Food & Drink

This must be the place to be since we’ve seen Governor Janet Napolitano and her entourage of burly security guards dining here (what they ate, we don’t know — the goons wouldn’t let us near her table). Secrets can be spilled here, because with the din of closely packed important shirt-and-tie clientele, nobody is listening to anyone but themselves. The waiters don’t bug us, either, waiting until we’ve stopped talking to dive in for our orders. We know what we like for a classy midday repast — trout amandine (with roasted almonds in lemon white wine sauce), angel-hair shrimp feta, or calamari steak with tomatoes, capers, olives and basil. This almost feels like New York, actually, with the restaurant based at the bottom of a high-rise, pretty much hidden from the road, and altogether exclusive.

Readers’ Choice: Durant’s

There are those who still mourn the (d)evolution of Gold Bar Espresso, the funky Tempe coffee house that sprawled in an old bank on Southern Avenue, using the vault for poetry readings and the drive-in to make business boom. Gold Bar moved last year to an old TCBY across the street, a victim of landlord battles, and the regulars swore they’d boycott the replacement. But even some of the most loyal Gold Bar patrons haven’t been able to curb their curiosity, and have ventured into the new establishment. Gone are the tchotchkes, the wicker and the posters lining the walls that made Gold Bar more like a lived-in dorm room than a place where you’d want to eat and drink.

In fact, everything funky is gone, and we have to admit we don’t mind so much. Xtreme Bean is clean and sleek, with beautiful wood tables and Internet access. The front counter is beautifully appointed and the employees wear headsets. The coffee’s even pretty good.

Sometimes, sterile’s not such a bad thing.

Readers’ Choice for Best Coffee House: Starbucks

We had to walk out the front door of this place and take a peek down Central Avenue to be sure we really were still in Phoenix. With mismatched furnishings and concrete floors, Lux evokes the urban grunge vibe of Austin or Denver, but here it is, nestled in a small building that used to house — well, that’s not important. Nothing could be as cool as Lux.

The coffee’s rich — “like butter,” one regular insists. The art is better than what hangs on the walls of many Phoenix galleries, and the clientele makes for hours of people-watching. Step into Lux and you’ll feel like there’s a scene in the Valley — and you’re part of it.

There’s a buzz in this place, and it’s not just the caffeine.

At Litchfield Park Organics, owners Shaun and Cathy Kalos stock a beautiful variety of organic produce from local vendors, and from California (the lettuce is so fresh and beautiful we want to roll around in it naked). Primary shoppers for fruits and veggies are co-op members, but for the rest of us, they also stock organic pasta, cereal, canned goods, milk, cheese and butter. Beef comes from natural (what a word!) cows in Goodyear, smoothies are all preservative- and chemical-free, and Cathy even makes 100 percent healthful takeout sandwiches in her spare time. Even when we’re not hungry, this place makes us feel better just knowing it’s out there.

A friend of ours suggested we try losing some extra inches on one of those low-carb diets, but we just laughed. He’s lucky we didn’t belt him for suggesting we give up our romance with Willo Bakery, our favorite place to load up on the best-tasting carbs in town. Our pal doesn’t realize that life without Willo’s currant walnut rolls is a life not worth living. Once there, it’s tough to decide between Willo’s mind-bendingly perfect sourdough loaf and its tasty signature Willo Round. Then there’s our favorite crusty Sunflower Bread, hard on the outside, dense and springy on the inside. We usually wind up taking all of these home, with a slice of focaccia thrown in for good measure. (And since we’re not reducing, a quick cruise of the sweets counter is always part of our visit.) Everything at Willo is baked fresh daily, natch, and its bakers add no sugar, meat, dairy or preservatives to any of their magnificent breads. This attention to pure ingredients is our idea of sensible eating, and so we suggest a daily diet of Willo baked goods, pronto.

Readers’ Choice: Karsh’s Bakery

When we’re worn out, the only thing we want to do for dinner is eat over the kitchen sink at home. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find friends who want to do that with us. So on those nights, we ask them to meet us at Roaring Fork, where it’s almost as comfortable, casual and homey. These people understand the need to feed at a low-key bar. It’s still pretty, in one of the most bustling, beautiful people spots in the Valley. And it’s still got some of the most interesting, delicious, well-priced nibbles to be found anywhere. The “saloon” menu is available in the bar only, from 7 to 10 p.m. It includes thrills like green chile pork stew with jack cheese and buttered flour tortillas; a half chicken rotisserie-roasted over pecan wood with queso anejo and charred tomato salsa; or smoke-roasted barbecued pork ribs braised in Dr Pepper and chiles. Best of all, the plates run less than $10 each, and we don’t even have to do the dishes.

How the architect managed to figure out how to dig a wine cellar under the historic converted home that is Lon’s, we’ll never know. All we can say is that he did it, and beautifully. This brand-new room is hidden back behind the bar, behind a scrolled gate, and down a steep, winding flight of rock stairs. The temperature drops up to 30 degrees as we make the descent, and as we round the bend, we’re presented with one of the most gorgeous private dining rooms we’ve ever seen. If there’s no romance in the air in this room, lined with racks of wine bottles, crafted out of stone and centered with a heavy wood table dressed with candles, then this couple has no chance. There’s no room charge, either, with menu and wine selections from Lon’s seasonal offerings (adore that cow “q” Kobe beef, or the Peruvian seafood grill). It can be just us, or, if we want to shout our love out to the rooftops, we can invite up to six other couples. The manager tells us his servers often feel the need to announce when they’re approaching the room — after all, mood lighting, mood food, mood ambiance, and, well, it sure puts us in the mood.

Readers’ Choice: The Melting Pot

After slaving over a hot desk all day long, who really wants to face an hour or more working in the kitchen for dinner?

Still, we’d like our families to enjoy a healthful, tasty, home-cooked meal, even if it isn’t cooked in our own home. So it’s Elie’s takeout to the rescue! We love this tiny, family-run quick-stop casual shop where pretty much everything on the Mediterranean and American menu is homemade. Our family members with the simplest tastes love the straight stuff — hot and cold subs fashioned from Boar’s Head meats, a fine BLT and grilled cheese, and burgers. More adventurous types lust after the Greek specialties, like magical grape leaves stuffed with rice, tomatoes and garbanzo beans, dipped in silky-tart yogurt spiked with cucumber, garlic and mint. And we’ve been known to make an entire meal out of tabbouleh, a refreshing salad of chopped parsley, tomato, cracked wheat, lemon juice and olive oil, with some hot pita bread on the side. All food is prepared to order, but it’s done with speed — we never wait more than a few minutes before we’re tramping our treasures out the door.

Our brain is pounding. Our stomach is churning. Our eyes hurt, our mouth tastes like old eggs, and we’ve got that heavy, guilty misery that can only mean one thing: We drank too much again last night.

Perhaps we should punish ourselves for our indiscretion with the evil spirits, but aren’t we already suffering enough? Darn right we are, so now it’s time to treat ourselves to the only thing that’ll make us feel better — a huge, fattening, filling breakfast to soak up all that alcohol.

JP is our little cocoon for mornings like these. It’s always genteel quiet in the tiny shop, no matter how busy it gets. It’s dark, decorated in lots of black and slender mirrors, with soothing jazz music that makes us feel classier than our escapes of the evening before would suggest. The food is fresh and fantastic, with amenities we can’t find elsewhere: hot-dog-size Hormel sausage links, thick-cut Hormel bacon and dry-cured ham, golden biscuits with chunky sausage gravy, billowy oven-baked apple pancakes, Belgian waffles and tasty daily specials like quiche or tomato-fresh-herb-goat-cheese omelets.

Coffee is strong, hot and bottomless. Boy, we feel almost good enough to go out tonight and get drunk all over again.

Okay, we confess: We eat more than just lunch at My Florist Cafe. We have breakfast there every Friday, because we can’t get enough of their yummy baked oatmeal. And you’ll find us there several nights a week, digging into the superlative pear salad and grooving to the impossibly swell stylings of pianist Nicole. But most of the time we’re there midday, elbow-to-elbow with folks who know that this is the chic place to break bread. Even if we’re craving lunch at 11 p.m. we get what we came for, because all of My Florist’s lunchtime specialties are available all the time. Day or night, sandwich or salad, My Florist is our all-the-time favorite lunch hangout.

Readers’ Choice: Durant’s

Ever wonder how you can be so busy, yet so broke? So when your long hours and lean wallet get to you, treat yourself to a meal at Cherryblossom.

There’s nothing more expensive than $10 on this lengthy menu of big, tasty noodle dishes, and most ring in at $5 to $8. The variety is constantly interesting — Japanese, Thai, Korean, Italian, and even some offbeat Japanese-Italian fusion recipes. The setting is soothing — the place is fast service, but instead of a cheapie snack shack, it’s a real sit-down affair.

You’ll love the yakisoba, sautéed with fresh vegetables, plus chicken or seafood (shrimp, scallop, squid and octopus). Korean spicy beef is sizzling, over clear, egg white or potato noodles. For a lighter nosh, try the pasta primavera, loaded with eggplant, tricolor bell pepper and sweet onion under marinara sauce.

You know where to get fast food, cheap and delicious. Just use your noodle — Cherryblossom’s noodle, that is.

There’s something exciting about watching a professional chef at work. The skill, the flair, the panache of a trained restaurant talent. We’ve never quite mastered the art, but with the Monastery, we can pretend we have. Here, at these casual, artsy restaurants, we get to be the chef ourselves. We like the original Indian School location the best, taken as we are with the rickety 80-year-old home tucked away under weeping willows, but the other two shops are endearingly similar. While our buddies play volleyball, horseshoes, Ping-Pong and shuffleboard, we man a barbecue and grill burgers, chicken, steaks, pork chops, Polish sausage or a vegetarian garden burger (if we need assistance, one of the staffers — dressed in brown monk robes — will help us manage the flames). We sip some beer or wine, select some sides (potato salad, salad, chips and salsa, bread and cheese board). This is one restaurant meal we’ll never be sending back.

