer through cup after cup just to get a little buzz. One cup of the Flo’s espresso ($2.95), Americano, ($1.95), or latte ($3.25) is enough to stave off those visions of dancing sugarplums — and dining Night Hawks — until you hit the sack.

Feeling that hollow sense of emptiness deep inside? Are you alienated, cut off, isolated, disconnected from all meaningful human contact? Can’t get a date because you’re too (paralyzed/terrified/stoned) to pick up the phone? Got the post-Cartesian metaphysical blues? Well, here’s a little pill to make you larger, friend: It’s shaped like the homemade chicken wonton in a jewel-colored bowl of soup at Lemongrass Asian Bistro. We defy you to swallow this mouthful of nirvana and cling to your insecurity complex simultaneously. It can’t happen. And after you’re warmed up and relaxed a little, after you’ve maybe worked your way through a plate of tiny whole marinated octopus or Vietnamese summer rolls and you’re starting to feel just a mite less misunderstood and rejected by the entire family of man, we suggest you take a look around and notice that there’s stuff happening beyond the horizon line of your own damned navel — like, f’rinstance, that trio of babes at the next table sucking on flash-fried, soft-shell crab legs.

The gravitational force exerted by this big pink moon upon the ocean waters directly opposite its outdoor terraces is roughly equal to the forces of attraction exerted between a plate of Luna Rosa’s ricotta-stuffed ravioli and your mouth. Or between your giant South African double lobster tails and your dining partner’s fork. Which is to say that, scientifically speaking, if you look hard enough for a good family-style Italian restaurant — serving homemade pastas, sea bass with olives and tomatoes, and Super Tuscan vino by the glass — that also happens to provide the sound of breaking waves and the smell of salt spray as a side dish, you’ll eventually find it.

Don’t second-guess the old man — he hates early-bird specials. And as long as his teeth and his nether parts are still in working order, he’d much rather eat grilled steak and ogle booty, thank you very much. There’s hardly a better place to do both than Brazilian Tropicana, the oldest churrascaria in town, where the meats — lamb, chicken, pork, sirloin tip, sausage — are marinated and spit-roasted over a wood fire, then dished out by roaming gauchos who travel the semicircle of tables set up around the stage, slicing dripping meat off their “swords.” It’ll take Grandpa back to the days when men were men, damn it! And women weren’t afraid to be girly girls! That’s the second part of the equation: A post-dinner floor show begins with one slinky torch singer crooning Carmen Miranda favorites, progresses through semi-naked couples dancing romantic and body-contorting bossa novas, to a finale where the ladies come out wearing nothing more than G-strings, pasties, platform shoes, and ten-foot headdresses. Believe it, an hour of watching the most perfectly proportioned and muscled bodies in Lauderdale will make Big Daddy feel like a colt again.

In thematically seamless style, Café Chef Marc Benoit has whipped up a little something to pair with the Norton’s excellent impressionism and Matisse exhibits this year, not to mention its stellar permanent collection of impressionists — a menu of French-accented small plates, soups, and salads as varied as the many faces and moods of Monsieur Matisse’s favorite model, Laurette. Nibble on paper-thin slices of smoked salmon brushed with crme fra”che and flecked with capers, explore a palette of assorted French cheeses with crusty bread, or apply a thick impasto of sinfully rich chicken liver mousse and port jelly to crostini. More substantial are a classic croque monsieur; a niçoise sandwich of tuna, olive tapenade, and roasted peppers; or full luncheon entrées including snapper á la Provençale, steak minuit, and omelette du jour filled with Comte cheese, French ham, and spinach. Add final varnish to a lovely meal with French roast coffee, a pear tarte amandine, or fallen chocolate soufflé cake in an atmosphere utterly conducive to the contemplation of beauty.

