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Best Inexpensive Italian Restaurant

Pizza Mia

Despite changing hands a couple of times over two decades, Pizza Mia has been serving the same menu in its cramped, narrow space — essentially a walk-in closet lined with tables and bad murals of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Coliseum. Nothing except an extra-large pie will cost you much over $10, and whatever you fancy will be served with a fresh, salty tossed salad with green olives and a basket of puffy rolls floating in garlic butter. But get there at lunchtime or before 9 p.m. if you want to dine in and enjoy your lasagna the way God intended it to be eaten: at a little table draped with a red-and-white-checked oil cloth. At these prices, the tasty and generous baked dishes (all $6.88 at lunch, $12.88 at dinner) are one of the few bargains in a town that's rapidly pricing us out. That means the chicken or eggplant parm, ravioli, and ziti — with just the right balance of sour and spice in the tomato sauce and the right proportion of cheese to noodle — will fill you up and out and keep your piggy bank full too.

Best Expensive Italian Restaurant

Vic and Angelo's

Technically, Vic and Angelo's, the new Italian "enoteca" (or wine bar) in Palm Beach Gardens, qualifies as expensive only if you make it so — and it's certainly worth making it so if you've got the dough. Daddy Warbucks begins his meal here with a salumi grande ($25). This rare treat is a generous board arrayed with paper-thin slices of imported, cured meats laced with fennel and Chianti, like DOP prosciutto di Parma, sopressata, coppa (a brazenly spiced pork shoulder), and finocchiona. Along with an order of equally impressive artisanal cheeses ($21 for five selections ranging from crumbly, piquant Parmigiano to creamy fontina Val d'Aosta), it makes an excellent antipasto. You'll want to follow that, perhaps, with a plate of homemade fusilloni ($18) tossed with chunks of white chicken breast, mixed sweet and hot peppers, grilled eggplant, and earthy San Marzano tomato sauce. In the interest of padding the bill, a medium-rare "barrel cut 1855" filet mignon ($29) draped in gorgonzola dolce makes a superb secondi piatti — although a dish of yellowtail snapper with lemon butter ($27) is as delicious and almost as pricey. A bottle of Super Tuscan is a super chaser to wash it all down. Life is good, eh? Then again, some of us will be content on a warm evening to sit at the outdoor bar over a Grand Street coal-oven-fired pizza ($17, meatballs, ricotta, mozzarella, and basil on a crust made with real New York City water) and a simple quartino of Valpolicella ($14). And then to play a game or two on the oversized patio chess board, for free.

Best Mexican Restaurant in Broward

Taqueria Dona Raquel

Foodie boards all over South Florida have been abuzz since Dona Raquel opened a couple of years ago in Pompano, then threw down a sister operation in Tamarac shortly thereafter. Arguably the most authentic and diverse Mexican street food around, the Pompano Dona Raquel offers a charming, homey space with warm tile and bright colors and an open kitchen where only a few broken words of English are spoken. So brush up on your menu Spanish, because the flavor of learning a language has never tasted quite so fine. Carnitas are melting braised pork tossed with cumin, cilantro, and onions, served with homemade tortillas. Cabeza are tender and fatty beef cheeks. Menudo is a beef tripe soup served only on Saturday and Sunday. Tamale mole is a fresh corn tamale with a spicy chocolate-based sauce. Agua fresca is a sweet drink made from ripe, pressed fruit. Queso blanco is homemade, buttery cheese scattered on top of tortillas or pressed inside sopes, which are extra-thick tortillas wrapped around shredded chicken, pork, or barbecued beef (sometimes deep-fried and called a gordita). The only other word you need to know, for now, is gracias, because they're open seven days.

