Eateries >>

• Personal Best Mmm. Cheese Fries
  Brent Buckman, TV Reality Contestant
  Maybe he lasted only five episodes on The Apprentice, but Brent Buckman, South Florida's own would-be Trumpster, knows comfort food better than most. Buckman, the portly guy with a penchant for irritating Apprentice teammates with his pushy, plow-through-walls approach, has delved deep into the... More >>
• Best Cheap Lunch
  Taqueria Guerrero
  If you want to hustle through your huaraches, thick, fried tortillas stuffed with barbecued goat (two for $7.99), forget it. Be prepared to linger over chips still sizzling from the fryer with two kinds of fresh salsa (green tomatillo and tomato) while -- on weekends, anyway -- a roving band of... More >>
• Best New Restaurant in Broward
  Serafina
  Short of having an actual band of winged seraphim fluttering over that perfect plate of risotto while strumming harps and singing hymns, it's hard to imagine how a meal at Serafina could be any more heavenly. This delicious, romantic retreat in Victoria Park, settled down by a glimmering harbor... More >>
• Best New Restaurant in Palm Beach
  Bova
  Forget it. You can't get in anyway. There are 150 guys ahead of you, and they're all a lot better-looking. Call right now and maybe the girl who answers the phone will put you down for a 5:30 p.m. reservation some Tuesday next month. Of course, you can always try just loafing around outside... More >>
• Best Service in a Restaurant
  SukhoThai
  Good service doesn't have to mean a ma”tre d' with an accent, waiters dressed in dinner jackets, or a sommelier with a silver cup. You don't always have to shell out the shillings to be treated well either. At SukhoThai, owner Susie and her son Eddie hand out their smiles for free, hailing new... More >>
• Best Restaurant Décor
  Jetsetter Lounge
  An unscientific New Times survey has revealed that a liqueur-infused strawberry sundae ($12.95) just tastes better when the nosher is curled up inside the cushiony interior of an exorbitantly pricey Eero Aarnio ball chair. The same survey has also found that it's far more exciting, a real... More >>
• Best Tea House in Broward
  One Tea Lounge
  There's an etiquette to drinking tea that one absorbs by osmosis, which is why you won't generally find tea house customers fiddling over laptops or screaming into cell phones. More likely, they're conversing in hushed tones over cups of liquid that smell like new-mown hay and jasmine blossoms.... More >>
• Best Tea House in Palm Beach
  Serenity Gardens
  Anyone who's ever dissed British food has never sat down to an English cream tea, an entity exactly as decadent as it sounds, in a very proper way, of course. Or put it this way: An English cream tea makes you want to plunge your face directly into the dish of clotted cream, strawberry jam,... More >>
• Best Small Plates
  The Cottage
  Here's a fad we hope lasts longer than celebrity knitting and mood rings: small plates. Because if ever we Americans needed anything badly, it's limited portion sizes. Never mind that you can get around the problem of "never enough" by simply ordering a lot of them -- you'll have a hard time... More >>
• Best Restaurant for Intimate Conversation
  Food Amongst the Flowers
  Red is the rose that in yonder garden grows... but my love is fairer than any. In the soft downlighting at this chic eatery, your paramour will compare favorably with the gigantic floral portraits lining the walls. Lovers both gay and straight rely on Flowers for its cozy, pillow-strewn booths,... More >>
• Best Restaurant for Out-of-Towners
  Joe's Riverside Grille
  Your Northern cousins arrive on your doorstep with four kids, 14 bags, and their heads full of dated, nostalgic drivel about discovering the "real Florida." It's no use explaining that "real Florida" is that line of hotels blocking their view of the beach, the 12 hours they just spent... More >>
• Best Restaurant When Someone Else is Paying
  Marcello's La Sirena
  If Daddy's buying, baby, make him take you to La Sirena. But remind him to make the reservation two weeks in advance, because securing a table here at a reasonable dinner hour is impossible. Easier to persuade a Palm Beach socialite to give up her Lilly pedal-pushers or a rich man to enter the... More >>
• Best Diner (2 Comments)
  Egg 'N' You
  Fifty years is a good age for a diner. That's about the time it takes to burnish the plastic of the booths to a gentle glow and for the waitresses' "honeys" and "What'll y'all haves" to attain a practiced verbal caress. At that age, the menu contains delightful fossils like liverwurst and... More >>
• Best Breakfast on the Beach
  St. Bart's Coffee Co.