We can’t remember how many times we’ve gone to the theater, or a movie, or simply overslept the dinner hour (hey, we’re night owls, and it happens). After 10, we’ve got no place to go, other than a noisy bar or some place slinging Grand Slam sadness. That’s why we’re so very happy to have Zen 32, where, no matter the day of the week, we can eat really terrific Japanese food until midnight. Sometimes we lounge on the misted patio, watching the lights of cars whizzing by while we munch on stellar sushi, like the rainbow roll layered with shrimp, salmon, tuna and hamachi; or asparagus with salmon and crab. If we arrive an hour earlier, we can select from the entire menu, an interesting grilled fusion happening (we especially like the sake-steamed fish, featuring Southeast Asian farm-grown Basa fillet wrapped in a sake steamed leaf with fresh steamed vegetables drizzled in Asian Zen sauce; or the chili-glazed shrimp, grilled with a mango, ginger and chili glaze, served with Asian slaw and Thai peanut sauce). Oishii! (In Japanese, that means delicious. Learn it. You’ll need it here.)

Readers’ Choice: Denny’s

We used to think that a worthwhile place to enjoy the British tradition of midday tea was as hard to find as a cool patch of shade in our town — until we discovered Teeter House. Tucked away in downtown’s Heritage Square, this posh spot offers several different tea ceremonies five days a week. We go straight for homemade scones and Devonshire cream, and always order traditional finger sandwiches and a pile of the candied walnuts made fresh here every day. Dessert is fussy, just the way we like it: teacakes, petit fours, and wee éclairs just like Mum used to make (or would have, had she been British). Teeter House also serves a four-course evening high tea on the fourth Thursday of every month; otherwise, it’s open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and on Sundays from noon to 4 p.m.; reservations are recommended.

Frankly, we have all the view we need when we dine with our honey — that face, those eyes. But we have to admit, it’s mighty romantic to do our staring in a sumptuous setting, for when we do look away, the surroundings should be at least as gorgeous as our companion. For that special view, we are smitten with Acacia, and particularly its Spanish-style balcony. It’s a semi-private veranda, just a small collection of tables lit by flickering votives, and done in rich wood. We feel absolutely swallowed up in the cocoon of the high Sonoran Desert loping below us, and the intense drama of the sunset over the Pinnacle Peak mountains just beyond. There are more than 40 acres of open resort property for our pleasure, lavish with towering saguaro, ocotillo cactuses and sagebrush. Really, after we’ve had enough of staggering summer heat, all it takes is a trip to Acacia to remind us why we live here (yes, we can appreciate the views through the windows, too, when we dine inside in the AC). The icing on this cake? Luscious steak house cuisine that has landed Acacia a Four Star rating. It’s the perfect addition to the stars in our eyes.

There are times when just another meal of mainstream Italian, Mexican or American just won’t do. We live on the edge, darn it, and our dinner needs to celebrate our daring, dashing nature.

Food doesn’t get any more exciting than at Manila Cafe. It’s Filipino, a dramatic blend of Malay, Chinese and Spanish, with hints of Indian, Mexican, Arab and American influences. For real adventure, we often leave the ordering up to the friendly family that owns the place. Just bring us what’s best today.

This means we sit at our table in the tiny store for hours on end, nibbling at plates of things that we can’t pronounce but that are mesmerizing with multilayered flavors of vinegar, black pepper, garlic, anchovy and ginger. Perhaps we’ll sample bulalo (beef kneecap with vegetables), binagoongang baboy (sautéed pork with fish sauce, tomatoes, onion and garlic) and pritong bangus (fried milkfish). If we’re a bit frightened of an unfamiliar fare, we’re offered freebie taste spoons of dishes like afritadang manok (juicy sautéed chicken with tomatoes, onion and bell pepper), or dinuguan (a surprisingly tasty dish of pork with pork blood sauce, pork ear, vinegar, black pepper and jalapeo over white rice). We’d never have imagined the charms of pinakbet otherwise, bringing a wicked stew of string beans, tart bittermelon, okra, meaty eggplant and chunks of skin-on pork boiled in anchovy sauce.

There’s no doubt our madcap side is well-fed here, with far-out but fantastic assemblies like pochero, a plate of pork, beef or chicken sautéed in tomato sauce alongside Spanish sausage, bananas, potatoes and cabbage. Wild thing — Manila Cafe, that is — we think we love you.

Sundays are for sleeping in. Unless we’ve got a reservation for brunch at El Chorro, in which case we might not sleep Saturday night at all. Brunch is served in the cool months, October through May. El Chorro is stunningly beautiful, nestled below the red cliffs of Echo Canyon of Camelback Mountain. It’s historic, built in 1934 as a school for girls. As a resort, it’s played host to celebrities like Clark Gable and Milton Berle. Many of the staffers are original characters, including the owners, Joe and Evie Miller (Joe started there as a bartender in 1952). The spread is much more intriguing than the typical eggs, bacon and Danish buffets, and excitingly retro. The magic begins with free sticky buns (homemade cinnamon rolls). Then it’s on to eggs Benedict (classic, with turkey, filet mignon or vegetarian), a Spanish omelet, curried chicken salad, salmon fettuccine, chicken livers and eggs, chipped beef, beef stroganoff, or shrimp Louie. Now that’s worth waking up for.

We’re not vampires. Really. But we do admit to having a certain aversion to sunlight. It’s just so hot. And bright. But when we want to chill out and calm down, we make tracks for Durant’s, a Valley legend since 1950. In good, old-fashioned style, Durant’s keep the lights turned way down low, even during the lunch hour. If there are any windows in this joint, we haven’t found them. The room is cloaked instead by deep red booths and walls, and black-topped tables, and manned by classic black-garbed waiters with sleepy attitudes. The menu is retro calming, too, with traditional selections like a beautifully juicy broiled T-bone. The meat is broiled on mesquite; we can see it sizzling as we come in the real entrance to the restaurant — the back door, through the kitchen. This is hefty food to eat while shielded from the screeches of day, like “Fat Man’s Specials” of thick-cut top sirloin, a full-pound hamburger, and even a 48-ounce porterhouse. Yeah, we could skimp and get an albacore tuna sandwich on Karsh’s rye, with coleslaw or cottage cheese, but Jeez, we’re at Durant’s. It’s nice and dark. We can eat whatever we want, get as messy as we want, take a nap, even, and no one will ever see us. Cell phones are strictly outlawed.

The last thing we want when we’re enjoying a luxury resort dinner is to feel like we’re eating a luxury resort dinner. That’s because so many resorts these days are enormous corporations, with sterile, appeal-to-the-masses menus that have us yawning in our caesar salad, roasted chicken and crème brûlée. Not T. Cook’s, though. At T. Cook’s, we feel like we’re dining in someone’s private dream. It’s the dream of a gardener, given carte blanche to create an Eden that invites long romantic walks along winding pathways embracing the Royal Palms property. It’s the dream of an interior decorator, who has fulfilled our every fantasy of ambiance, with luxurious Southwestern decor and intimate, elegant seating. It’s the dream of a chef, who delights us at every meal, and surprises us at every season. Where else can we loll in such decadent dishes as cream of spinach soup with nutmeg and spiced duck confit; or scallops with red pepper gnocchi, fiddlehead ferns, leeks and carrot curry jus, all roasted in a giant fireplace before our very eyes? T. Cook’s harvests our local organic farms for the finest fare, too, something no big corporate resort likely would do. A tip of our toques to T. Cook’s!

We read somewhere that when political/royal structures were built in the old days, they were made to be as huge, ostentatious and overwhelming as could be, so as to intimidate visitors from other countries. So imagine bringing that finicky client to the Sanctuary, situated on 53 acres on the side of posh Camelback Mountain, with breathtaking views of the north Valley, including ooh-la-la Paradise Valley.

If the view doesn’t bring your client to quivers, we guarantee the cuisine will. Executive chef Charles Wiley has earned international acclaim for his skills, focusing on farm-fresh American with Asian accents. Spinach and goat cheese casserole will have your client so distracted you can propose the most outrageous idea and it’ll be a winner. Roasted duck breast with garlic polenta, wilted spinach and orange tamarind glaze? That client will be in such a swoon, he’ll sign any contract you propose. As the saying goes, the best way to win someone over is through his or her stomach. Here, the philosophy is elemental to success.

In its earlier days, Greasewood Flats was known only to a few folks lucky enough to have discovered the little place hidden off a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. Those folks included John Denver and Glen Campbell, who would do impromptu performances. Today, the circa-1883 former stagecoach bunkhouse is more widely known, feeding up to 400 people a day. And that includes us. On any given evening, you’ll find us cozied up in the rustic bar, or, better yet, at one of the picnic tables outside. We kick back under the canopy of trees, listen to music, and chat with our pals. A cold beer, a grilled-to-order hamburger, and when we time it just right, a spectacular sunset over the mountains soaring to the west — does life get any better?

Are we inside? Are we outside? It can be difficult to tell the difference at Postino. The place is a refurbished post office, and what used to be loading doors are now retractable walls that open up to an expansive patio. Whichever side we’re on, it’s all beautiful, with walls of wine, royal-toned paint, an opulent mahogany bar and cushy sofas. The music throbs, with jazz, blues and reggae, and we fill our gullets with the best bruschetta around: huge slabs of bread topped with a rainbow of flavors that we pick and choose. What goes with wine (some 200 bottles as an inventory) but cheese? And Postino has it, specialty wedges paired with nuts and fruit. This is definitely a place to see and be seen, even if we’re really sitting in a parking lot of an old mail-sorting station. It’s still the coolest patio performance anywhere.

