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Best Restaurant When Someone Else Is Paying

Soleil at the Ritz-Carlton,

OK, we're going to assume that if you're reading this category, you need a place to take the grandparents. Down for the weather, they've promised to give you a break from your normal dinner of chicken wings and Schlitz. You'll need to take them to a place on their turf, and there's nothing better than codger-filled Manalapan, home to Ritz-Carlton's Soleil restaurant. Soleil is perfectly situated on an oceanfront terrace to give you something to stare at during Grandma's rants. If you go on Fridays, hit the $52 seafood buffet. On other days, start out with the citrus-poached shrimp cocktail accompanied with a "coconut scented cocktail sauce" ($15), since the only scents you're used to during dining are the ones that emanate from the sticky floors at Hooter's. Next, since Gramps is paying, go for Soleil's priciest item, the $36 rosemary-flavored rack of lamb, which comes with herbed gnocchi and red-wine braised carrots. Finish it off with the restaurant's award-winning chocolate mousse with a crème brûlé filling for $8.50. That's a total bill of about $80 with tax and tip, which just might take a day's work to pay for at the car wash.

Best Sit-Down Deli

H&E Marina Deli

If your palate craves strong flavors and your belly demands a hearty meal, head to H&E Marina Deli. The mouthwatering food and no-nonsense service merit the sometimes difficult search for the deli, which is tucked away in the back of the Southport Shopping Center. The first two meals of the day come easy to these folks, who serve an array of breakfasts ranging from $2 to $5.25 and including a pastrami omelet and a crabmeat omelet (both $5.25). For lunch, there's a hot corned beef sandwich for $7.25, a veggie Reuben for $5.45, or a tuna, chicken, or whitefish salad sandwich for $6.75. The drink selection in the fridge is equally stacked with everything from chocolate milk and a variety of juices to Dr. Brown's sodas. It's a real New York kind of place. On your way out, throw a tip in the jar reading "Subway" and the crowd behind the counter will yell "Thank you" without looking up. But don't be upset at the lack of eye contact. As you'll know by then, they have important work to do. Open from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday, Sunday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Best Diner

Howley's

You've complained for years that the major thing wrong with most diners is you can't get a vodka gimlet straight-up with your eggs over easy at 3:30 in the old a.m. Well, quit your bellyaching, you hopeless lush; the oldest diner in Palm Beach County not only hops around the clock on weekends but will gladly shake you up a creamsicle martini (if you must) or pop open a magnum of bubbly until exactly 3:59 on Saturday and Sunday mornings. So you can have your pancake and drink it too. And, dig it, you might just get those hotcakes bussed to your table by some freaky little slip of a nymphet with a bar through her tongue and bangs tinted blue. Thank nightclub entrepreneur Rodney Mayo for bringing civilization to the madlands of Dixie Highway, along with easy-on-the-wallet Howley's egg-with-French-fries-on-top sandwiches, steak frites, crab cakes Benedict, grilled Black Angus burgers, homemade apple pie à la mode, cups of espresso as black as the night is long, and a Pied Piper parade of babelicious artsy types who drape themselves around the retro-chrome chairs, dissolve into fits of giggles over the Jackalope heads hung on the bathroom doors, and swerve from counter to patio in their go-go boots, waving clove cigarettes. What with that filtered lighting and the Cure on the sound system, you might say it's just like heaven.

Best Restaurant for Kids

Waffleworks

Robin: "Holy car collection, Batman!"

Batman: "Uh, yeah, Robin. That's what Daddy keeps around the restaurant for all the little kiddies."

There's generally nothing unique about a Waffleworks franchise, but the one in Hollywood is extraordinary. It's decorated with about 500 scale-model cars on the walls. You can imagine there's plenty to look at while your little angels wait for their Mickey Mouse-shaped chocolate chip pancakes ($1.99) or their M&M Waffle, Oreo Waffle, or Crunch Waffle (made with the Nestlé's stuff that Shaq claims to eat), all of which are $4.99. Visit on Halloween, when owner Sergio Goldvarg arrives dressed in his authentic Bat costume (often with his son, dressed as Robin, in tow); the kids go wild angling for photos. Parents don't have to feign interest either, since the Batmobile he arrives in is one of the actual cars used by Adam West and is an admirable collector's piece.

Best Restaurant to Die and Be Reborn

KM at the Grapevine

If you believe in reincarnation, you probably think you'll come back in the next life as a sky princess or a space wizard. But odds are just as good you'll eke out your latter days as a skink. Dramatic transformations are the stuff of the afterlife. Hell, even restaurants undergo major shape-shifting in their reincarnations. Thus did the Armadillo Café, a gargantuan and popular Southwestern food palace, bite the dust in the summer of 2004 and reappear six months later as KM at the Grapevine. The new place is a tiny neighborhood fooderie wedged into a gourmet shop, open on Wednesday through Saturday nights only and offering a drastically pared-down menu. But there's no net loss of flavor, imagination, and personality in these scaled-back digs. Among our favorites were a $27 lobster quesadilla and a special: the "wild" Tasmanian salmon, which went for $26 and was simply poached in white wine and butter, nestled in a bed of sautéed spinach, and served with slim, crunchy green beans and broccolini. Kevin McCarthy, one of the partners from the old Armadillo, now has breathing space to come out of the kitchen and gab with customers, to change the menu weekly, and to experiment with exotic fish from around the globe. Favorite 'dillo standbys join new creations, the atmosphere is cozy and congenial, and the plain-Jane looks of the place can't conceal a heart of purest gastronomic gold.