  St. Bart's Coffee Co. is kind of like the bar in the TV show Cheers... where everybody knows your name, if you're one of the regulars. This joint, however, gets going at sunrise, when cooks start turning the day sunny-side-up inside the cozy spot on Fort Lauderdale Beach. Crowds jam in here to... More >>
• Best Sunday Brunch
  Victoria Park
  If you'd rather cook your own spam 'n' eggs than have to queue at an omelet station at some overrated brunch emporium, make a reservation at Victoria Park, where you can sit down like a civilized person and let Gary Boylan serve you his Benedict di Parma. Or his potato pancakes with poached... More >>
• Best Restaurant for Kids
  Biddy Early's Irish Restaurant & Bar
  They want to go to McDonald's for lunch. Or Burger King. Or some pizza arcade with jet-engine-like decibel levels of noise. But the choice ain't theirs. They're going to sit and listen to the withered old men at the bar riffle The Mail and call out to the flatscreens showing English Premier... More >>
• Best Barbecue (2 Comments)
  Texas Hold 'Em
  Although there's a delicious new high-end barbecue emporium in Broward out west of 441, there's something about the shack-on-the-side-of-the-road feel of Texas Hold 'Em that gives it the edge. This year-old spot is the kind of place where you can watch the dude out front manning the massive,... More >>
• Best Comfort Food
  Deco
  Even the superrich need comforting sometimes, and restaurateur Paul Darrow, whose experience combines the sublime with the ridiculous -- Cordon Bleu training on the one hand, a chain of Cheeburger Cheeburgers on the other -- seems to have put his finger on a lineup of American recipes guaranteed... More >>
• Best Restaurant in South Broward
  Chez Andrée
  This divine, romantic brasserie is the kind of place visitors to Florida -- or, at least, French Canadian visitors to Florida -- dream of and rarely find. And who'd think to run across it crammed among T-shirt, ice cream, and souvenir shops on the Broadwalk? Chez Andrée's superb... More >>
• Best Restaurant in Fort Lauderdale
  3030 Ocean
  It's time we admitted we've been scooped: New Times readers last year voted 3030 Ocean as Fort Lauderdale's best restaurant. Let us shout it loud: Readers, you were totally on top of it! You had the savoir faire and gastronomical chops to know a mean plate of Australian butterfish when you... More >>
• Best Restaurant in North Broward
  Romantico Ristorante
  When Michael di Bella took over Romantico from his mentor, Tonino Tizzano, a few years ago, he didn't hire an interior designer from Miami to hang glittery curtains and space-age uplighting or take on a bevy of PR ladies to spin his "concept" or set up a website with thumping house music and... More >>
• Best Restaurant in Palm Beach
  Saporissimo
  If you are not happy, they are not happy. Signor and Signora Monegatti, originally from the island of Elba, serve a mind-boggling menu of Tuscan classics -- rabbit soaked in wine and chocolate, venison osso buco, cuttlefish with pasta in black ink, parpardelle with wild-boar sauce, quails cooked... More >>
• Best Steak House
  Gotham City
  Steak houses are like people. Well, not really. But sometimes like our human kin, some are unpretentious old money, solid as a duchess in a pair of Wellies. Others haven't given up the checkered tablecloths and celebrity photos after 60 years of business, but the cuts are still prime and... More >>
• Best Argentine Restaurant
  Che, Pibe
  If the authentic food and Spanish-speaking staff and clientele aren't enough to convince you that Che, Pibe offers an authentic Argentine experience, then simply take a look around this charming Miramar restaurant. In one corner, you'll find the local newspapers from Buenos Aires. In the other... More >>
• Best Caribbean Restaurant
  Sugar Reef