Readers’ Choice for Best Outdoor Patio: Sugar Daddy’s

Wow, if we had way, way too much money to burn, this is where we would do it. This concept is a full restaurant, with a full staff and a full gourmet menu, but it’s designed for just a single party. As in one table, seating just two to 12 guests. We like to think of it as our own private Mary Elaine’s, complete with fancy Reidel stemware, fresh custom flowers, a live baby grand player or any custom music we desire, custom scented candles, and stunning views from atop Eagle Mountain. Our evening brings six-course designer dinners of cheese, appetizer, salad, soup, entree and dessert (perhaps oysters with saffron, habanero oil, spinach and Parmesan; then prime New York strip pan-blackened with chile garlic butter, garlic-red jalapeo mashed potatoes). Our private (of course) sommelier helps us select from 300-plus bottles of wine, or 125 choices by the glass. And for the privilege, all we need to do is shell out $195 (for a basic dinner for two), up to $1,775 for a seafood indulgence, including wines and champagnes, for 12. The rich truly are different from us, and this is why.

Who says experiencing a “foodie fantasia” has to be some high-priced, completely complicated, rich and crazy (and expensive) undertaking? Fate chef Johnny Chu proves that the magic of fine food comes in complete respect for the most simple ingredients, left to their pure flavors and nudged to excitement by lightly applied but highly creative sauces. His Asian cuisine doesn’t require elite recipes, fashioned primarily from vegetables. We can add in our choice of tender chicken breast, quality beef, shrimp or terrific deep-fried tofu, then select our sauces. Chu, born and raised in Hong Kong, does more with sauces than many of our best Valley chefs.

Real foodies like funky, of course, and Chu serves that up and more. His restaurant is also an art gallery and music salon, set in an old house in a questionable neighborhood. What’s not to love?

If there’s anything we can’t find in this 24,500-square-foot south Phoenix mercado, all we have to do is visit its second location, a 40,000-square-foot monster in the West Valley. Pretty much the entire country of Mexico is contained within these stores, with a jaw-dropping display of staples like whole beef head, carne seca, fresh coconut, guava gel, mammee fruit, and tamale husks. Yet perhaps the most exciting feature is the food court, a massive area of quick-serve meals of such top quality that it’s hard to believe we’re not in a real restaurant. It even looks like a restaurant, fronted with a classy wooden ranch house façade, and filled with throngs of families feasting at picnic-style tables. The booty is beautiful: a buffet array of chile Colorado tacos, tortas, burritos, sopes, cocido, tamales, homemade tortillas, roasted chicken, carnitas, rice, beans, salsas — all cheap at about $5 for a full meal. We can eat with the masses at the tables, charged up with thundering piped-in mariachi music. Or, we can get our stuff packed in Styrofoam, to indulge in a quieter, private picnic at home. Either way, when the lunch and dinner bells ring, we’re heading for the ranch.

When is something old actually something new? When it’s old as in authentic, but when it’s new to Valley taste buds. And the Mexican food served at Los Sombreros is excitingly new. This isn’t the typical gringo ground beef taco with Cheddar cheese, but the regional cuisine of and around Oaxaca. That means some exotica in ingredients, like cotija (dry crumbly white cheese), rajas (poblano chile strips), string-style white Oaxacan cheese, and cilantro crema. That means deep ethnic food, with things like mole poblano, a Puebla dish incorporating some 30 ingredients. That means high-class staples, like free-range chicken from Young’s Farm in Dewey.

Often, dishes are unexpected, like tacos de birria de chiro (braised goat), and chilaquiles de camarónes (a comfort casserole of corn tortilla strips and shrimp simmered in salsa verde, jack cheese and crema). Even dessert is different here, so old, so new, with homemade vanilla ice cream spiked with toasted pumpkin seeds. It’s a brave, nueva frontier here at Los Sombreros.

The love affair with simple, satisfying Sonoran-style gringo food starts with the chips. They’re spectacular, crispy light, warm, and sprinkled with lots of salt. The chunky salsa purée is flamed with just enough chiles to add spark without pain. It’s tempting to eat an entire basket all by our lonesome. But we resist, knowing that owner Marina Carbajal is in the kitchen, crafting her family recipes to feed the crowds at her tiny cafe (five red-tile-topped tables plus five booths).

These are fantastic favorites — tacos with juicy rich shredded beef layered in lacy thin shells, enchiladas in spicy, fork-licking sauce, and burros bursting with luscious stuff like green chile beef in oceans of thick grayish gravy. We feast on the magical machaca, the shredded beef blended with vibrant spices, tossed with scrambled egg, onion and tomato, slathered with soupy-soft refried beans, cheese and rice, then wrapped in tears of warm flour tortillas. Carbajal’s has topnotch menudo, too, bobbing with soft tripe and al dente hominy mixed with chopped red onion, minced cilantro or lemon, plus exquisite albóndigas, a kiddy-pool-size portion of rich tomato broth, rice, carrot, potato, white onion, squash and highly herbed meatballs.

This is the best there is of comfort food, Mexican style.

The menu at Carolina’s offers these toppings for their tortillas: cheese, with red, green or machaca meat, or slathered with butter. We admit that we’ve made a major meal of ordering one of each. Pure heaven. What is harder to come clean on, though, is that before we leave the restaurant, we buy a dozen more tortillas, and have been known to eat them all, plain, on the drive home.

The aroma of Carolina’s fresh-griddled wraps is intoxicating. The recipe is simple: unsifted, white enriched flour; baking powder; salt; water; and the most important ingredient — trusty, old-fashioned lard. But the experience is complex, all earthy rich goodness, golden brown bubbles, chewy thin lace. Now that’s real flour power.

If you haven’t tried horchata, the sweet, refreshing Mexican rice drink, you’re depriving yourself of dessert in a cup. Made with rice, sugar and cinnamon, it’s a beverage you’ll find at most Mexican restaurants in the Valley. But there’s something extra special about the horchata at Barrio Café. Served in a charming, old-fashioned glass bottle, it’s got the luscious, creamy consistency of chocolate milk and a flavor reminiscent of rice pudding. Sipped between bites of Chef Silvana Salcido Esparza’s tantalizing cuisine, it’s a soothing foil to spicy flavors.

Our out-of-town visitors were pooh-poohing us, saying that for all they’d heard about the spicy potency of Mexican food, they weren’t impressed. Why, they’d had a cheese crisp, they’d had a taco, they’d had some chips and salsa at one of those big chain restaurants, and they barely felt a tingle.

So we took them to Los Dos, starting with a cheese crisp smothered in green chile. That’s chile as in Hatch chiles from New Mexico, one of the hottest peppers known to mankind. After a few bites, our buddies were squirming. Then, they dipped their chips into the hotter-than-hell salsa. We warned them, yet they insisted on ordering the adovado, tooth-tender pork cooked to fall-apart juiciness, but marinated in fire-alarm red chile and served with beans spiked with even more chile. By this time, they were just about on their knees, begging forgiveness for their cockiness, It’s okay, we said, and showed them the proper way to savor this delicious inferno — a bite of flame, then a bite of cooling sour cream or guacamole. A taste of torture, then a taste of tame, with a side of flour tortilla. A snack of sadism, then a sip of salvation, with an ice-cold raspberry margarita on the rocks. Because Los Dos doesn’t rely simply on heat to grab our attention — this truly is some of the finest Mexican food to be had anywhere. Our friends went home happy, exuberant, and with a great story to tell.

See our wallet? It’s fat and happy, just like us. The most we can spend at this peppy little hole in the wall is $8.50, and that’s for a hefty platter of fajitas, grilled steak with green peppers, tomatoes, onions, refried beans, rice and flour tortillas. Just $5.75 gets us a combo of crisp beef picadillo taco, chorizo tostada, and cheese enchilada. We’ve made entire meals, actually, of the basket of corn chips and mild salsa (free), plus a soft chicken taco stuffed with lots of shredded breast in natural juices, and piles of crispy lettuce and tomato ($2.25). Even if we splurge for a side of fluffy Spanish rice or creamy refrieds, it’s just a buck more. We love that it’s chic and cheap, too, with Mexico City-style treats like a quesadilla (not the usual gringo affair, but a turnover of corn dough filled with picadillo or chorizo then deep-fried for $2.30). Enchiladas aren’t everyday fast food, with zingy tomatillo and Mexican cheese (just $2.30). And the capper: A high-octane margarita is only $2.75.

Eating at La Tolteca is like eating in a Mexican market, because actually we are eating in a Mexican market. This place is part Hispanic grocery store, part kitchen accessory store, part bakery, part butcher shop, part fast-food takeout counter, part sit-down restaurant. The music is loud and boisterous, the servers are cheerful chatterboxes, and, most important, the food is amazing. We stop in for tacos whenever we’re in the ‘hood (okay, it’s not a glamorous ‘hood, surrounded by used-car dealerships and discount furniture stores). But these tacos make any neighborhood beautiful. Everything is made fresh each day. The flour shells are light and crispy, like puffy sopaipillas. The corn shells are exquisitely crunchy and full of fresh vegetable flavor. The meats are lovingly roasted to juicy perfection, including chicken breast, carne asada, pastor (spiced rotisserie pork) or carnitas with onion and cilantro. There’s seafood — shrimp and mahi-mahi. And because this is a true Mexican experience, there’s exotica like cabeza (head), lengua (tongue) and tripa (tripe). When we’re really hungry, we get the monster taco, a flour shelled beast that’s so big it takes up an entire dinner plate. It takes a double shell to hold all the shredded chicken or beef, iceberg lettuce, tomato and cheese. A squeeze of fresh lime, some salsa from the homemade salsa bar, and this is heaven.

Being dedicated professionals, we didn’t simply take the restaurant manager’s word that Via Delosantos, a madcap little Mexican restaurant in north Phoenix, serves more than 210 tequilas. First, we counted the listings on the menu, and we came up with almost 200 varieties. Then we went to look at the collection in person: A sign posted as we entered the restaurant boasted a library of 193 labels. We started to count the actual bottles, displayed along an entire wall behind chicken wire. But it pretty quickly got too difficult for us, keeping track of the blurring array of fresh-from-the-still blanco brands, reposado aged in oak two months to a year, and anejo aged more than a year. So then we decided to try ordering a shot of them all, making a little check mark for each guzzle as we nibbled on warm chips and zingy salsa. A half-dozen drinks later — a half-dozen chicken scratches later — we had completely forgotten the purpose of our mission. But we were happy, and that’s all that matters. So take our word for it: Via Delosantos has very nice tequilas, an amazing whole lot of them, and that’s all we really need to know.