Time marches on at Ireland’s Inn Beach Resort, where the 60-room ’60s hotel, undulating like a gigantic, pink tsunami, is slated for demolition in the next couple of years to make room for a 600-unit condo-hotel and what the owners hope will be a five-star restaurant. Ireland’s third-generation proprietors, Andy and Kathy Mitchell, are thinking big — but for the moment, the clock seems to have stopped at the hotel’s restaurant, Windows at Ireland’s. Fine by us. The dinner waiters still dress in tuxes, the menu and the décor have defied every trend you can throw at them, and those huge windows still look out on the 450 feet of beachfront the Mitchells own — enough sand to fill an hourglass set for infinity. Breakfast and lunch are served on the outdoor terrace overlooking the Atlantic — including 30-year traditions like eggs Benedict, grilled bangers and eggs, chicken shortcake, Waldorf salad, stuffed avocado, Ireland’s seaside club sandwich, and a classic key lime pie. Dinner’s a soothing affair accompanied by live piano music and personable, attentive service. The pan-fried chicken, served family style, and hearts-of-palm salad, with orange segments and yellow peppers, are just about unimprovable, and prices for a beachfront hotel (two can dine well for around $80) are stunningly reasonable.

The list of seafood we can consume without compromising our nervous systems or the entire ecosystem has dwindled to a handful, but there’s still enough to eat with pleasure and sans guilt from the menu at Blue Moon. Grab a table for two on the dock at sunset and order from the raw bar, where fresh oysters priced at $1.95 and dabbed with house-made lemon horseradish cocktail sauce are delightful little mouthfuls of political correctness. Gorge to your bleeding heart’s content on fresh clams, Zataran spiced gulf shrimp, or Hawaiian spiked tuna poki, secure in the knowledge that the Environmental Defense Fund will never name you on their enemy hit list. Sea scallops with chipotle-tomatillo ratatouille get the green light from the Green Party, as does the Dungeness crab and Louisiana crawfish cake. And your crocodile tears can just dry right up over that plate of blackened mahi-mahi with giant sea scallops and jumbo shrimp forked with a little green apple-mango salsa and vanilla rum butter — a sea-dwelling triumvirate that’s still as theoretically sound as the dollar.

Eaten enough pad thai to add extra padding to your thail? Now that tom yum has become the ubiquitous Asian equivalent of spaghetti with red sauce, Thai-aholics desperate for a little novelty will really appreciate the menu at Tamarind, where a skewer of grilled quail eggs yakitori is enough to file the edge off creeping Thai-dium. A plate of sweet boniato Thai fries breathes new life into the standard greasy chip: Sizzling and crisp, they’re perfectly paired with the spicy peanut dipping sauce that comes with. A green papaya salad is tart and tangy enough to wake up jaded appetites. And while nobody will divulge the recipe for any of it, the Thai dumplings are a secret worth keeping — ground chicken and shrimp with a fresh mélange of lime and garlic. Purists will also appreciate the fresh tamarind pods for dessert and a luscious nursery-style pudding of sweet sticky rice and black beans.

Those Spaniards really know how to work a room. Their idea of a good meal is something you can carry with you, all the better for movers and shakers who like to make contact — or need to make a quick exit. At Paella, the tapas are a little hard to manage one-handed, but Wednesday night’s flamenco floor show will keep you glued to your chair anyway. Dig into a Peruvian ceviche of marinated octopus, shrimp, tilapia, and mussels; tortillas espanol; omelets with potatoes and Galician sausage; paprika-spiced octopus in tomato sauce; spicy and soothing garbanzo frito with Serrano ham and Spanish sausage; grilled octopus; button mushrooms steamed in wine and olive oil; bacalao croquetas; and loaves of warm, crusty bread. You’ll just have to set down your fork between bites to clap and shout ÁOlé!