  There are places that make a more authentic jerk or bake their fish in banana leaves or boast a grandmother who cooks from secret recipes passed down through generations of African slaves. But for the slow-time pace of a summer evening on a remote island, it's hard to find a restaurant as... More >>
• Best Chinese Restaurant
  Hong Kong City BBQ
  Hong Kong City isn't the fanciest Chinese restaurant around, though the small, simple room is warm and inviting enough. With the arrival of some more ambitious and diverse Chinese eateries in the area, their Hong Kong and Cantonese cooking is no longer as exotic as it once may have seemed... More >>
• Best Cuban Restaurant
  Mario's Catalina
  Enough that Mario serves you the sourest, strongest mojitos, the most melting skirt steaks doused with citrusy, peppery mojo, and the sweetest, stickiest plantains you've ever tasted. Enough that he has kept pouring the wine, carting out the grilled shrimp and tamales and ham croquettes and... More >>
• Best French Restaurant
  Chez Jean-Pierre
  It's official: French is out. South Florida is evidently still nursing a grudge over that silly Iraq thing, because good French restaurants here have become as rare as ivory-billed woodpeckers in a Louisiana swamp. You think you glimpsed a flash of a red-, white-, and blue-striped flag or heard... More >>
• Best Indian Restaurant
  Taj
  For once, the best is synonymous with the most. In the form of an $8.95 lunch buffet where you can fill and refill your plate with all the spice-redolent delicacies of India: a deliciously gooey sag paneer of spinach and homemade cheese; fragrant eggplant bharta; onion bhaji doused in cream and... More >>
• Best Expensive Italian Restaurant
  Rino's Tuscan Grill
  Not many chefs can strike an ideal balance between simplicity and surprise -- they leave you either yawning over another plate of calamari or spooning up pig's-foot ice cream -- but Naples-born Chef Rino Balzano, well-schooled throughout Northern Italy, takes Tuscan classics and brings them up... More >>
• Best Inexpensive Italian Restaurant
  Papa Pistola's
  For decades, you could count on the checkered tablecloth and the bottle of Chianti, the proprietor who knew the latest dish on everybody who walked in the door, the bread soaking in garlic butter, and the 12 kinds of spaghetti all cooked in the same heavy red sauce. Then, overnight, they were... More >>
• Best Jamaican Restaurant
  Annie's Fresh Fish and Baked Goods
  Good Jamaican and Caribbean food abounds in South Florida. Drive ten minutes from anywhere and you can get decent jerk and oxtails that taste pretty much the same as the ones you had elsewhere. Are they all using the same recipes and sharing one big kitchen? Annie's is one of a handful of places... More >>
• Best Japanese Restaurant for Pyrotechnics
  Sakai Japanese Restaurant
  You thought old-fashioned hibachi pyrotechnics had gone the way of the samurai? Not so, Grasshopper: The spinning knives and the flying fillets are still dancing through their paces at Sakai Japanese Restaurant, where -- depending on how sociable you feel -- you can reserve a seat at one of four... More >>
• Best Mexican Restaurant (1 Comment)
  Silvana
  If you've run through the menu at your local taqueria a few dozen times and think your burrito tour has made you an expert in Mexican food, it's time to get cozy with Silvana. The focus here is seafood, and we don't mean fish tacos: Chef Antonio Brodziak takes his classical Mexican culinary... More >>
• Best Philippine Restaurant
  Horizon International
  Open the front door to Horizon and it'll look like a tiny Asian food mart. But follow the murmur of voices and clanging of pans coming from the back and you'll discover a busy little kitchen with seating for about 20 and lunchtime fare that'll snap you out of your burger complacency. Come here... More >>
• Best Salvadoran Restaurant (1 Comment)
  El Tamarindo
