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Best Place to Eat With a Shark

Blacktip Reef

Greg McMenaman has come up with a concept to spur any flagging appetites at Blacktip Reef: a pet shark that trolls its wall-sized tank immediately adjacent to tables where you're chowing down your Delray fish taco or Bermuda conch chowder. There's something about that vision of pure, insatiable hunger that makes you want to keep ordering conch fritters and raw oysters, and keeps you longing for pan-seared grouper with a little mango risotto on the side. Blacktip Reef is as much neighborhood bar as it is gourmet fish house — the crowd ordering baskets of steamers at the bar, or showing up for "shark hour" drink specials, is drawn from a cross-section of Delray. Here's where the minnow swims happily with the barracuda, the lobster with the hammerhead: lawyers, deep sea fishing guides, secretaries, the temporarily unemployed, bricklayers, PR ladies, and yachtsmen glide fin to fin in Blacktip's Caribbean-hued light, only baring their teeth for another bite of blackened wahoo.

Best Place to Renounce Meat-Eating

Woodlands Vegetarian Indian Restaurant

Eric Barton

So you have a vegetarian girlfriend. It's cool, man, it happens to the best of us. Thing is, she's awesome — sweet, thoughtful, and totally willing to accompany you on your weekly trips to Casa Del Carne, doing it all for the glory of love (cue Peter Cetera of Chicago). That means a lot, you know, so it's time you showed her you care by adopting her lifestyle for an evening. Take her to Woodlands Vegetarian Indian Restaurant. You won't find a single dish with meat on the menu, and most are completely vegan, too. You won't be fulfilling any cravings for rib eye steak, but you will feel an unsettling urge to ravage their fabulous chana bhatura, a pumpkin-shaped balloon of fried dough and accompanying sweet-curried chickpeas. You won't miss lamb or chicken curry either, not when there's baigan bharta, avail, and mutter paneer to sop up with your naan. And you'll swear there was meat stock in the sambar, because Woodland's version of the ubiquitous South Indian soup is so savory. But there's not. See, this is a place where you can feel vindicated in relinquishing your carnivorous ways. You're going to fall in love, but that's OK. Just do us meat-eaters a favor: When your girlfriend wants to go out again, don't tell her it's Woodlands you're secretly pining for. We've got appearances to keep up, after all.

Best Place to Stumble Off a Boat for a Meal

Shooters Waterfront Café

Courtesy of Shooter's Waterfront

Chaz: Let's take my baby out for a spin this weekend.

Jackson: No man, it's my turn.

Blake: Aw shucks, fellas, how am I ever gonna pick up babes if I'm cruising the Intracoastal in my buddies' boats? Let's take mine!

Life is indeed rough in the "Venice of America," especially when you and all your friends own yachts. But fear not, well-heeled one. Shooters has space to dock your 25-footer. Their dockmaster even takes reservations and offers valet service. The best part? Everyone at the café gets to see you walk off your very own boat. Chicks will be swarming!

Best Place When Someone Else is Paying

Rachel's Steakhouse

When we rope a high-roller, we make them take us to Rachel's, where we end up with more filet and filly than we know what to do with. In fact, we have buddies we cultivate for nothing so much as their willingness to let us tag along and share their strip (New York), their tail (lobster), their hot potatoes, their creamed spinach, and the gaggle of lovelies that materialize whenever VIPs come through the door. The fun at Rachel's is as bottomless as the dancers, and the ATM situated conveniently at the entrance; the night as endless as a loop of "Me So Horny" — Rachel's serves dinner with a side of booty and late breakfast until 1:30 a.m., and it serves drinks until 4 on weekends. The ladies are tireless in their attentions. By the time your pal's bankroll gives out — "Sir, we're sure the ATM is not broken" — you won't remember a thing."

Best Potato Chip

Grapevine Gourmet

Photo courtesy of Mustard Seed Bistro
Consider for a moment the potato chip. This forgettable culinary staple dresses the side of many a lunch plate, but more often than not it's hastily exchanged for coleslaw or the more health-conscious fruit salad. But at the Grapevine Gourmet, the potato chip has been elevated to an art form. Order any of the artfully prepared sandwiches at this West Broward lunch spot and they'll be accompanied by a cascade of potato perfection you'd be a fool to turn away. The secret is in the waffle-cut — it's what makes the Grapevine's frites so uniformly crisp, yet at the same time as light and airy as a starch-enhanced cloud. The cut also works to wick away excess oil, so you end up tasting potato, not fry-o-lator. Just one helping of these bad boys and you'll be hitting up the take-away counter on your way out the door, buying 'em up by the bagful (at only $5 per pound) for further adventures in chipland.