Best Restaurant for the Hearing-Impaired

Kitchenetta

Brush up on your American Sign Language before heading to this stylish Fort Lauderdale eatery... because the torturous clamor prevents any meaningful conversation. What with the metal chairs and concrete floors, the tables on rollers, and the exposed ceilings, you can hear every barked order, every dropped spoon, resonate. Still, you're in sublime South Florida, darling, and you'll know it from the gnocchi with gorgonzola cream sauce ($14), the flat-screen TV, and the hot -- if sometimes unpunctilious -- waiters. Who needs talk, anyway, when you can just make goo-goo eyes and blow kisses across the table? Sometimes what's left unsaid is what really counts in matters of the heart... and, perhaps, of the stomach.

Best Chinese Restaurant

Silver Pond

The best way to find great Chinese food -- unless you happen to live in San Francisco, where it rains jasmine tea -- is to disguise yourself, Inspector Clouseau-style, and trail a Chinese family at a safe distance. A little careful sleuthing and you'll end up at Silver Pond in Lauderdale Lakes. Getting a table might be another matter, since Hong Kong families, and New York families, and Vancouver families will have gotten there well ahead of you. But the few minutes you'll have to cool your heels will allow time to inhale the scents wafting from passing trays, to pick the exact lobster/crab/flounder you want from the wall of fish tanks, and to peruse the 200 dishes on the menu. Some of these inevitably may be new to you (braised sea cucumber); some may be old friends (pork fried rice). But it's the in-betweens that will take your breath away: a whole sea bass steamed in ginger and filleted tableside (market price); a whole barbecued Peking duck for two ($35) served in two courses: the honey-sweet, oleaginous skin wrapped in a pancake with hoisin sauce first and the cut-up duck with vegetables to follow. A bamboo basket of scallops with homemade bean curd ($11.50) is as delicate and creamy as the inside of a courtesan's thigh; salted, chopped, and flash-fried crabs ($9.50) are as rich and steamy as that same courtesan's pillow book. And if you've been feeling a little slow on the uptake, shark's fin soup ($10) is an ancient -- and delicious -- remedy for what ails you.

Best Restaurant for Intimate Conversation

French Quarter

"Language of Love Spoken" reads the sign in the window. Not really, but where better for a sotto voce discussion of the nice and naughty things you'd like to do with that plate of shrimp maison au beurre blanc ($14.25 lunch, $25.95 dinner) than at the French Quarter? In this centrally located spot, Paris, the city of amour, meets the Big Easy, city of sin. Nestled at a table under glass skylights, partially hidden by tropical plant fronds that are becomingly lit by gas lamps, you'll almost certainly get something going here. But if you fail -- or things are looking grim -- impress your dinner companion with your savoir faire. Just casually mention that the duck à l'orange ($22.95) was Grace Kelly's favorite dish and that the baked Alaska ($12 for two) was invented by master cooks of the Chinese Celestial Empire. It won't hurt your case to choose a bottle from one of the best wine lists in the city either. Here's a hint, you big lug: There's no romantic problem that a double magnum of bubbly won't solve.

Best Service in a Restaurant

Herban Kitchen

Good help is so hard to find these days. Sure, you'll be well-attended at the Captain's Table on the QE2 or in the grand dining room of the Ritz, but the servers at most neighborhood cafés might as well have been trained at Fawlty Towers. Consider it a lucky break if you don't end up with another table's crab cakes when you ordered steak Diane. Unlike so many of its brethren, Herban Kitchen has a service system choreographed like a Balanchine ballet: You're taken care of by a half-dozen pleasant and unruffled dudes who know how to maintain a precise balance of friendliness and distance. They come and go, filling glasses and removing plates. They don't share their first names or interrupt you mid-brilliant dissertation. And you won't find yourself stuck in that dead zone between dessert and the check when the entire staff disappears outside for a smoke.

Best Service at a Lunch Counter

Daily Squeeze

Someone forgot to tell the guys who serve sandwiches, salads, and smoothies at this bustling downtown Fort Lauderdale lunch spot that they have every right to behave as über-efficient Soup Nazis -- Get 'em in! Push 'em out! Instead, just for walking in the door here, you're likely to be handed a paper cup of freshly blended strawberry juice. Sandwiches (e.g., salmon salad, turkey breast, grilled chicken, natural peanut butter) are fresh, quick, painless, $4 to $6. The orders are accurate, the smoothies ($3.50) whirled while you wait. Cashiers say thanks. Upon asking for a takeout telephone number, a customer received not only an employee's cell phone but a chocolate-chip cookie. ("Best cookie you'll ever eat," it was said.) The capper came when an employee took time to rebound a customer's errant, wadded-napkin jump shot into a trash can. "Try again," he said, and when the second shot missed even worse than the first, he scooped it up and threw it away. No need to pad the stats, nor belabor the misses.

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