  Two days after Wilma hit, the power was out everywhere. The streets were a mess. The airport was dark and silent. Taking a walk before curfew as twilight set in, we smelled carne asada. A policeman in a parking lot radioed another patrol: "I'm at Tamarindo. They're open. Come on over." A... More >>
• Best Sushi in Broward
  Wasabi Cafe
  Now that even Wal-Mart is selling raw fish, you might say the sushi craze has jumped the shark -- or maybe jumped the maguro. But about a year ago, Yoshi Sakata closed the dual sushi place/fish market he'd owned for more than 20 years and moved across the street to reopen as a small Japanese... More >>
• Best Sushi in Palm Beach
  Sushi Bon
  Scruffy single types, guys in suits, and a local chef or two are bellied up to the bar here at odd hours, like old barflies with the DTs. But it's the wahoo, not the whiskey, they're hankering for, and they'll have it straight, no chaser. Sushi Bon is a secret we'd really rather not share; this... More >>
• Best Tapas
  Paella Seafood Grill
  Those Spaniards really know how to work a room. Their idea of a good meal is something you can carry with you, all the better for movers and shakers who like to make contact -- or need to make a quick exit. At Paella, the tapas are a little hard to manage one-handed, but Wednesday night's... More >>
• Best Thai Restaurant
  Tamarind Asian Grill
  Eaten enough pad thai to add extra padding to your thail? Now that tom yum has become the ubiquitous Asian equivalent of spaghetti with red sauce, Thai-aholics desperate for a little novelty will really appreciate the menu at Tamarind, where a skewer of grilled quail eggs yakitori is enough to... More >>
• Best Seafood Restaurant
  Blue Moon Fish Co.
  The list of seafood we can consume without compromising our nervous systems or the entire ecosystem has dwindled to a handful, but there's still enough to eat with pleasure and sans guilt from the menu at Blue Moon. Grab a table for two on the dock at sunset and order from the raw bar, where... More >>
• Best Waterfront Dining
  Windows at Ireland's
  Time marches on at Ireland's Inn Beach Resort, where the 60-room '60s hotel, undulating like a gigantic, pink tsunami, is slated for demolition in the next couple of years to make room for a 600-unit condo-hotel and what the owners hope will be a five-star restaurant. Ireland's third-generation... More >>
• Best Museum Café
  Café 1451 at the Norton Museum of Art
  In thematically seamless style, Café Chef Marc Benoit has whipped up a little something to pair with the Norton's excellent impressionism and Matisse exhibits this year, not to mention its stellar permanent collection of impressionists -- a menu of French-accented small plates, soups, and... More >>
• Best Place to Dine With Gramps
  Brazilian Tropicana
  Don't second-guess the old man -- he hates early-bird specials. And as long as his teeth and his nether parts are still in working order, he'd much rather eat grilled steak and ogle booty, thank you very much. There's hardly a better place to do both than Brazilian Tropicana, the oldest... More >>
• Best Outdoor Dining
  Ristorante Luna Rosa
  The gravitational force exerted by this big pink moon upon the ocean waters directly opposite its outdoor terraces is roughly equal to the forces of attraction exerted between a plate of Luna Rosa's ricotta-stuffed ravioli and your mouth. Or between your giant South African double lobster tails... More >>
• Best Place to Dine Alone
  Lemongrass Asian Bistro
  Feeling that hollow sense of emptiness deep inside? Are you alienated, cut off, isolated, disconnected from all meaningful human contact? Can't get a date because you're too (paralyzed/terrified/stoned) to pick up the phone? Got the post-Cartesian metaphysical blues? Well, here's a little pill... More >>
• Best Late-Night Dining
  The Floridian
  If the late Edward Hopper were around to re-create Night Hawks -- his celebrity-filled ode to late-night dining -- he'd probably put his four famous faces at the Floridian (AKA, the Flo'). With the sort of retro diner look that befits a 24-hour joint, the Floridian takes on a surreal,... More >>