Best Mexican Restaurant in Palm Beach

Taqueria Elvira

Any Mexican will tell you that there's no such thing as a Best Mexican Restaurant. Ex-pats from south of the border know that you go to one taqueria for your tripe soup, another for your mole, a third for your chile rellenos, and a fourth for your tacos barbacoa — depending on who's in the kitchen. At Taqueria Elvira, hidden in a half-empty shopping plaza behind Congress Avenue, the Osorio family knows how to make an eminently respectable burrito ($8.99 for one filled with beef tongue and served with refried beans and yellow rice), an excellent huevos a la mexicana ($4.99 with rice, beans, and tortillas), and a fine, smoke-infused taco barbacoa ($1.75). But the thing that's going to knock you flat with admiration and change the way you think about lunch forever is the quesadilla ($1.99 each). Forget everything you think you know about quesadillas — those limp, tasteless rounds served as "small plates" at fern bars, filled with Monterey Jack and swimming in bottled tomato salsa. These are not those. The Elvira quesadilla is a pillowy, oily, handmade tortilla, maybe three-quarters of an inch thick, folded over and sealed around homemade queso fresco (or shredded chicken or picadillo), then topped with more shredded queso and lettuce and served with a fruity, fiery green salsa. The texture of the tortillas is spongy and melting, like the lightest pancake. The cheese inside is a cross between freshly churned butter and artisanal mozzarella, and its effect is to induce involuntary moans. This quesadilla is ideally matched with a bottle of Mexican Victoria beer — a pilsnery, darkish brew — or a glass of horchata, a milky rice water sweetened with vanilla and cinnamon.

Best French Restaurant

Café Claude

Café Claude comes as a blessed relief: Both atmosphere and menu are stubbornly, willfully oblivious to trends — it's like meeting a lost tribe of French people who've been living undiscovered in Deerfield since the end of the Second World War. The décor hasn't changed a thread since Mary and Claude Pottier opened the place in 1989, and enough time has passed that the drop ceilings, weird carpet, and silk plants exert a wry charm. By the time the cheerful French servers (all of them well-preserved ladies of a certain age in cashmere sweaters, knee-length skirts, and sensible shoes) get through with you, you'll be thoroughly won over. Delights are many, in a very classic French bistro vein: homemade duck confit with du Puy lentils ($12.95), saumon mariné with caviar, asparagus tips, and dill sauce ($12.95), or even a simple green salad dressed in luscious, creamy tarragon dressing (gratis, with your entrée). Outstanding specials might include a creamy, melting yellowtail snapper poached in lobster sauce with sides of skinny green beans and pommes Duchesse; or a slow-cooked cassoulet of white beans that have absorbed all the wild, unfamiliar flavors of sausage, smoked pork rinds, lamb, and preserved duck — and you'll be taking at least half of it home ("Eeets even bettair tomorrow"). Entrées can get pricey (roasted rack of lamb with ratatouille is $31.50), but prix fixe and early-bird menus are good value. A dessert cart wheeled around at the end is irresistible — pear tart with almonds, raspberry tart with custard, chocolate torte, cheesecake topped with fresh strawberries — and a porcelain pitcher of sweet cream tipped over your plate as the grande finale.

Best Place to Dine Alone

Chez Andree

Born a ramblin' man? If your footloose life leaves you occasionally dateless, you need to know how to fully appreciate a meal in your own company. And that goes for you single girls too who might occasionally want to partake of a solo supper without the condescension or the sneer on some waitron's mug that signifies "woman alone = crappy tip." Mosey your moss-free self over to this charming French bistro, perched seaside with one of the best ocean views in the south, a breezy patio strung with lights, a staff of waiters who couldn't be less obnoxious and an interesting list of French wines by the glass and half bottle. Owner Bruno Barnegaud and his American wife, Kathleen, have been serving lone Montreal businessmen plates of pâté de campagne and moules marinires since they took the place over from a friend five years ago (who'd named the place after his Maman). People-watching on this strip of sand is unsurpassed — the beautiful, the bad, and the ugly stroll hand in hand along the renovated three miles of Broadwalk to keep you amused while you dig into delicacies that combine the best of the Caribbean — the fresh fish, the curries — with classic Bordeaux dishes.