Readers’ Choice: Garduo’s

For more than 25 years, Rito’s owners have been telling folks to get out of their house. It hasn’t worked. Even with no sign, limited operating hours, and an inconsistent list of daily menu offerings, people continue to flood the tiny converted dwelling for topnotch burritos, tacos, chimis and tostadas. The Salinas family doesn’t even go out of its way to make us feel too welcome. We shout out our orders at the counter, after waiting in line for way too long; they shout back at us when it’s ready to pick up. There’s no seating, save for a few plastic tables on a patio. Law officials are always swarming around — Phoenix police are good customers. And choice? There is none. There’s red chile and green chile, plus beans and rice. Sometimes there are enchiladas. Whatever we get, it’s hot. Hot as in painful. Hot as in the Salinas family might be subtly telling us: “Get the hell out of here.” But it’s all to no effect. On any given day, at any given lunch hour, you know where you can find us: standing in line at the Salinases’ house, begging for another meal from Rito’s.

Until we discovered San Carlos Bay, we never understood octopus. Sure, we’d eaten it as sushi, and were happy enough with the sometimes rubbery, often tasteless seafood. The novelty intrigued us, though never knocked us out. Yet now we know: There’s simply nothing better than San Carlos’ garlic octopus, impossibly tender, outrageously fragrant, and decadently buttery. It positively melts in our mouths, spooned in messy bundles of flour tortillas wrapped around French fries, rice, beans and salad. In fact, San Carlos has given us an entirely new appreciation for the swimming stuff of all kinds. We adore the authentic seafood cocktail, brimming with octopus, squid and shrimp in a zesty tomato broth spiked with cucumbers, onions and cilantro. Shrimp is always sparkling fresh, served in our favorite culichi style (a tangy green sauce blended with cheese and sour cream) or “endiablados” (meaning the devil, as in hot sauce). Snapper is stupendous, too, prepared Veracruz-style (zesty olives, onions, tomatoes and peppers), or served whole, fried and torn in fleshy chunks, slathered with creamy beans and rice, dunked in zingy salsa and wrapped in warm tortillas.

A margarita needs to be prepared properly. That’s why we like the magical margs served at Brasa Roja. The place is a Colombian restaurant, but bartenders know their way around this specialty Mexican concoction like nobody’s business. Each drink is made to order, not too sweet, and served in a rainbow of flavors like lime, peach and strawberry. We like sipping a salty one on a weekend night when the live Latin American music plays. It’s just the thing to go with nibbles of patacón, a delightful appetizer of green plantains, sliced and gorgeously greasy-crisp deep-fried. The chips are sprinkled with salt, and then dipped in zingy green aji chile salsa or Dijon-mayo sauce sparked with jalapeo. Another round for everyone!

Readers’ Choice: Garduo’s

Fry bread actually isn’t an authentic Indian dish (trust us). It comes from the time that white settlers arrived in the Valley hundreds of years ago. Two cultures have come together in a most marvelous fashion, and fry bread has become a favorite taste of Arizona. For all its history, there’s only one place in town that truly does the treat justice in our book, and that’s Fry Bread House. The creations are hot and fresh, virtually greaseless, a pillowy puff peeking through the lightest veil of vegetable oil. Meals come as golden brown taco-style pockets, stuffed with delights like red chile, vegetarian (smoky beans, green chiles, produce and sour cream) or a wickedly spicy chorizo beef combo.

If eating a bowl of menudo means you have a lot of guts, what better way to show it than by getting into a boxing ring just a few feet from your dinner table? You can do that every Wednesday night at Pitic Restaurant, famous for its caldo de res and green salsa. The attached lounge serves up amateur night and enchiladas for the fight-crazy crowd, who line up in neatly placed rows. The place is a riot mostly because the crowd tends to take over with funny-as-hell jabs at the boxers and announcers. Street fighters and proud papás sign up weeks in advance for their shot at a $300 cash prize and to appear on Canal 53, a low-power Spanish TV station that broadcasts the fights the ensuing Saturday night.

Don’t let the out-of-place bingo games get in the way of good, hard-punching entertainment.

Some of them look like dinner rolls dusted in psychedelic sugar. Some look like buns that have had a violent run-in with fruit. But they’re called bunuelos, and they’re actually little bundles of joy. The Mexican pastries are flaky, light, and usually just slightly sweet (most of the sugar comes from the colorful topping, in pink, yellow, blue and/or green). They taste best when freshly made, and at Azteca, the bakers are busy every day except Sunday, stocking the cases of the small takeout shop with multiple all-natural, preservative-free varieties. Selections vary, but usual offerings include pan dulces (sweet rolls and breads), empanadas (turnovers), galletas (cookies), orejas (puff pastry) and pan de muerto, a Day of the Dead specialty. If that weren’t enough, this shop also cranks out homemade tortillas. Sweet!

Jordan’s has been a Phoenix landmark since 1946, and the place looks its age, with its dark interior, shiny, gold-flecked wallpaper and ragged red carpeting. Thank goodness for tradition, though — the owners have seemingly never learned that so many restaurants these days are happy to shame us with food from bags, boxes and freezers. All food here is prepared fresh from scratch daily, including, wonder of wonders, the crispy, salty warm corn chips slapped in baskets for free on our tables. The chefs make their own salsas, including a thin, wet, truly infernal tomato purée; and a gentler mix that kind of reminds us of tomato soup. Our waitress, in fact, actually rolls her eyes when we ask if these beauties are made on-site, by hand. She sighs, and says, “Of course, there’s no other way.” Long live the legend.

Readers’ Choice for Best Salsa: Garduo’s

We would love to take a tour of Acapulco Bay’s kitchen. We think it must be enormous, to stock such an incredible selection of fresh seafood: red snapper, cabrilla, tilapia, shrimp, octopus, lobster tail, calamari, oysters, green mussels, scallops and crab. We’d love to dig through the chefs’ recipe books — the depth and creativity are astounding, with seafood prepared in garlic butter, spicy peppers and butter, salsa butter, Veracruz-style with olives and pickled jalapeos, breaded in cracker flour, grilled with peppers and onions, or with fresh mushrooms and cheese. Meat eaters aren’t left out, either, with chicken dressed in Baja spices, marinated pork steak, carne asada and carnitas, glammed up with crispy vegetables, fresh chunked guacamole and spicy pico de gallo. We’re pretty sure we could eat here every day for a year, and never have the same meal twice.

We expect a lot from our “best” Mexican restaurant. First, there’s the food, of course. And La Casa delivers in delicious style, with home-style breakfasts of chilaquiles con queso; or lunches and dinners of shrimp-octopus cocktail, ceviche tostada, and mixed skillets of fabulously seasoned chicken, beef and carnitas or seafood. It’s all fresh and fun, with our favorite dish being tilapia fish with tons of real garlic swimming in butter, alongside stellar rice, beans and a warm flour tortilla. Second, we want atmosphere, and this place has it, from splendid colorful murals on walls, to loud, piped-in music, and mariachi tunes on weekends. Third, we want something to wash down with our festivities, and La Casa doesn’t disappoint. We crave the aguas frescas, homemade with horchata, pineapple or tamarind. In the spirit of a real party, we slam from an impressive array of brandy, cognac, rum, tequila, whiskey and vodka. For a true Mexican fiesta, La Casa is the best.

Readers’ Choice: Macayo’s

The list of cheeses available at the Duck reads like a phone book, with more than 60 varieties from around the world. We’ve been stopping in at the place for years, trying different cheeses each time, and have never been able to catalogue all our adventures — that’s how often the cheese whizzes here update their fresh offerings. Every day, it’s something surprising and new, like St. Andre, an extravagantly rich triple-cream cheese with a mild, mellow flavor; or the rare l’Explorateur, an incredible triple cream concoction with 75 percent butterfat. Do we know all of the exotic cheeses? Of course not. We just rely on the Duck’s experts, and vow to sample them all.

Real fruit, real juice and non-dairy smoothie mix make chilling combinations like strawberry-banana, peanut butter-banana, pineapple-coconut-orange, blueberry-banana, and raspberry-banana. If we need an extra boost, we can add in such healthful stuff as protein powder, carbo powder, lecithin, wheat germ, bee pollen, ginseng, brewer’s yeast, spirulina, wheatgrass, creatine, or multi-vitamin powder. In hot months, we gravitate toward slushies (guava strawberry really rocks), or old-fashioned lemonade with lots of ice. When it cools down, we get an extra kick with the Power Energy Squeeze, a trademark blend of ATP and creatine (when put together, we’re told, these ingredients race around inside our body’s cells to increase our energy level). Whatever the concoction, it all tastes terrific at Surf City.

Readers’ Choice: Jamba Juice

How we celebrate as the Valley slips into fall, and mourn the last days of spring. Not just because blistering summer means we’ll no longer be able to touch any surfaces without wearing hot pads, but because summer is the only season we can’t spend our Saturdays browsing through the luxury of Vincent’s outdoor market.

From 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the cooler months, Vincent’s black asphalt parking lot is converted to a slice of Provence, with a gorgeous grouping of stalls filled with the freshest local produce, plus imported exotic fruits and designer vegetables. There are warm, crusty breads, buttery croissants, cookies and pastries. We love the imported cheeses, signature dressings, fresh pastas and pestos, herbs de Provence, homemade mustards, wines. Just looking at all the exciting, one-of-a-kind ingredients makes us believe we, too, could be gourmet chefs. But why would we bother firing up the stove, when Vincent Guerithault and his team of skilled artisans are already on the job for us, creating cooked-to-order treats like crepes, tamales and pizzas that we can enjoy while relaxing at umbrella-topped tables right in the market? Vive la Vincent’s!