• Best Wine Deal
  Wine Living's Wine of the Month Club
  Joining Wine Living's Wine of the Month Club is like hiring a personal organizer at a fraction of the cost. Owners Giancarlo and Mary de Falco will let you keep the junk in your closets and file cabinets, but they'll streamline your wine profile into something chic and sophisticated, clear your... More >>
• Best Soul Food
  Jesse's Place
  Jesse's bills itself as "a fine soul food restaurant." No argument here. This spacious strip-mall café cooks up soul food with a twist of Caribbean and a dash of Haitian. There are, of course, the hardcore dishes: fried chicken livers and gizzards with fries for $4.99 and side dishes,... More >>
• Best Deli in Broward (1 Comment)
  Pomperdale New York Style Deli
  Truly transcendent deli, the ultimate comfort food, is all about trust. Some will quibble over details -- the altitude of the sandwich, the sourness of the pickle, the correct brand of house mustard. Those elements are important; at the deli altar of Pomperdale, they're implicit. Step inside the... More >>
• Best Deli in Palm Beach
  Ben's Kosher Deli of Boca
  Ben's has seven locations, and six of them are in an area bounded by Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan. The seventh has trailed a flock of hungry, kvetching snowbirds down to Boca Raton and set up a palace big enough to hold anybody who happens to be looking for whole rotisserie-roasted empire... More >>
• Best Restaurant for Gluttons
  The Jungle Queen
  If we're going to sin, let's sin extravagantly. By all means, let's precede the sin with a boat trip down the New River past the glittering manses of even fatter and richer sinners. Let's indulge our sin -- an "All You Wish to Eat" barbecue of ribs, chicken, and shrimp ($32.95 per person!)... More >>
• Best Sunday Sauce
  Ruggero's
  Used to be there were three, not two, certainties in life. There was death. There were taxes. And there was Sunday sauce. If you were Italian and it was Sunday, your mother would most definitely be up to her elbows in breadcrumbs, raw egg, and pounded meat, putting together the veal or pork... More >>
• Best Supper Club
  Spice Resto-Lounge
  It's not like you need a reason to visit happenin' Hollywood these days, but Spice Resto-Lounge makes a hell of a good one. You can park your fanny at a table at 8 p.m. for dinner (with a reservation, friend!) and not have to worry about going anywhere for another eight hours or so -- except up... More >>
• Best Breakfast Special
  Rendez-vous Bakery & Bistro
  You won't find greasy-spoon fare at this charming bistro, whose calm, Old Country interior seems a world away from the snarling street outside. One particular item on the petit dejéuner menu has been dubbed "rustic," but the breakfast campagnard is fit more for a prince than a farmer. The... More >>
• Best Food Court
  Swap Shop
  Forget Sbarro's, Starbucks, and Ben and Jerry's. Every food court in every two-bit mall in the nation holds out those same few fast-food chains to their captive audiences of weary shoppers. Only in the chaotic, Third World atmosphere of the Swap Shop do the conformist food pods give way to... More >>
• Best Coffeehouse
  Brew Urban Café
  Surrounded by the hubbub of Himmarshee Street saloons and Las Olas Riverfront tourist traps, Brew is an oasis of calm and caffeine. Its Seattle-style ambiance and fastidiously prepared drinks have won over the following of a large group of regulars who chat together in half-moon booths, lofty... More >>
• Best Desserts
  Shore Restaurant and Beach Bar
  Shore scores points for getting a very basic premise of dessert: If ever a course deserved the full dog-and-pony show, it's not the apps and the entrées. When it comes to those early dishes, we're still ravenous; we couldn't care less if our escargots are wearing rolled-basil-leaf hats or... More >>