Best Indian Restaurant

Madras Cafe

Despite a sizable Broward population of immigrants from the subcontinent where vegetarian cooking is a high art, there's still a dearth of Indian restaurants here willing to venture into the uncommon cuisine of south India. But Madras continues to buck the trends, serving idli, sambar, and those delectable little savory doughnuts called dhai vada, plus lesser-known dishes from the southern coast — like the marvelous, hot sour Malabar fish stew made with kingfish and curry leaves. Excellently cooked North Indian clay-oven specials are here too, like chicken tandoori marinated in yogurt that falls off the bone in one lovely bite. And anybody still craving lamb vindaloo and chicken korma won't go hungry. But it's the feel of the place, in all its bustle and warm scents, in the melodious accents coming from the next room — where extended Indian families come for the buffet — that really makes Madras a place to lodge deep in your heart. The staff can't seem to stop smiling, busboys keep refilling your basket of fiery papadams, and owner Soye Thomas, originally from Madras, really cares if you're happy with the number of dried peppers in your vegetable chettinad.

Best Jamaican Restaurant

Hot Pot

What can you say? It's a Ting thing. When you get a craving for grapefruit soda and jerk chicken, you want to go where the meat is spicy and tender and the Ting is larger than that glass-bottle thimble they pass off at most Jamaican joints. And on top of that, you want your meal served up hot with a side of booty jam videos, under the glow of fly orange neon lights. Yeah, you want the Hot Pot. This strip-mall staple knows how to stew its ox, curry its goat, and jerk its chicken better than anyone else around, and they built window boxes into each booth's wall so you can kick back and watch B.E.T. while you E-A-T. The lunch specials pile on enough caramelized plantains, shredded cabbage, and brown gravy to keep you going until noon tomorrow, so consider it $5 well-spent. Or, if you're more of a breakfast person, swing by earlier and try out their morning fish dishes. Then go brag to all your friends that you had a kick-ass breakfast with Beyoncé and Usher — don't elaborate.

Best Honduran Restaurant

La Costa

Along with Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Haitian, Mexican, and Cuban eateries, western Fort Lauderdale now boasts at least three Honduran restaurants that have all sprung up in the past year. La Costa, housed in an old doughnut shop across from a car dealership, looks to be popular with Central Americans and curious gringos alike. If you're just getting hip to Honduran cooking, try the baleadas (Spanish for "single shot") first. Served everywhere from Tegucigalpa to La Ceiba, baleadas are hot, fat, fluffy tortillas smeared with beans, crema, and strips of marinated steak. They function as utilitarian staples, appropriate for everything from breakfast to midnight snack. Some call it a Honduran burrito, and two of them are positively belly-stuffing and set you back a whole $7.50. Judging solely by the baleadas barometer, La Costa comes out way ahead, but it's worth noting that the specialty house breakfast (just your typical Honduran fare of eggs, meat, white cheese, refried beans, crema) bests the competition as well.

Best Thai Restaurant

Thai Bayshore

Few things in life spread happiness like the discovery of a good Thai restaurant in the neighborhood. We're not talking some fusion club with a DJ and a parade of supermodel wannabes sipping saketinis — that just spreads ennui. But a pretty place, preferably run by a not-unfriendly Thai family that offers takeout or dine in and stays open seven days for lunch and dinner, that's a fail-safe pleasure-generating machine. Because a body has to get its fill of pad Thai and tom yum gai, and a body has to have an affordable place to park its butt with a few pals on a rainy Tuesday night, right? Thai Bayshore, centrally located in Lauderdale, fully embodies this simple proposition. A husband from Bangkok, Pat Siri, with ten years' experience in the restaurant biz, waits tables while his wife, Nida, cooks from family recipes. Both of them personally chose the decorative details (wooden screens, Buddha statues, a stone-relief sculpture) and had them shipped in from Bangkok. The pace is leisurely, the colors soothing, and the music low enough to encourage interesting and intimate conversation. The presentation of the dishes is beautiful and the ingredients sublimely fresh. In summer, the Siris celebrate mango season by bringing in bushels of ripe fruit from a local monastery and serving them with sweet, sticky rice doused in coconut milk — a serendipitous sensual pleasure that also happens to be good for you.

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