Navigation
Support Us
Search

Best Menu Typo

Geronimo's Casual Gourmet Grill & Bar

You have to love it when a restaurant offers a special called the "10-Ounce Sauteed Lobster Tail with Fresh Muscles." We always told you those homonyms were tricky. Sea watt wee mien?

Best Mexican Restaurant

David's on the Avenue

The gringo lingo of the appellation doesn't give much clue here that chef-owner David Peraza's fare is not just authentic Mexican, but haute as well. Yet one glance at the tongue-twisting menu, filled with items such as ixtapa poblano (guajillo peppers stuffed with blue crabmeat, green olives, and Chihuahua cheese) and xochimilco (an ancho chili-flavored crepe stuffed with cuitlacoche, or corn fungus, and serrano peppers), and you'll be convinced. A little cultural interference comes via American items such as chicken wings on the menu and a '70s disco pretending to be Studio 54 upstairs, but nothing short of an earthquake could interfere with the palate's pleasure here -- and that would only be if, thanks to the shaking, you accidentally bite your tongue.

Best Microbrewed Beer

11

Adam Fine's career began in his living room as a hobby. Then he got the idea that has propelled him to become a veritable pioneer in Broward County. The thought process worked kind of like this: South Florida is really hot. Hot climates tend to call for lighter beers, but a lot of people really love dark beers. So he came up with 11, a dark beer that is at the same time refreshing and not as heavy as, say, Guinness. He toiled over his home-brew lab, and when he came up with the right recipe, he took it to a microbrewery in Orlando and, lo and behold, he had himself a little business, which he calls Fresh Beer, Inc. Today, Fine markets four types of beer, which one can find at several bars in South Florida, the most centrally located being The Poor House in Fort Lauderdale. Swing by one night and raise your glasses to South Florida's number one braumeister.

Best Natural Food/Vegetarian Restaurant

Sara's

When you go veggie, must you accept that the days of ordering a McDonald's Supreme Bacon Quadruple Chili Cheeseburger are over? Hell, no! Check out Sara's, a kosher restaurant that boasts a thick menu of vegan and vegetarian food. This location and its sister eatery in Miami serve ersatz-carnivore fare such as no-chicken quesadillas, sandwiches bulging with faux corned beef, and country-fried fake steak. Though the food is good, you could always pop a Boca Burger in the microwave at home for a similar culinary experience. No, the thrill comes from sitting on a McDonald's-style bench and ordering something sloppy. It feels so wrong -- in a good way.

Best Neighborhood Restaurant

Gusto's Grill & Bar

If a neighborhood restaurant is all things to all people, then Gusto's is the epitome of a "won't-you-be-my-neighbor" eatery. For the "just folks," it's club sandwiches, chicken quesadillas, and calzones. For the kids, it's chicken tenders, crayons, a place mat that doubles as a coloring book, and a soda with a lid and a straw. For the late sleepers, it's Saturday and Sunday brunch from 11:30 a.m. till 3 p.m., with the added attraction of $2 bloody marys. Executives can have their salmon BLTs and blackened chicken penne catered or, if both money and time are short, have the menu faxed to the office and preorder for a quick, on-premises lunch. And ladies drink and play pool for free every Thursday night, while the hard drinkers indulge in two-for-one happy hours daily. What could be friendlier than that?

Best New Restaurant

Roy's Restaurant

There once was a chef named Roy

Whose Hawaiianish fare was pure joy.

He opened some places

We're stuffing our faces

And now he's a happy boy.

Best Pan-Asian Restaurant

Echo

It's rare enough when a new restaurant opens in Palm Beach that has all the elements for success: a stellar management team, plenty of money behind it, and a topnotch bill of fare. But it's even more unusual for one critic after another to crack that oyster and find a perfect pearl every time. That's the reception Echo has received, and it's worth repeating: This pan-Asian jewel, according to the experts among us, is flawless. Dishes hail from the four corners of the Far East and range from Thai shrimp soup to tempura pork tenderloin to Peking duck, carved tableside. What they all have in common is simple: purposefulness of preparation. The purpose? Culinary greatness. The result? Ditto. Or should we say "Echo"?

Best Pizza

Pizza Girls

Girls, girls, girls: You've got a good thing going here. You set up shop with absolutely no real pizza experience and manage, in only 18 months or so, to convert everyone in the area to a PG junkie. Your competitors say it's sabotage. They say making a "lasagna" pizza is sacrilegious. They can't quite figure out what you do to make your New York-style pizza so crisp and traditional yet innovative at the same time. To tell the truth, we can't either. But we know we gotta have it. So don't, under any circumstances, blow this gig. And yes, girls, that's an order.

Best Place to Gamble

Steak houses

At stake in the ultimate gamble, as any bungee jumper can tell you, is your life. But these days you don't have to jump off a bridge with a harness around your waist to cop that thrill. You can simply eat the wrong meat. In the current climate that means brain food -- quite literally. Mad cow disease, or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), is a prion (microscopic protein particle) disease found in an animal's nervous system. Humans can acquire a form of BSE, called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), by ingesting infected brains, spinal cords, retinas, or even internal organs, which are often found in ground beef and beef byproducts. And while, unlike Europe, the United States hasn't discovered any BSE-infected cattle or reported a single case of vCJD, there's always a first time. So nix on those sweetbreads and mystery-meat sausages -- unless, of course, you don't mind a gamble.

Best Place to Pick Up a Picnic

Croissan'Time French Bakery & Fine Foods

If you've been to France, you know that the French are seriously into food. And if you've been to Croissan'Time, the French bakery, delicatessen, and fine-food emporium, you know that Bernard Casse has taken his homeland's culinary obsession to delectable extremes since 1986. From the southwest of France, Casse trained as a pastry chef and has worked many a professional kitchen. He's obsessed with natural ingredients, the "quality of the basics," particularly as they relate to bread. And well he should be, since Croissan'Time on average turns out 2000 loaves of different types of bread daily, including some 500 baguettes. Once you've purchased that long loaf, head to the charcuterie-épicerie wing for imported cheeses, pâtés, or meats such as mergez, andouillete, boudin, or confit. And don't forget the bottle of wine for your tailgate picnic or the sweets: filled croissants, cakes, tarts, candies, or chocolates (the last of which are not candy to the French, they're part of the five basic food groups). The food is delicious and luscious to look at, the one-stop shopping suits the American mentality, and if you didn't hear the swish of traffic on Federal Highway, you'd swear you were in a Paris café listening to the strains of Jacques Brel.

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