Navigation
Support Us
Search

Best Gelato

Sonny's Gelato Café

We'll be honest. We went for the gelato but stayed for the accordion player, and when that beautiful septuagenarian belted "That's Amore," we had to wipe a tear from the corner of our eye. On Wednesday nights at Sonny's Gelato Café in Boca Raton, you too can be serenaded while relaxing outdoors, the wind caressing your hair as you lick a nutella and banana gelato. The Italian family who runs it knows their stuff — they've got creamy, sweet cassata Siciliana, stracciatella, and zuppa Inglese gelato — and it's all made healthy, with skim milk and not much fat. The only problem with Sonny's is that it tends to run out of things, as retirement home aids often schlep their entire crew over for an afternoon treat. It's therefore beneficial to show up early and often. You can't miss the mango-colored building on Federal Highway, just north of 20th Street. We also recommend the appetizers, soups, salads, panini, and classic Italian hot subs, served daily from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Best Soul Food

Betty's Restaurant and Barbecue

Candace West
When it comes to Southern cooking, in certain neighborhoods, there are soul-food restaurants on almost every corner. With such an abundance, it's hard to come up with an appropriate barometer for quality, since most of the menus at these restaurants are identical. It sounds like fun research, but after awhile, all the collard greens start to taste the same, the candied yams have the same texture, and the joy of Southern cooking gets lost in mediocre food shacks. The one venue locally that set itself apart is Betty's Soul Food. It's got the best macaroni and cheese in town, bar none, and its short ribs of beef are good enough to make a customer want to jump up and slap his own mama. The stewed chicken over rice is as succulent a meal as one could ask for, and fish sandwiches are cheap and filling. Instead of fooling around with a bunch of dessert dishes, Betty's keeps it simple — bread pudding, cake, and sweet potato pie. That may seem like a small selection, but there's a lot of love poured into those desserts, and if you have to choose, go for the bread pudding. The staff there is friendly to newcomers but knows how to chide and joke with the regulars enough to create plenty of countertop camaraderie. Located in the historically black Sistrunk neighborhood for the past 30 years, Betty's is a staple that's worth visiting time and time again.

Best Cold Treat on a Summer Day

Birthday Cake Gelati Richie's Gourmet Italian Ices

If you haven't visited the little ice hut on the southwest corner of Dixie and Commercial, you must be a moron. We are serious about this. How fucking stupid do you have to be to miss out on the birthday cake gelati — a combination of ice cream and yellow cake-flavored Italian ice, complete with multicolored sprinkles? Richie's has been around for 15 years, ever since owner Richie Childs came down from Philly, went to the beach, and desired a cool treat. He couldn't find one worth a damn, so he opened his own little hut, where you can find him selling ices, gelati, coffee, and snacks Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. (and from 9 a.m. Saturday). On the seventh day, the God of Italian ices rests, and some kid mans the stand. But it doesn't really matter — the ices, which are made through a secret process with fruit juices, fruit extracts, sugar, and water, taste exactly the same. In case you are so stupid that you've never tasted a homemade vanilla chip ice or a cotton candy ice, keep your eyes peeled for the square, mint-green building with the apricot-orange canopy. Drive your idiot self around the oval and up to the drive-up window, apologize for taking so long, and go nuts.

Best Deli in Broward

The Daily Squeeze Café

Don't let the small signs and bland décor fool you inside Fort Lauderdale's Daily Squeeze. What the quaint, one-room deli lacks in ambiance is quickly made up for in quality of food and service. Free samples of freshly blended smoothies await every customer walking through the door, and it's not uncommon to get a free cup of organic butternut squash soup while you're waiting. Friendly owner Bob Mourry isn't trying to schmooze his way into the red; he simply realizes the wealth of competition he has as a downtown eatery. When the deli is minutes from closing and a patron needs avocado, a fresh green aguacate is pulled from the cooler without a second thought and sliced generously onto sandwiches at no extra charge. Most items in stock are organic or fat-free, and items that fall outside of this criterion (like the lobster bisque and king crab chowder) are slowly heated, never burned, and well worth the extra calories. The menu here isn't cluttered with countless meat options like most New York-style delis and instead offers a core selection of eight sandwiches, allowing customers to add whatever toppings they like. That might sound far-fetched, but with such oddball items as presidential feta and capers listed as toppings, finicky eaters can delight in the customer's-never-wrong attitude that the Daily Squeeze emanates every time a person walks through the door.