Best Prepared Foods

Pa' de Gennaro's Gourmet Deli

The only relationship Pa' deGennaro's deli has to the Italian restaurant of the same name next door is proximity. The "deli" — if you're thinking tongue sandwiches, forget it — is run by a Swiss guy named Ulrich Koepf, who apparently got the idea somewhere that when Americans think "take out," they think "pumpkin seed crusted salmon with five spiced sweet potato mash and mango citrus sauce." Actually, Koepf has been around SoFla for quite a while running upscale restaurants like Bistro Mezzaluna and Café Picasso; now he's brought his culinary talents to bear on food made specifically to be carried home in a paper bag and reheated, so that you and your paramour can have a romantic, candlelit dinner à deux without the butter in your hair (unless you want to get up to that sort of thing deliberately). On a Friday night, for example, you can haul home lamb shank braised in Rioja sauce, the catch of the day, a whole rotisserie chicken "herbs de Provence," or a seafood bisque with chives; on Saturday an osso bucco; and the following Monday, chicken Scarpiello with an array of scrumptious side dishes. The place also sells the wine with which to pair these feasts, of course. Sure beats the hell out of chop suey.

Best Reason to Renounce Vegetarianism

Chima Brazilian Steakhouse

Brazilian steakhouses have fantastic salad bars. Seriously. Between the hearts of palm, array of cheeses, and various salads, pretty much any vegetarian can walk away from a meal more than satisfied. But if those skewers of beef that keep passing by seem at all appealing, this is the place to order up some meat and go out with a bang. Leave the world of rabbit food behind. After the server carves off a slab of juicy top sirloin, you can dive into the pork ribs, followed by some lamb, chicken, and sausage. Go whole hog! While a rodizio in Brazil might lead you into totally uncharted territory — think grilled chicken hearts — this stateside feast will help you ease back into life as a carnivore.

Best Restaurant Decor

The Four Rivers

Paula Palakawong and Ravin Nakjaroen have designed a brilliantly soothing space to showcase their menu of new Thai cuisine at the Four Rivers, one of the dreamiest rooms you'll ever set foot in. Forget an afternoon at the spa, a meal at the Four Rivers will do more to lower your heart rate and blood pressure and induce beta waves than a month of massages. Raised pools are a lucent canvas for floating candles and water plants; a wall of lotus flowers showcases each single stem in its own pristine, uplit vase; on another wall, Buddhist poetry worked in bas relief makes a kind of intuitive sense as design, even if the strange curling script is illegible. You sink into buttery leather on the banquettes, note the whorl of the wood grain in the polished tables and the solid geometric shapes of the tableware, and begin to appreciate detail again. A veil of darkness has been laid over everything, occasionally punctuated by shocks of luminosity, like a low-volume conversation between light and dark, presence and absence, here and there.

Best Restaurant for a Double Date

Sushi Blues and Blue Monk Lounge

"So how did you meet? During a liposuction appointment? How sweet. And you say you were married? Oh, I'm sorry: you're still married — but you two share a deep connection that needs to be explored. Right, I understand. Do we what? Swing? Oh, no — I mean, we aren't ones to judge or anything like that, but we also don't blow other couples. Thank you for the offer." Double dates can be awkward, but there are a few ways to troubleshoot tricky situations. Pick a restaurant with an exquisite menu: At Sushi Blues and Blue Monk Lounge, you know that whether you go for the sweet potato French fries, the special roll of the day, or any of the delicious noodle dishes, you're going to wind up with something worth raving about, and so will everyone else at your table. You also want to select a place with ambiance: This is where the Blue Monk half comes in; on Friday and Saturday nights, session cats populate Blue's inside stage under the direction of jazz musician Kenny Millions. If conversation gets thin, just redirect your gaze to the stage. Or better, get up and dance. There's also excellent people-watching through the oversized front windows; you'll see the best of downtown Hollywood right from your table. To break the tension, you'll want booze: Sushi Blues not only has a full liquor bar, its staff knows how to use it so well that you won't even notice that the other couple has been talking about their cats for the last 30 minutes.

Best Restaurant for Kids

Rainforest Café

Rainforest Café has been at Sawgrass Mills for more than a decade, but for tykes and the young at heart, the restaurant's gimmicks still seem fresh. Lightning flashes. Thunder cracks. A thin mist wafts. Monkeys chatter. Drums beat out an African rhythm. It's all simulated, of course, but there's enough going on to keep even the squirmiest children amused long enough to eat a meal. The Disney-esque animals are naturally a big hit with the little ones: Thanks to animatronics, a python wiggles, a larger-than-life butterfly flaps its wings, and an elephant charges through the brush. The menu is amusing, too: For kids there are items like "Jurassic Chicken Tidbits," which are dinosaur-shaped nuggets, while for weary moms and dads there are signature cocktails like the Tropical Toucan and the Margarilla and an enormous selection of dishes from appetizers to desserts. For those searching for extra sensory stimulation, on Wednesday evenings kids can get balloon animals, get their faces painted, and hang with a guy in a green tree-frog costume.

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