Maybe he lasted only five episodes on The Apprentice, but Brent Buckman, South Florida’s own would-be Trumpster, knows comfort food better than most. Buckman, the portly guy with a penchant for irritating Apprentice teammates with his pushy, plow-through-walls approach, has delved deep into the food dimension. He did this both before his appearance on the show, and he has done it after. Buchman’s earlier food explorations gave him that soft, endearingly blimpy figure. His later ones helped him lose 64 pounds. The secret, Buckman says, is his patented “four bagel diet.” One bagel for each daily meal and a snack (sometimes with low-fat margarine, sometimes with an eight-ounce portion of sliced meat). Stick to the diet and watch the pounds fade away, he says. (Well, there’s the diet and there’s also a rigorous schedule on the treadmill.) How do you keep up, week after week, a gruelingly monotonous routine of bagels-bagels-bagels? You have to give yourself a once-a-week treat, the Toronto-born lawyer says. For that, Buckman goes to his favorite restaurant, the Outback Steakhouse on Pine Island Road in Plantation. Keep your Tandoori baked pheasant morsels or Peruvian cui au gratin served on sautéed escarole, Brent says. He’ll take Outback’s Aussie cheese fries, a messy mixture of gooey yellow cheese and fried potatoes. If he’s feeling especially decadent, he throws some bacon chips on top and dips each forkful into a bowl of ranch dressing. “The best cheese fries on the planet,” Buckman says with ill-concealed longing. “My goodness, they’re to die for.”

Now that even Wal-Mart is selling raw fish, you might say the sushi craze has jumped the shark — or maybe jumped the maguro. But about a year ago, Yoshi Sakata closed the dual sushi place/fish market he’d owned for more than 20 years and moved across the street to reopen as a small Japanese restaurant. That’s a loss for locals who needed a good fish market, but it’s a boon for the Fort Lauderdale sushi scene, because Sakata is now focused entirely on dishing up the tastiest Japanese delicacies in this vicinity. Drawing on two decades’ worth of relationships with fishmongers, Sakata knows how to get his hands on the most interesting seafood from here and abroad. At Wasabi, sushi is always presented in pairs, since the Japanese words for one slice and three slices are puns on the words to kill (obviously unlucky when you’re feeding people). At this tiny restaurant, which holds fewer than a dozen tables and a small sushi bar, Sakata might offer flounder usuzukuri, deeply flavorful slabs of yellowtail, exotic thinly sliced swordfish, tangerine-hued mackerel, tuna so fresh it seems to be breathing, uni imported from Japan, a soft, chewy, red clam from Canada, or a beautifully presented dish of tamago, a sweet egg custard as individual as the chef who creates it. Sakata’s sushi is beautifully textured, complexly flavored, and elegant enough to restore your faith in the art.

Two days after Wilma hit, the power was out everywhere. The streets were a mess. The airport was dark and silent. Taking a walk before curfew as twilight set in, we smelled carne asada. A policeman in a parking lot radioed another patrol: “I’m at Tamarindo. They’re open. Come on over.” A powerline repair crew sat at a table outside. A waitress came out. They were salvaging what they could from the freezer and cooking with propane: “We’ve only got carne asada and churrasco with rice and beans.” Inside the dark restaurant, flashlights ricocheted around the kitchen. Candles flickered at a few tables and at the counter. Food came out in styrofoam. Even before their stint as the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, El Tamarindo won us over with its nicely charred grilled shrimp and beef, its pupusas encased in handmade-to-order tortillas, its sweet corn tamales and Sunday-morning huevos rancheros, and its “Exotica” salad with apples, queso blanco, and hearts of palm. All served on real plates, in an appealing space, with prices that will make you smile.

Open the front door to Horizon and it’ll look like a tiny Asian food mart. But follow the murmur of voices and clanging of pans coming from the back and you’ll discover a busy little kitchen with seating for about 20 and lunchtime fare that’ll snap you out of your burger complacency. Come here during the weekend and you’ll likely stand in line with a cadre of Filipino workers from the cruise ships docked at nearby Port Everglades. Horizon is home-away-from-home for many of them, serving up the mainstay dishes of their homeland. Philippine food has been influenced by Malaysian, Chinese, and Spanish cultures, but it retains an identity all its own. Your best bet is choosing among the pork dishes, most of which cost $3.99. Adobo, considered the national dish, is pork marinated and sautéed in cider vinegar, soy sauce, ginger, and peppercorns. Pata tim is pork hock sautéed in a dark, sweet-vinegary sauce. Lechon kawale, or pan-roasted pork, is bite-sized pieces of belly that are fried in a wok to a golden, crispy brown. Some of the vegetable dishes use bitter melon, a squash that’s too strong for most America palates, so it’s best to ask if it’s in a dish before ordering.