Best Crepe

Rendez-Vous Bakery & Bistro

There aren't many crepes on the menu at Rendez-Vous, because it's not a creperie. If you were to chat up a chef, he'd probably wax poetic about the place's desserts and breads, because Rendez-Vous is, in fact, a bakery. No matter: The place's four crepe offerings will inspire flowery declarations of fealty from the foulest Francophobes. The veggie crepe is delicious and light, with the thin and teasingly chewy buckwheatesque pancake wrapped around tomato, squash, eggplant, red pepper, and zucchini and drizzled with olive oil. While most French food makes you sleepy, this thing makes you want to run a marathon. The ham-and-swiss crepe is similarly remarkable: The cheese blends rapturously with the béchamel until you can't tell the two apart. But it's the chicken Florentine and seafood crepes that ultimately carry the day. These two meals border on the sacramental. They're miracles of creaminess, subtle textures, salt, and sweetness. The lobster mixed with the béchamel in the seafood crepe makes you want to drink a bucket of the stuff, bisque-style. Incredibly, these things are light on the pocketbook: Lunchtime crepes range from $8.50 to $12.50, and at dinner, they run a mere $10.75 to $13.50. They're big, but you may find yourself eating two, just because you can.

Best Deli in Palm Beach

3G's Gourmet Deli

Lots of South Florida delis tout themselves as "New York-style," but then they lack the basics: overstuffed sandwiches, a three-hour early-bird special (in this case, 3 to 6 p.m.), and the stocking of the delicacy meat called, quite simply, "cow tongue," which the uninitiated cringe at and the connoisseurs relish. 3G's has the basics covered, and besides a tongue sandwich on rye, the extensive menu offers everything from cheese blintzes to sweet-and-sour-stuffed cabbage. And nothing goes with a brisket like a cup of chilled borscht (beet soup). Next to the refrigerated cabinet with the corned beefs and pastramis is a second holding no shortage of powdered-sugar sprinkled treats. The linzer is in there — moist raspberry jelly between two sweet but not-too-sweet cookies, with a powdery white dusting on top. 3G's has been dishing up egg, tuna, and whitefish salads since 1986. There's also a fresh fish of the day every day of the week. And for those computer-savvy early birds, check out 3G's website for a $1 off coupon — to redeem it, you must be seated by 6 p.m.

Best Key Lime Pie

Le Tub

In South Florida, few things are taken seriously. Even most hurricane rations are turned into sensible dinners after enough uneventful months slip by. But true Sunshine Staters will go toe-to-toe with any Yankee scoundrel who's trying to pass off store-bought key lime pie as homemade. In fact, they freak the hell out. And after being scorned enough times in the past, key lime gourmands know the warning signs: perfectly triangular solid wedges of (shudder)... gelatinous green stuff. That's just another reason why locals brave the Darwinian seating order at Le Tub: Its key lime pie is the delectably whipped yardstick that all others must measure up to. The globby hunk of goo expands as it sits in its Styrofoam dish, while its condensed milk glue keeps the surface tension cohesive, making every spoonful a creamy victory. The heavy slab of pie is about the size of a wedge of brie and twice as rich, and the staff is never timid about slathering it with Reddi-Wip. Have it served alongside a margarita on the rocks and you'll understand why you waited so long for a table — after all, everyone around you is experiencing the same thing: a short-term love affair with a piece of pie. Savor it.