Readers’ Choice for Best Farmers’ Market: Sprouts

It’s sure not easy keeping kosher. Not with keeping milk separate from meat, as in separate cookware, utensils, bowls and dishes in separate drawers and cabinets, plus two sinks, two disposals, two dishwashers and two ovens (all stainless steel, and blessed by a rabbi).

Even shopping isn’t easy. Creatures have to be slaughtered in a prescribed ritual and humane way, with the blood meticulously removed before the flesh is soaked and salted. Eggs must come from kosher birds, and be free of blood spots. This is not your typical stop into Circle K kind of stuff. Never fear, Cactus Kosher is here. Everything in this shop is certified by a rabbi, with traditional staples like gefilte fish, pickles, pastrami, corned beef and deli sandwiches to go. If wishes were knishes, we know where we’d be.

Stop in at Food City and pluck a couple different kinds of peppers out of the produce bins and off the shelves, take them home, roast them up. The fresh chiles are always waxy and pretty, like the Hatch chile verdes, pasillas, jalapeos, serranos and habaneros. The dried ones are convenient for quick meals, including chile de arbol, pasilla-negro, pasilla-ancho, chile guajillo, and hot or mild New Mexican chile pods.

If you need even more, there’s a fine selection in the canned food aisle, such as whole jalapeo, whole green chile, and chipotle adobado. Bring on the sizzle!

Back in 1990, Meng Truong took a gamble and opened a 2,000-square-foot Asian grocery store. His risk paid off, because today, he is owner of a thriving 52,000-square-foot international bazaar. We’ve tried to take inventory of all the exotica carried here, and it’s impossible, sort of “It’s a Small World” of foods and accessories. Besides, we find it difficult to pry ourselves away from the seafood, which is an absolutely incredible display of live and fresh frozen varieties — some we’ve never even heard of. Those googly eyes are watching us from their tanks, wondering which of them will be our dinner. Perhaps it’ll be live crab, mussels, clams, tilapia, catfish or carp. It could anchovy, flounder or barracuda. Might be salmon belly and head, gaspergou, squid, cuttlefish or massive shrimp. Possibly, we’ll just sample them all, like our own private sushi bar. Here, fishy fishy…

Greekfest owners Tony and Susan Makridis wish us “kali orexi” — have a good appetite. And man, we’re going to need it, because with one look at their expansive menu, we know we’ve got to have it all. This is a taverna absolutely brimming with good times (yes, the cheerful waiters yell “opa!” when they flame our saganaki cheese), and great food. Steaming ceramic crocks of moussaka, pastitsio and youvetsi are sublime pasta-meat casseroles. Lamb and chicken turn on a souvla over crackling fires. The desserts are prepared with ritualistic family tradition, like natural yogurt and honey with walnuts. Hey, if this stuff is good enough for the Olympian gods, then it’s good enough for us.

Readers’ Choice: Greekfest

The fact that Michael DeMaria is a spectacular chef is reason enough to choose him to cater your next intimate party. The fact that he was trained at some of the Valley’s best resorts makes him perfect for large corporate events, too. He handles each occasion with excitement and ease. DeMaria does on-premises catering in his high-tech kitchen studio adjacent to his elegant restaurant (12 to 17 guests) where diners watch the chef in action with Q&A sessions and take-home recipes. Or, you can relax at the Chef’s Table (6 to 10), with multiple courses paired with wines. Larger groups of 20 to 60 can take over the private dining room, with glowing fireplaces and views of a pond-strewn garden, or one of the patios (12 to 60), with desert trees, adobe walls, a cascading waterfall and mesquite-burning fireplaces.

For catering at your own location, DeMaria’s team arrives equipped for a memorable full-service wedding, private cooking in our own home, party at the property of our choice, and even backyard barbecues and picnics. The dining choice is yours, with tasting menus, custom menus, multi-course services and more, selected from an encompassing arsenal of contemporary, American and Mediterranean specialties. Better yet, let the remarkable DeMaria choose the menu.

Many chefs test their creativity on appetizers. ItÕs less risky to get wild with small-portioned dishes, and diners feel more comfortable sampling an exotic plate thatÕs not entree-priced. Chef Gregory Casale is a perfect case in point. WeÕve never seen such fantasy at any other fancy restaurant, with compelling, perhaps a bit crazy, choices like Southern fried frogsÕ legs over leek-tomato fondue with black-eyed peas. Starters are also where Casale lets loose with dynamite delicacies such as Thai lobster bisque with kaffir lime leaf, lemongrass and Thai crayfish cake; hazelnut-encrusted veal sweetbreads over truffle-scented pea risotto in roasted corn broth; and beef tartare with spicy soy vinaigrette and cold sesame noodles. With starters like these, we know our meal is going to come to a most exquisite finish.

At some point, the meaning of “gourmet” has been lost. It’s come to mean crazy, wild concoctions, with bizarre foods and even weirder combinations. But actually, gourmet means “a connoisseur of fine food and drink.” So there’s no better restaurant to celebrate fine food and drink than at Rancho Pinot. Co-owner Tom Kaufman is a wine genius, with a hugely clever and creative wine list (love the illustrations!). Co-owner Chrysa Kaufman is a food genius, and leader of the Phoenix chapter of Slow Food, an international group that cherishes farm-fresh foods, natural ingredients, and the joy of relaxing over a meticulously prepared meal.

The Kaufmans can get a bit wacko in their intense drive to prepare the most perfect food (don’t ask for substitutions). But it’s only from their obsession for the best in every bite of food, every sip of drink. The menu changes constantly, depending on what is the best available from organic farms and local artisans, and by what Chrysa deems acceptable to her creative skills.

Try this place once, and learn the difference between just food, and true art.

This no-frills joint stuck in a strip mall between stores that sell cheap water and cigarettes has a devoutly loyal following, and with good reason. It’s the place to go for happily inexpensive southern Italian fare, lunch or dinner. The owner, a Jewish Italophile who is the principal cellist for the Phoenix Symphony, is apt to greet you at the door and recommend his special of the day before you order at the front counter. The venerable staff (some of them have worked there for years) will fix your meal any way you like it. These days, with everyone and his mother on some kind of diet, that can mean an awful lot: If you ask, the guys will whip you up an antipasto that the late Dr. Atkins would appreciate from low-carb, high-protein heaven. A meal at Giuseppe’s isn’t complete without the sampler plate of bruschetta. It starts with a toasted piece of Italian bread topped with tomato, garlic and herbs, and goes from there (cheeses, meats and grilled vegetables). Three pieces for five bucks is an eminently fair price.

Readers’ Choice for Best Italian Restaurant: Olive Garden

What, exactly, is New American food? Nobody really knows. But ultimately, it seems to come down to presenting diners with dishes they think they might know, but then, surprise! There’s some crazy twist to keep you scratching your head. Often, it’s delicious in an exciting kind of way; at Cowboy Ciao, the surprise is always spectacular. Executive chef Bernie Kantak has come up with dishes like chile gratin (elk, beef loin, white beans, smoked Cheddar and Gouda); rare tuna with ground hops and chamomile over curried chow-chow and mango soy; or peppercorn ostrich tenderloin with blackberry compote and cocoa-nib mashed Yukon golds. You may think you know what you’re in for with grilled duck breasts, but then Kantak sideswipes you with apple-chipotle marinade, ancho-pecan chutney and smoked Gouda grits. You may not always recognize the dinners at Cowboy Ciao, but you’re going to love them.

Sometimes Cajuns and Creoles like to fight over food. Cajuns tend to think Creoles are stuck-up, what with their French-inspired cuisine and fancier ingredients. Creoles tend to believe that Cajuns are at best bourgeoisie, given to snacking on such lower-level swamp critters as alligator, crawfish and, yes, even squirrel. Voodoo Daddy’s doesn’t have squirrel, and it doesn’t have luxe dishes like deep-dish rabbit and foie gras pie. But it does have an impressive enough selection of New Orleans-style dishes to keep even the most orthodox Cajuns and Creoles happy. We appreciate the casual but excellent fried green tomatoes, the gator bites (marinated chunks of alligator dusted in corn meal and fried in peanut oil), and the fragrant frog legs piquant (sautéed in peppery tomato-based sauce, simmered with andouille sausage and green olives over long grain white rice). When we’re feeling a touch fancier, we go for the Oysters Bienville (a dozen fresh shucked Louisiana gulf oysters topped with cheese, breadcrumbs and herbs, broiled until golden on top), or duck confit salad (sautéed duck mixed with salad greens, onions and a warm balsamic vinaigrette topped with duck cracklings). We always finish up with a fine dessert: French bread pudding with raisins, pecans and whiskey sauce. Let the two camps duke it out; all we can say is, ooh wee, these vittles are all good.

Readers’ Choice: Voodoo Daddy’s

Schnitzel! We love that word. But more than saying it, we love eating the tasty meat cutlets, dipped in batter and fried. At Haus Murphy’s, we fill up on fine varieties including Wiener schnitzel, jäger schnitzel, Balkan schnitzel, paprika schnitzel, Holstein schnitzel, prager schnitzel, schweizer schnitzel and chicken schnitzel. Sausages! We adore sausages, and no one presents the wide variety found at Haus Murphy’s, like nurnberger bratwurst, knackwurst, krakauer wurst, thuringer bratwurst, weisswurst and spicy bratwurst. Sauerbraten! Szegediner gulash, kassler kotelett, hackbraten! We love all that, too. No, we’re not going to detail all those specialty dishes for you. Just trust us. Go. Order something. Anything. Get one of eight German drafts, and enjoy the strolling accordionist. We promise that, though you may not be able to pronounce what you’re eating, you will love it.

We could gush over the hip-happening ambiance of Sapporo, packed to the rim with beautiful people sipping beautiful cocktails in a beautiful atmosphere. We love the sushi and teppanyaki. But it’s the Pacific Rim menu items that get our hearts pattering like chopsticks drumming on a table. From the katsu fried calamari with sambal chile and rice vinegar to the crispy shrimp stuffed with lobster mousse and spicy Japanese butter, all dishes are spectacular, crafted with the freshest ingredients by chefs who are willing to take the risk to bring Valley diners something different. It’s all just soy, soy great.