If you’ve run through the menu at your local taqueria a few dozen times and think your burrito tour has made you an expert in Mexican food, it’s time to get cozy with Silvana. The focus here is seafood, and we don’t mean fish tacos: Chef Antonio Brodziak takes his classical Mexican culinary training and gussies it up in contemporary trappings via New York, where he worked with Richard Sandoval at Tamayo. Specials from Brodziak’s rotating menu, like sea bass with roasted corn and tamarind, tuna with tomatillo and mango chutney, adobo-marinated yellowtail, and salmon served with warm pico de gallo and black bean sauce, are priced between $17 and $22.95 and served by big, raven-haired Mexican boys whose smiles could melt a block of queso fresco. It’s all buttery, beautiful, and sensually revelatory, but Brodziak’s camarones Silvana ($18.95), grilled shrimp drizzled with pitch-black calamari ink and arranged around a sigh-inducing masa cake stuffed with black bean paste, is enough to make serious diners consider permanent relocation to West Boca. And you know, that’s high praise.

You thought old-fashioned hibachi pyrotechnics had gone the way of the samurai? Not so, Grasshopper: The spinning knives and the flying fillets are still dancing through their paces at Sakai Japanese Restaurant, where — depending on how sociable you feel — you can reserve a seat at one of four communal hibachi tables. Kids, of course, love to belly up to the hibachi to see old Iron Chef play with his food (where else is tossing around your vegetables socially acceptable?). Watch him, all but stony-faced, as he twirls his knives like batons, cracks raw eggs midair, and composes a flaming volcano from a stack of raw onion rings. Choose steak, shrimp, scallops, chicken, and lobster in some combination ($19 to $35); hibachi dinners include soup or salad, fried rice, stir-fried vegetables, and noodles — you can’t go away hungry. Sushi and excellent vegetable, tempura, and tofu plates are available in the quieter front room, where you and your party can shutter yourselves away from the madding crowds in a completely private booth, sliding the paper screen closed behind you with a satisfying whoosh.

Good Jamaican and Caribbean food abounds in South Florida. Drive ten minutes from anywhere and you can get decent jerk and oxtails that taste pretty much the same as the ones you had elsewhere. Are they all using the same recipes and sharing one big kitchen? Annie’s is one of a handful of places where such thoughts never occur. The jerk is not just tender but scented through and through with peppers, cinnamon, and allspice. Fish are cooked fresh, not ladled from a steam table. Rice and peas are moist and fragrant, not dry and starchy. Even the steamed cabbage has a certain something to it. The sorrel and bracing ginger beer are made on the premises. And save room for dessert: The “Off-the-Chain” spice cake really is.

For decades, you could count on the checkered tablecloth and the bottle of Chianti, the proprietor who knew the latest dish on everybody who walked in the door, the bread soaking in garlic butter, and the 12 kinds of spaghetti all cooked in the same heavy red sauce. Then, overnight, they were gone. Our cozy neighborhood Italian restaurants morphed into places playing trance music and serving vertical appetizers. Today, your chocolate martinis are brought by tattooed hunks, but the tattoos no longer say “Rose” or “Mama”; they’re Sanskrit hieroglyphs that translate to “Ohm.” Papa Pistola’s is a nostalgic glimpse back to that bygone era when a bottle of wine with dinner set you back 15 bucks instead of 50. From the Dean Martin, Al Martino, and Mantovani record sleeves that decorate the walls to the fried mozzarella, pasta fagiole, and homemade gnocchi to the sincerity of the servers and the very reasonable prices (about $14.95 to $17.95 for the entrées), Papa’s not cutting any edges. But he’s not cutting corners either.