Best Place to Dine With Gramps

The Restaurant at the Four Seasons

Anybody who's survived eight decades deserves to be treated like the heirloom he is: still in decent condition, if a little scuffed at the edges. A dinner at the opulent Four Seasons Resort will act on this antique like a good coat of Minwax. By the time Grandpa has meandered through five or seven courses courtesy of Chef Hubert Des Marais, with their accompanying wine pairings, he'll be polished to a lustrous sheen. The restaurant known as "The Restaurant" — with all the hushed reverence the title implies, as one might utter the term "The Queen" — is a place calculated to smooth wrinkles and quell creeping senescence: At dusk, the light falling through those high windows is graciously mellow, and waiters in dark suits seem to divine one's needs by sniffing the lily-scented air. The noise level rarely rises above a faint murmur and rustle. Chef Des Marais sends out plate after plate of exquisite tastings derived from local flora and fauna and from the fruit and herb garden he's cultivated at the hotel for years. They say from night to night, he almost never repeats a dish. As for the old man, a final glass of 40-year-old port will make him feel like he could live another half-century.

Best Cookie

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies at Charcuterie Too

Cookies are like magic. A mom was the first one to discover that; she realized that any child could easily be turned into an indentured servant so long as she kept enough of the crumbly, homemade bargaining chips on hand. Now fast-forward into adulthood — that feeling of reward has been hard-wired into you. Work turmoil, pet urination angst, and neurotic fears about bird flu: They can each be alleviated by the ultimate rainy-day remedy — the Perfect Cookie. But where will you find this evasive cure-all? Who holds the secret to the Holy Grail of snacks? The unlikely source of abundant happiness is right here, every weekday in Fort Lauderdale. And (with tax) it sells for a meager $1.01. Charcuterie Too is a charming little mom-and-pop café on the second floor of the Broward County Library's Main Downtown Branch, and inside is a tiny cafeteria line loaded up with mouthwatering daily specials (but for our purposes today, just jump to the end and snag an oatmeal raisin cookie from the basket.) How Charcuterie's staff bakes these cookies so magically, we'll never know. Maybe it's the golden raisins they use in place of banal auburn ones. Or perhaps it's the gooey, brown-sugar adhesive that spins the cookie's delectable web of inner scaffolding. For all we know, the secret ingredient is a combination of freshly plucked fairy wings, dragon eyelashes, and ground-up unicorn horns — and we don't care. Because after consuming one, all of your day's stresses dissipate and you're left feeling like a little kid again. Mom would be so proud of you.

Best Pre-Dinner Cocktails

Trina

"The harsh, useful things of the world, from pulling teeth to digging potatoes, are best done by men who are... starkly sober... But the lovely and useless things, the charming and exhilarating things, are best done by men with, as the phrase is, a few sheets in the wind." Thus spake the great American philosopher H.L. Mencken in 1924, four years into Prohibition. Seventy years later, we're finally experiencing a cocktail renaissance that would have gladdened Mencken's heart and ravaged his liver. The 2000s appear to be better years for heavy tipplers than even the martini-quaffing '50s. These days, our cocktails are made with fresh-fruit infusions, muddled herbs, and exotic spices. They're as heady and complicated as a witch's love potion, usually to similar effect. The best restaurants hire their own drink wizards, who are charged with putting together not only excellent wine and beer lists but also with inventing dazzling menus of cocktails perfectly calibrated to soften us up for whatever follows. Such is Trina's beverage manager, Nick Mautone, who offers Florida-inflected elixirs like the Ruby Red, composed of pink grapefruit muddled with sugar cane syrup, Patrón tequila and citrónge, then rimmed with red sea salt. Or the retro-Mediterranean Rosey Ramos Fizz, a slurry of Bombay gin, rose water, raspberry syrup, cream, and lemon — the sort of drink you can imagine sipping from a chilled thermos while wandering in a Moroccan souk. That Mautone's martinis amply prepare you to tuck in to Chef Don Pintabona's Sicilian-by-way-of-Africa menu is just one of their varied pleasures.
  • 601 N. Fort Lauderdale Beach Blvd., Fort Lauderdale, 33304 Map

Best Of Broward-Palm Beach®

Best Of

Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our terms of use and our privacy policy The New Times Broward-Palm Beach may earn a portion of sales from products & services purchased through links on our site from our affiliate partners. ©2024 New Times BPB, LLC. All rights reserved.
Do Not Sell or Share My Information
Powered By Foundation