The last time we tried cooking at home, we caused a fire (okay, so flaming dishes don’t belong on wooden tables). Then, we went to Tabletop, where the staff actually encourages us to play with flames, because we cook our own food at the table, on centerpieces of shiny stainless-steel grills. We can grill our own bulgogi, thin slices of rib eye marinated in sugar, garlic, soy sauce, sesame oil and possibly kiwi (the fruit’s acidity acts as a tenderizer). The thin slices cook in minutes, and under the careful supervision of our server, no one gets hurt. There’s so much to love about Korean food, and it’s all found here: dozens of kimchee snacks, and ginseng kalbi (marinated barbecued beef short ribs on a sizzling platter to be rolled with thick red-chile paste, onions and sliced jalapeos like a Korean taco). Unless we’re Korean, this is a place where it’s expected to ask questions — why do some dishes come with scissors, for example. But the staffers are always happy to answer, happy to demonstrate, and discreet enough with their handling of the fire extinguisher that we feel no shame.

The only problem we have with Tao Garden is deciding what to eat: Everything on the restaurant’s 210-plus-item menu is spectacular. Sometimes we’re in the mood for mainstream, so we fill up on perfect pot stickers, fiery kung pao chicken and black beef chow mein. Other times, we’re craving adventure, so we order authentic Cantonese or Mandarin specialties like fish maw with crab soup; salted fish, chicken and tofu hot pot; sautéed squid with preserved greens; and prawns with crispy fried milk. We’re always up for a dive into Tao’s fresh fish tanks, stocked with live lobster, crab, tilapia, rock cod, flatfish, catfish, scallops and clams. The kitchen has ingenious ways of preparing its catch, and we’re sure to ask about the daily specials (printed in Chinese but cheerfully translated by a friendly staff). At least one dining decision is simple — for best Chinese food in the Valley, we choose Tao Garden.

Readers’ Choice: P.F. Chang’s China Bistro

One of our friends is a chef, living in that fresh food capital, Berkeley. She came to visit, and we took her to dinner at Christopher’s. Months after that meal, she still raves about the incredible truffle-infused prime sirloin she ate, the tender meat served with fareki (a Middle Eastern grain), shallot confit and rich red wine bone marrow sauce. She still swoons over the decadent soup of wild mushrooms and foie gras, the frisée salad with lardons, poached eggs and sherry vinaigrette. If there were a restaurant like this in her hometown, she keeps repeating, she’d eat there every day.

So how lucky are we, because we can eat this fantastic French food every day, for lunch, dinner, and even late night (the place serves until midnight seven days a week). Christopher’s has kept us thrilled since chef Christopher Gross first opened this comfortable, elegant bistro in 1998, and we swear, he just keeps getting better. Chalk it up to the simple grace of his Gallic classics, emphasizing artisan ingredients from local and regional farmers. Salmon is smoked in-house, most dishes are prepared in a wood-burning oven, and the traditional French touches are all there (fantastic wine list, an extensive cheese program).

And ooh la la — the desserts! Parnassienne of chocolate mousse has no equal. Christopher’s, c’est magnifique.

Readers’ Choice: La Madeleine French Bakery & Cafe

Barmouche may be a fancy-looking restaurant, owned by a big-name celebrity chef (Mark Tarbell). It may have upscale dishes like “laitue,” organic butter lettuce with Roquefort cheese and walnut dressing. But we go there for the things that everybody loves and understands — mom’s home cooking. Tuesdays through Saturdays, there are Blue Plate Specials (chicken fried steak, spaghetti and meatballs, fish and chips). Every day, there are the cozy basics, like “Mark’s Mom’s Mac & Cheese,” biscuits and country gravy, or baked veal meat loaf. Desserts can’t be missed — chocolate banana bread pudding, ice cream sandwiches, an old-fashioned banana split and peach cobbler hit the spot. Not only cozy, though, this comfort cuisine is gourmet, prepared with loving care and the best ingredients (that cobbler gets its fruit from the local farms of Queen Creek, so we know it’s fresh). It’s the best of two worlds — like mother’s cooking, if we had grown up in the house of Julia Child.

While Americans salute a cheeseburger and French fries as a national treasure, people in India feast on the signature dish of tandoori. That’s chicken marinated in yogurt and mild spices, cooked in its own juices over red-hot charcoals, then roasted with onions in a tandoor (a special clay oven imported from India) to a crisp, tender copper brown. We have hot dogs. Indians snack on lamb boti kebab, marinated lamb meat in morsel-size pieces skewered over hot charcoals with mint chutney and onion. Sure, we love our American food, but you get the picture: There are many more intricacies to Indian dishes. And no one makes the complex recipes sparkle like Indian Delhi Palace. It’s difficult to choose from the massive menu. So we suggest letting the chef do it, with one of the complete meals offered. Our favorite is the tandoori dinner, with shish kebab, tandoori chicken, lamb tikka, vegetable curry, naan, dessert, chutney and tea. This is a culture we’re proud to be part of.

Readers’ Choice: Delhi Palace

A half-hour north of town, it’s worth a jaunt to this old-fashioned saloon with, yikes, honest-to-goodness real cowboys. Rock Springs has a history as delicious as its food, existing since the 1800s as an Indian encampment, a bivouac, a watering stop for miners, and a stagecoach stop. In 1918, it was enhanced to include a general store, hotel, and saloon.

Today, Rock Springs is as rustic as ever, dark, with lots of rough wood, an 1856 Brunswick bar and an antique soda fountain. Cowboy twangers play live music on weekends, and on the last Saturday of every month, there’s a Hogs in Heat Barbecue and Nut Fry (yes, Bradshaw mountain oysters, battered and deep-fried, also known as the private parts of calves and lambs).

The old-time menu features lots of mesquite-smoked Midwestern beef and old-fashioned barbecue, catfish, trout, chicken-fried steak and liver and onions. When the rooster crows, cooks dish up breakfasts of steak and eggs, biscuits and gravy, buttermilk pancakes and grits. If a homemade hot buttered cinnamon roll isn’t enough, dive into one of Penny’s Pies, baked fresh every day. Now that’s some gosh-darn honest cowboy cookin’!

Readers’ Choice for Best Steak Restaurant: Ruth’s Chris Steak House

Japanese restaurants have been proliferating all across the Valley like shiitake mushrooms after a rain. Why, within a mile or two of our beloved Sushi on Shea, there’s almost a half-dozen of the ethnic restaurants. Yet as much as we were impressed with the quality of SonS when it first opened in 1994, we’re that much more in love with it today.

SonS never lets us down with the basics. This is consistently perfect maguro, hamachi and red snapper sashimi. Salmon melts like butter in our mouths. Tempura emerges from the fryer light and crispy; tonkatsu is the real thing, with moist slabs of pork crunchy in panko and served over crisp green cabbage. No details are missed, either — the green salad is slicked with dynamite ginger soy vinaigrette, miso soup is always hot and rich, and white rice is always exquisitely fluffy-sticky.

SonS goes the extra mile, offering traditional dishes like shabu-shabu and nabeyaki udon. And the kitchen is always coming up with something new and exciting, like the recent addition of carpaccio, lacy thin strips of raw tuna dressed in a gripping horseradish-hot wasabi cream.

After almost a decade, our romance with Sushi on Shea just keeps getting more passionate.

Readers’ Choice: RA Sushi Bar Restaurant

We eat a vegetarian diet because we want to feel healthy. But that doesn’t mean we don’t want deeply flavored, interesting foods. Plaid delivers — the kick-back, casual den strewn with sofas caters to a hip, multinational college student clientele. We like the salad “plaidders,” omelets served all day, the “plaid” Thai noodles, Caribbean jerked tofu and lemongrass tofu served over rice. Some of the most exciting dishes show up as daily specials, like black bean pepper stir fry in Asian brown sauce, and Singapore curry. It’s an interesting environment, too, earthy and hodgepodge, full of tree-hugging fellow diners, but with a full bar.

Readers’ Choice: Pita Jungle

The best seafood in the Valley can be found in a dark room, buried in an underground building, across the street from a cemetery. But the owners of the Salt Cellar seem to understand that, when it comes to a fine tradition of excellent food, reasonable prices and a comfortable setting, it doesn’t matter where the actual property is. So rather than go for a glitzy, high-profile location, these folks have kept the Cellar pretty much as it was when it first opened in 1981. What they save in rent, they pass on to us in lower prices for exquisitely fresh seafood flown in daily from places like Hawaii, Chesapeake Bay, Alaska, Boston, British Columbia, Idaho and the Gulf of Mexico. The cellar keeps us coming back for its seasonal specialties, too, like turtle soup, and smoked blue marlin. Great seafood, for just a few clams? Who could ask for anything more?

Readers’ Choice: The Salt Cellar

We’ve been contemplating taking up the Atkins Diet. That’s the only way we can justify the gluttonous meat orgy that is a meal at Drinkwater’s. This place is a caloric menace, with massive steaks (33-ounce rib eye chop), veal (a full pound) and pork chops, entire 22-ounce racks of lamb and whole roasted chickens (one and a half pounds).

This isn’t just any meat, either, but the best USDA Prime, Midwest corn-fed steer, cut in the in-house butcher shop, wet-aged for 21 to 28 days, seasoned, broiled at 1,800 degrees, slicked with clarified butter and presented on a sizzling, 400-degree plate. We can even get our steak crusted with Gorgonzola for extra impact.

No fancy diet can justify the indulgence of Drinkwater’s side dishes — of table-tilting proportions — but we can never say no to full-pound baked potatoes drenched in butter and sour cream, soup-plate-size twice-baked spuds, or buckets of broccoli swamped in oceans of melted cheese. They’re just too tasty.

We pay for our gorging — an easy 30 bucks on just a piece of meat (no salad, no potato, no vegetable included, nothing but the plate). And we’ll pay again for months as we drag ourselves to our Stairmaster. But we’ll keep coming back, because with Drinkwater’s, there’s just no way to pretend we’ve got willpower.

