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Best Cuban Sandwich

Tropical Café

Why such passion for a sandwich that's not even good for you? Because it tastes so good, that's why. And the sandwich at Tropical Café is an exemplar of the genre. A huge, pressed Cuban roll stuffed with ham, Swiss cheese, and home-cooked pork (roasted to tenderness for four and a half hours) can easily get you through the day and only set you back $4.99, including a small bag of potato chips and a soda. But if you're especially hungry, there's a special or even a supremo, each a third again as large. If you'd rather not take all your daily cholesterol in one shot, a medianoche is a smaller version on a sweet roll with honeyed ham substituted. And if you're just not in the mood for the Earl of Sandwich's clever device to enable him to stay at the gaming tables during meals, Tropical Café boasts a diverse menu of Cuban specialties such as shredded beef, carne con papas, or lechón asado (that's roast pork to you, gringo) -- each served with rice and black beans, plantains, and that ubiquitous soda. Tropical Café is owned and operated by Humberto Fajardo and his wife, Sol Maria. While the operation on Andrews Avenue is an open-air experience where patrons perch on high stools lined along a sidewalk counter, the Searstown café is an indoor 50-seater. Maybe the latter is not as picturesque, says Berto, who came to Miami from Havana at age 19 and has worked in Cuban restaurants since, but it is air-conditioned!

Best Desserts

Stork's Bakery and Coffeehouse

This elegant little café offers a wide range of happy endings -- from a simple ginger cookie to a sinful Chocolate Decadence. It's all good. In addition to classic cakes, this neighborhood favorite mixes things up with trendy chocolate bread pudding or an upscale rendition of carnival fare. "It's all air and sugar," laughed one recent customer after happily biting into an elephant ear. A fitting description: The main ingredients at Stork's are sweetness and light.

Best Dim Sum

King Palace Chinese Bar-B-Q Restaurant

It wouldn't be dim sum without shrimp and pork playing leading roles. And in this otherwise nondescript strip-mall Chinese eatery, the little crustaceans and the "other white meat" combine to steal the show -- which runs from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. (The restaurant is open until 10 p.m. on weekdays and 11 p.m. Friday through Sunday.) Whether steamed whole with leeks inside a dumpling; minced and blended with dough, then fried into a fluffy ball; or chopped and wrapped with a won ton skin in a siu mai, the shrimp here is uniformly delicate and tasty. The pork siu mai also bursts with delicious meat, peppers, and ginger, while the sweet barbecued-pork pastry is somehow both comforting and sophisticated. Top it all off with a few squares of pan-fried turnip pudding and some sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves, and Hong Kong won't feel quite so far away anymore. Prices aren't bad, either. They run from $2.15 to $3.95 per plate.

Best Donuts

Krispy Kreme

Yes, we named this place last year, too. But when something is the best, it's the best, and that's all there is to it. Krispy Kreme rules the donut world; all else is just fat-fried dough. Arrive when these deliciously soft, airy treats are fresh out of the oven, and you'll finally understand why the good Lord gave you taste buds.

Best Early-Bird Special

Sonoma Grille

The restaurant prefers to call them "sunset specials," which made more sense before the end of daylight savings caused the sun to set at, oh, 8 p.m. or so. But why quibble? The fact remains that this eatery, which opens daily at 4 p.m., offers a great gourmet deal: soup or salad, main course, potato and vegetable of the day, nonalcoholic beverage, and dessert. Prices range from $11.95 for a perfectly roasted chicken in lemon-thyme broth to $16.95 for herb-marinated lamb chops. Then there's the Wiener schnitzel, the potato-crusted salmon, and the duck in wild berry sauce, all of which are freshly prepared and served with an extra dose of friendliness -- and plenty of sunshine.