Not many chefs can strike an ideal balance between simplicity and surprise — they leave you either yawning over another plate of calamari or spooning up pig’s-foot ice cream — but Naples-born Chef Rino Balzano, well-schooled throughout Northern Italy, takes Tuscan classics and brings them up to date. Balzano, known for “miking up” to serenade his customers with Italian arias, isn’t shy when it comes to employing the famous game meats of Tuscany, like rabbit and quail, that might seem exotic to American palates. But simply grilled or braised in rich stock with wine and onions, then tossed over a bit of homemade parpardelle or polenta, these dishes become instant favorites, the kind of meals to give you separation anxiety when they’re finally over. Rosemary-infused pork chops ($28) and veal chops ($44) smothered with wild mushrooms and cooked over an open flame, a wild mushroom-topped oval of fresh buffalo mozzarella ($12), and a finale of zuccato cream-cake ($9) with a glass of Moscato di Asti ($10), plus a list of 500 Italian wines, are just a few of the great possibilities worth exploring.

For once, the best is synonymous with the most. In the form of an $8.95 lunch buffet where you can fill and refill your plate with all the spice-redolent delicacies of India: a deliciously gooey sag paneer of spinach and homemade cheese; fragrant eggplant bharta; onion bhaji doused in cream and yogurt sauce; belly-warming channa masala; and creamy spiced peas and potatoes. There’s the vegetable korma with cream, tomatoes, and raisins; three kinds of chicken; sweet pickled potatoes, coleslaw, and yogurt-cucumber dahi raitha; and a katchumbar salad of spiced onions, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Then you can return to the buffet table and do the whole thing again, backward this time, adding fruit chutney, hot sauce, and breathtakingly salty pickled vegetables, great for mopping up with endless baskets of handmade bread hot off the griddle — dense, smoky naan and puffballs of fried poori. Gulab jamun made from scratch comes swimming in rosewater-infused syrup. It’s a meal fit for a Delhi Sultan at Untouchable prices.

It’s official: French is out. South Florida is evidently still nursing a grudge over that silly Iraq thing, because good French restaurants here have become as rare as ivory-billed woodpeckers in a Louisiana swamp. You think you glimpsed a flash of a red-, white-, and blue-striped flag or heard the distant notes of the Marseillaise, but it’s an illusion — that was actually the sound of another basket of freedom fries getting dumped into hot oil. But the grand old pre of la cuisine française is still going strong in Palm Beach, proving once again that money is wasted on the rich. Still, even jaded aristocrats pause for long moments of contemplation and gratitude over plates of Normandy-born Chef Jean-Pierre Leverrier’s sautéed sea scallops in brown butter, his homemade foie gras terrine, a dish of roasted duck glazed with honey and thyme, or a perfectly executed Dover sole expertly filleted at your table. With his wife, Nicole, and son David, Leverrier has perfected these dishes over more than a decade, until they’re as much a part of the Palm Beach landscape as Mizner architecture and 20-foot hedges.

Enough that Mario serves you the sourest, strongest mojitos, the most melting skirt steaks doused with citrusy, peppery mojo, and the sweetest, stickiest plantains you’ve ever tasted. Enough that he has kept pouring the wine, carting out the grilled shrimp and tamales and ham croquettes and shredded pork and red snapper and cuatro leches and coffee until you feel like you’ve been simultaneously petted, spoon-fed, and serenaded for an entire two hours by the handsome contingent of servers and by Mario himself, who will have called you “honey” roughly 250 times. Enough that you have been served the best possible meal in the most luscious setting, a meal probably cooked by grandmotherly elves imported directly from Havana on magical flying banana leaves, because there’s gotta be some tropical pixie dust in this stuff to make you feel so good. Enough that you’re lingering there at the table over the great conversation and the final sip of coffee, lingering for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, and not a person in the place is making you feel like you need to move one second before you’re good and damned-well ready. Enough. Enough. And then along comes the complimentary round of afterdinner liqueurs.