Chef-owner Daniel Malventano has been knocking our socks off with his spectacular Italian fare for more than a decade. Sometimes it’s a little hard to keep up with him, given his penchant for changing the restaurant’s name (it started as Il Forno, then became Acqua e Sale, and has just been rechristened Daniel’s). Who cares what he calls it, though, as long as he never stops serving up the same level of classical dishes that he travels around the world to research and perfect. There’s no one else who serves succulent diver sea scallops in black truffle mousse, duck ravioli in butter-sage sauce with blood orange reduction, or our favorite class act: pork tenderloin roasted in amarone wine reduction, julienne prosciutto, sun-dried plums and crème de cassis with butternut squash-mashed potatoes and baby vegetables. Bellisima!

This is the first place to which we direct diners when turning them on to the distinctive cuisine that is Southwestern. Many people think our Southwestern signature is standard Mexican stuff. Some think it’s, gasp, Tex-Mex. Many think it’s cowboy cookouts. Too many think we’re all just sitting out in the desert here munching on cactus and lizards. One taste of the items on Windows’ stunning menu, though, and they understand: Southwestern is all about elegance, high style, and dramatic pairings of regional ingredients. Real Southwestern cooking is as intricate, artistic and stunning as the colors of a mountain mesa at sunset.

Start with cornbread-crusted crab cakes spiked with mango, avocado and citrus, or a sweet onion and lobster tamale with roasted corn salsa. Move on to Arizona mixed greens tossed with toasted pepitas (pumpkin seeds) and tangy-sweet prickly pear vinaigrette. Indulge in entrees like grilled veal chop with ham hock hominy cake, vegetable salad and chipotle demi-glacé, or pan-seared trout with yellow corn grits, artichokes, roasted corn and garlic cream sauce. Splurge, finally, with citrus and pine nut cake filled with goat cheese, orange caramel and cajeta ice cream.

Windows wows us with its wine list, including selections from Mexico, Chile and Argentina, and with its specialty margaritas fashioned from boutique mescals and fine tequilas. The decor is as delicious as the food, too, lush in sand-colored furnishings, regional pottery and paintings, panoramic golf course views and the warmth of a carved travertine fireplace.

Food this fine doesn’t come cheap, but for something as special as this Southwestern sensation, it’s worth every precious penny.

Readers’ Choice: Z’Tejas Grill

We’re all for eating healthfully. We just don’t want to think about it — all that balancing of nutrients and calories, and then, does the stuff even taste good? Happily, Soma has done the work for us. Everything on the extensive breakfast, lunch and dinner menu is broken down by protein, carbs, fat, fiber and calories. Everything is fashioned from lean meats and monounsaturated fats, with virtually no oil and lots of good-for-us grains and veggies.

But even better, the chef who created the menu is nationally acclaimed James McDevitt, so all the Asian-American treats taste terrific. This is real food, like a charred filet of soy-garlic marinated top sirloin (just 350 calories), or center cut pork chops with Chinese mustard applesauce, sweet potatoes, spinach and caramelized onions (798 calories for two meaty chops). For breakfast, we can feast on crepes stuffed with apple-cranberry tart, or a pita bulging with apple-sage sausage and scrambled eggs (50 percent egg whites). Lunch might be mahi-mahi tacos with ginger-carrot vinaigrette, or lettuce wraps, with three bundles of moist chicken chunk breast, sliced toasted almonds, string-thin carrots and bean sprouts. For dinner, we can choose thrills like sake glazed chicken with jasmine rice and spinach, or pork tenderloin with ginger-plum barbecue sauce.

With gourmet food like this, in such an upscale, bistro-style setting, we sure don’t feel like hippies. And with such body positive food, we sure don’t look it, either — hippy, that is.

Readers’ Choice: Pita Jungle

Chef Mahmmud Jaafari knows his Persian cuisine. He also knows his Mediterranean, Italian, American, Mexican, Cajun and vegetarian foods, and even a smattering of Oriental influences. The result is one of the most exciting restaurants in this town, with cooking that is defined most simply as Middle Eastern. This is knock-your-socks-off caliber, with appetizers like pourani (parboiled spinach blended with yogurt and deeply perfumed with garlic, onion and olive oil, spooned with homemade whole-wheat pita bread triangles). You’ll crave every bit of his from-scratch cooking (even pita is homemade), like the oil-free minestrone dusted with Parmesan, and a salad of angel hair pasta and romaine tossed with feta, Parmesan, scallions, tomatoes, avocado paste and mountains of garlic. There are complex stews, tender lamb gyros and elegant salmon with grilled eggplant-wrapped asparagus topped with dill cream on saffron rice. This is a place you must find for yourself: Persian Garden truly is a magical culinary carpet ride.

Readers’ Choice for Best Mediterranean Restaurant: Pita Jungle

The cooks at Pho Bang continue to craft the most outrageously decadent Vietnamese dishes in town. This long-standing restaurant doesn’t get hung up on pretense — dishes come rapid-fire out of the kitchen, sometimes sloppy on their plates, sometimes with nary a smile from our server. But the prices are so low, and the food so cunning, we never quibble. Besides our favorite pho (15 varieties), there’s an impressive array of exotica like canh chua ca (catfish soup with pineapple and vegetables in a spicy lemon sauce), or tom va bo nuong vi.

How cool is it to sit down at our own tabletop grill, and be presented with a large plate circled with whisper-thin slices of lightly oiled raw beef, whole shrimp, sliced onion, chopped scallion and peanuts? On the side is xalach dia, an array of sliced carrot, cucumber, pickled radish, whole scallion heads, mint, cilantro and lettuce, alongside plates of rice paper sheets and butter. In fact, everything at this cozy hole-in-the-wall is remarkable.

We’ve eaten a lot of gyro sandwiches during our search for The Best, wondering if somewhere some eatery might be able to create something better. And now we’re eating another gyro from Gyros Express, just to confirm that, yes, Gyros Express is absolutely the best in town. What’s the secret? We don’t know. We can just guarantee that there’s no better pressed beef and lamb, looking like a huge fat log of juicy goodness, carved from a rotisserie and tasting of deep savory meat. Great generous portions come tucked in a comforter of freshly grilled pita, layered with tomato, onion and cucumber yogurt sauce on the side (crucial for dipping). The diet-minded can get gyros meat over a Greek salad, with lettuce, green pepper, onions, tomatoes, cucumber, Greek olives, feta and Italian dressing. Any way, and no matter how much we get it, we always want more.

It seems so obvious. Arizona’s indigenous foods — delicacies like fresh local fish, wheat, melons, pistachios, olives, chiles, citrus and squash. Yet amazingly, no chef has really tried it here, until this year, with James Beard Award-winning chef Janos Wilder. Wilder, already famous for his innovative French-Southwestern Janos restaurant in Tucson, has brought us fine dining drawn from our state’s Native American heritage. How authentic is it? The chef works with Pima/Maricopa Indian farmers to harvest the finest of their 35,000 acres of land and aqua farms on their reservation surrounding Kai.

Dishes come looking like earth and sky, and tasting of heaven. They’re inspired all on their own, but made even more magical with Mexican, Pacific Rim and European touches. The olive oil that starts our meal is grown and pressed on-site, and dotted with sesame and pumpkin seeds. We slather it over superb crusty bread, crunchy and sweet-tart with apricots and pumpkin seed, or cranberries and hazelnuts. Rack of lamb comes rubbed in chunky pecan-crust mushroom-infused cornbread pudding, and a mole sauce fashioned from ingredients supplied by Native Seeds SEARCH (a Tucson-based nonprofit that protects and cultivates ancient indigenous agricultural methods). Lobster fry bread is lavish, the thin dough capped with an entire four-ounce Maine lobster tail, roasted corn, avocado and garlic butter.

Beautiful food, straight from Arizona — that’s A-O-Kai with us.

Time was, not so long ago, that it was difficult to find even basic ingredients like cilantro in local grocery stores. Fennel was a plastic doohickey we used to change our car’s oil, “greens” meant iceberg lettuce, and pizza came from Domino’s. But Craig and Kris DeMarco have taken our fair Valley into the big leagues, with La Grande Orange, a Berkeley-esque grocery/deli/pastry shop/sit-down cafe/coffee house/wine store and pizzeria. They’ve divided the shop into a culinary co-op of independent local food artisans (a pastry and cake wizard, a master bread baker, a produce expert, a fruit genius, etc., all share the space). A highlight is the on-site pizza god, handcrafting pies from natural sourdough fermented crust; organic, seasonal vegetables brought in daily by local growers; homemade meats and cheeses; and herbs so fresh they’re plucked in bunches from silver tubs in the store’s produce section.

We can buy retro candy (Pop Rocks!), and select from a dizzying array of olive oils or pestos. We can feel oh-so cosmopolitan lounging with our pooch on the patio of the adjacent Java Garden coffee shop. We no longer even blink to find simple breakfast fare composed of once considered ultra-luxe smoked salmon on an English muffin with cream cheese, capers and onion. Lunch is modern and magnificent with a croque monsieur, layered with ham, tomato, spicy mustard, Gruyère and egg. Dinner, of course, is pizza, perhaps Wednesday’s special of fennel, organic greens and goat cheese.

This is the new, cutting-edge Phoenix we know and love, and we say thanks to the Orange for making our lives so grande.

The credit begins with Douglas Rodriguez, celebrity chef from back East, and father of the unique cuisine now known as Nuevo Latino. He’s the big name behind Latin-influenced Deseo. But the award goes to Deseo’s actual chef de cuisine, Mark Dow, who is flawlessly crafting Rodriguez’s recipes and bringing brand-new excitement to the Valley’s dining scene.

We rarely see arepas locally, and never like this, the Cuban corn cakes lavish with raw quail egg, caviar and crème fraîche. We’ve never had such spectacular ceviche, either, such as a “rainbow” presentation of sashimi-grade slabs of layered halibut and salmon, and of ahi with red and green chiles in a brilliant marinade of soy sauce, citrus juices, red onions and cilantro. And there’s true genius behind a clever plate of plantain-crusted halibut, pan-seared with sliced banana, sautéed spinach, bacon and cherry tomatoes.