Best Ethnic Food Store

Middle East Bakery

Just a stuffed grape leaf's throw from the county courthouse, Adib Salloum's little gem of a store would be worth the trip for the fresh pita alone -- earthy, chewy, and delicate all at once. The fresh hummus and tabbouleh are terrific; big barrels of imported olives from all over the Mediterranean take up the shop's center stage. The cooler case to the rear holds feta and kasseri cheeses from a similar broad selection of lands. A shelf of tapes by the register is stacked with a nice selection of Middle Eastern music. But the best entertainment is Adib's younger brother Tony: This good-natured kibitzer would sell you your own rug off your floor if he got the chance -- and make you think you got a bargain in the process. Check the parking lot for signs of the Palm Beach ladies who venture over the bridge to do some grocery shopping here. If those people deign to cross the Intracoastal for Middle East Bakery, the place must be something truly special.

Best Expensive Italian Restaurant

Bice

Yes, it's a classic, this link of a very popular, worldwide chain of high-end Italian restaurants. And yes, some of the menu items -- carpaccio, for example -- tend toward the tried-and-true. The restaurant is also loud, crowded, and filled with socialites. But really, when you're talking about receiving such delicacies as squid-ink ravioli filled with minced fish and seafood, or air-dried beef with black olives and cherry mozzarella, or veal chop in port wine sauce, it's hard to argue that this isn't some of the finest Italian fare around. Plus it's certainly expensive enough to qualify: Appetizers alone range from $16 to $80.

Best Homemade Pasta

Mimi's Ravioli

Other than your Italian relatives' house on a major holiday, this is the place to be for fresh homemade pasta. The place got its start in 1970 when Joe and Mimi Termine brought a couple of ravioli machines from New York City. Joe figured he'd make some ravioli, maybe sell a bit, and have a nice little hobby. A few years later, he was dragging his cousin, fellow Brooklynite Frank Billisi, down to Hollywood to help him with the business. Billisi then bought the shop from the Termines and has never looked back. The place now boasts all manner of strange machines, constantly churning sauces, kneading dough, and stretching what will eventually become spaghetti. As for those ravioli that gave the place its start and its name: They take Chef Boyardee, tar him, feather him, brand a big MIMI on his butt, and then toss him out of town on his ear.

Best Hot Sauce

Hot Pot Jamaican Restaurant

Along with the tasty Jamaican specialties served up at this Lauderhill eatery -- callaloo; mackerel; jerk pork, chicken, and fish; brown stew chicken; and curry goat -- some of the spiciest yet yummiest hot sauces in the land are made at Hot Pot. This golden-red dew of the gods is full of floating seeds harvested from the Scotch bonnet pepper, each one capable of decimating an entire tongue. The rub that the Hot Pot crew slathers over its jerk meats is plenty blazealicious too, but the Chernobylesque, Three Mile Island-ish, China Syndrome-like sauce is guaranteed to make your eyes water, your scalp sweat, and your life flash before your eyes. It's that hot.

Best Ice Cream

Sloan's

Even the bathrooms at this neon-color monument to all things fattening are deliciously tempting. People flock to the lime green-and-orange ice cream parlor to dare friends and strangers to step behind the clear glass doors of the bathrooms, which are in full view of those waiting in line for their favorite confection. Luckily for those who prefer to keep some parts of their lives private, a mere flip of the switch activates liquid crystals, making the transparent walls safely opaque. The mutable glass bathroom doors are just one reason to visit the dizzyingly cute ice cream parlor across from the public fountain in downtown West Palm Beach. The hot pink décor, which looks like a throwback to the Roaring '20s, is alive with hand-painted murals of cherubs clutching bowls of ice cream and pulling garlands filled with cakes, cookies, brownies, pies, hot fudge sundaes, and banana splits. It's enough to make even the lactose-intolerant among us drool. Lucky for the lactose dependent, relief is in sight. The 25-plus flavors of homemade ice cream, the Heath Bar crunch mousse cake, the toffee, and the caramel bars are even more amazing than the bathroom doors. And according to reliable sources, the extra weight normally generated from eating such delicacies somehow magically disappears -- like the view of the bathrooms.

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