Deseo is Spanish for “desire.” With a ravishing menu like this, there’s no question we do.

Readers’ Choice: Bar Nun

Sometimes, even before we rub the sleep from our eyes, we’ve already decided what we’ll be having for breakfast. That’s because the early morning fare served at New York Bagels ‘n Bialys visits us in our dreams. The selection offered in this Jewish deli is mind-boggling, with almost three dozen delectable dishes. The Rabin family uses recipes handed down for more than 100 years. We love the traditional dishes — real Brooklyn lox scrambled with onions and eggs; a deli omelet groaning with corned beef, pastrami and melted cheese; or homemade corned beef hash with three eggs. We appreciate the offbeat, too — the Reuben omelet with corned beef, grilled sauerkraut and Swiss; or the filling Philly beef omelet, packed with steak, onions, peppers, mozzarella and mushrooms. Whatever we get, we’re not going away hungry, since each plate comes with a heap of crisp-skinned home fries, choice of tomatoes or cottage cheese, and a bagel or bialy. Bagels are made fresh from homemade dough, fat-free and sugar-free, with no additives or preservatives. Then they’re boiled, and baked on both sides for optimum chewy-crustiness.

Readers’ Choice: The Good Egg

This is the fanciest fast food to be found. Everything here is prepared to order, with fresh ingredients, and with sauces and dressings made from scratch. The family-run cafe keeps it simple but satisfying with a Hawaiian-Asian menu, meaning stir fries and rice bowls (no extra charge for white meat chicken!), teriyaki-pineapple-chicken salad, or a Big Kahuna burger, bringing a third of a pound layered with American and provolone cheeses, Canadian bacon, a pineapple ring and mayo. Milk shakes are handmade, and instead of plastic-toned soft-serve, thereÕs the premium BertoÕs gelato, in coconut-lime or mango-raspberry. Still, everything costs less than $6 for an entire meal, including sandwich, cooked-to-order shoestring French fries and a soda.

Food of this caliber requires some patience. It takes a few minutes to get fed, since the cook actually prepares dishes instead of sliding them prewrapped from a warming tray. But when weÕre in a rush, we just call ahead, and CJÕs has our order waiting at a drive-through window (where we push a button under the window to let staff know weÕre there). Such luxury, without even leaving our car. Makes our heart go vroom!

(and 19900 North Remington, Surprise, 623-584-8494) Who says real barbecue has to be served in a dive, usually on paper plates, with plastic forks and nothing but reams of flimsy napkins to sop up the mess? The folks at Dillon’s have figured out that, while we demand the best in our meat, we also don’t mind some civilized surroundings while we gnaw.

Dillon’s is a cute, converted old house that looks like grandma’s parlor. It’s got fancier staples than many places, like prime rib, turkey, and Northern Atlantic salmon. But this ‘cue is as honest as any rough-and-tumble, smoke-spewing joint. Large portions and reasonable prices shout of authenticity. We can’t go wrong with traditional slow-smoked St. Louis-style seasoned pork spare ribs, or tender baby back pork ribs. A half chicken is slow smoked, too, sealing in its juices, while turkey practically melts in our mouths. Juicy choice cut beef brisket, pulled pork in spicy vinegar sauce, smoked sausage, or burnt ends marinated in Cajun or sweet-mild barbecue sauce have us salivating just thinking about them. Sometimes we go for a kick: the Southwestern smoked stew, a comforting dish of smoked beef, pork, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, peppers and corn in a robust sauce. Sometimes we go for the kill: The Brontosaurus beef rib platter could fell a WWE champion, with its huge, full rack of meat. Take a ‘cue from us: Dillon’s is the best all the way to the bone.

Readers’ Choice: Honey Bear’s Bar-B-Q

Sophie’s calls this plate Les Frites – la Parisienne. It sounds completely intimidating until you realize that, hey, this is just a fancy name for French fries. But mon Dieu, these are not just any fries. For less than five bucks, you get a soup bowl full of exquisitely fresh-cut shoestring potatoes, perfectly deep fat fried to be crisp-skinned with a succulent hot interior. They’re dusted with fresh herbs, ever so gently salted, and served with roasted tomato aioli (think sweet, chunky purée, much more interesting than ketchup). It’s not uncommon to simply order a plate of these fantastic fries and some fresh-brewed iced tea. For lunch, nothing more is needed.

This is a true story: Once we were in Guido’s waiting in line behind an ancient, impossibly tiny lady. She might have weighed 80 pounds, and could barely see over the top of the counter. She ordered a capocollo and provolone sandwich. When the deli server slid the plate to her, she gasped. This monster sandwich was so huge, so bulging with meat and cheese, she literally couldn’t lift it. The server had to come out from behind the counter and carry the plate to her table.

Yet there’s more than size to impress. Guido’s uses only the most premium ingredients for its sandwiches — Boar’s Head, and the finest imported Italian brands. Meatballs, sausage and tomato sauce and all the salads are homemade. A hot roast beef is heaven, layered with soft grilled onions and green peppers with lots of Italian herbs, thinly shaved meat and ladles of juices so rich and savory, we actually slurp as we bite. It’s hard to choose: Sometimes it’s the chicken focaccia, with spinach, roasted peppers, grilled onions and provolone, baked until the cheese melts to bubbly goo. Other times, we go for the Italian sub, a massive masterpiece of salami, mortadella, pepperoni and provolone with lots of fresh lettuce, tomato, onion and Italian dressing.

Guido’s sandwiches span nine inches long, and we’ve measured them four inches tall. But still need convincing that these are the best around? Well, as we stole one final glance at the miniature old lady, she was wiping her chin with a napkin, and there wasn’t a speck of food left on her plate.

Readers’ Choice for Best Sandwiches and Best Sandwich Shop: Subway

We’ve got a little secret. We like mayonnaise on our cheesesteaks. It may seem like overkill, seeing as Uncle Sam’s sandwiches are already the best on the planet, enormous torpedoes brimming with so much thinly sliced imported meat that we can’t finish even half of one. These juicy beauties are draped in lots of gooey cheese, and our choice of extras: pizza sauce, mushrooms, peppers, onions, lettuce, tomato and hot or sweet peppers. Everything is plopped on a squishy Italian roll (white or wheat), and we always ask for a fork so we can spear every last bit when the overambitious package falls apart. There’s a reason this place has been packing people in for more than 20 years. The only thing that could make these steaks better is, you guessed it, mayo. Try it. See if you agree.

Chef-owner Michael Mishkin isn’t yet 30, which may be partly the reason he’s not hung up on the old-fashioned, tried-and-true of cooking. This creative guy has taken a new approach to the classic caesar, and bravo. His traditional toss of crispy romaine comes currant with spunky green chiles, crunchy frizzled tortillas, and cotija cheese, a salty white Mexican variety with a dry, crumbly texture. Add roasted chicken or grilled shrimp to make it a full, magnificent meal.

We know, we know: Technically, sushi needs to be paired with sweetened rice to be sushi. And there isn’t a speck of rice to be found on Sea Saw’s menu. But we’re going with the looser definition of sushi being tiny Japanese appetizers with fish as a starring role — partly because there’s no other way to describe the unique, global dishes Sea Saw chef Nobu Fukuda creates, and because this food is so good we’d call it anything just to get it into our mouths.

Think of it as Japanese tapas. Each dish is individually prepared to order, so plan on spending some time at the intimate bar. It’s a thrill seeing Nobu whip and turn in his tiny work space, describing each ingredient as he plates it like art. We can select our own choices of “warm” or “cool” dishes, like shinshu mushi (sea bass and green tea soba in scented mushroom broth), or tako and tomato (sliced octopus, organic tomato, buffalo mozzarella, micro arugula, vintage Turley olive oil, citrus and wasabi aioli). Chilled edamame soup is a must, the soy beans puréed and drizzled with crème fraîche.

But the best way to experience this sushi is to put ourselves in Nobu’s talented hands. We embrace the omakase, a tasting menu that changes nightly depending on what’s best in the market. Some eight courses may appear, each paired with an exciting sake, champagne or wine. Blue fin toro tartare, hamachi with grapefruit and avocado, seared tuna tataki with roast beet purée — these are just a few of the delicacies that may be in store for us.

Sea Saw, we salute your “sushi.”

Kazimierz is such a fun, upbeat place that instead of a typical happy hour, it features “early evening hours of joy.” Who couldn’t have a great time at such a stylish hideaway as this, a dark, intimate cave decorated like a castle with lots of wood, stone and stained glass? Your date will think you’re totally hip, just knowing how to find the joint. There’s no sign, and the front door is hidden within a breezeway. You can toast your potential beau with exotic wines, chosen from a menu brimming with some 1,300 labels (the indecisive will appreciate the flight samplings). Cozy sofas lend themselves to comfortable snuggling; if things are going well, you can retreat to one of the private tables hidden behind red velvet drapes. In case you find you’re so smitten you get tongue-tied, you can hide under the cool tones of live jazz, or KazBar’s playful CD mixes. And how cute is the menu, with “global” plates designed for snacking and sharing: things like two-cheese fondue pot with apple slices and bread, or flatbread of house-made focaccia rock shrimp, smoked Gouda, buffalo mozzarella and pumpkin seeds.

We love eating our veggies, especially when they come from Quiessence, a garden-to-table experience of contemporary American farm cuisine. Housed in a converted home amid the lush greenery of the Farm at South Mountain, the quaint cafe is open limited seasons, just Fridays and Saturdays, with one dinner seating each evening, and with reservations required (we recommend a month in advance). Why all the fuss? Because each menu is uniquely crafted, selected from what’s the most fresh and flavorful from the farm’s Happydirt Veggie Patch organic gardens, and picked just hours before our meal. First, there’s a chef’s tasting in front of the cafe’s wood-burning fireplace. Then, it’s a five-course carpet ride — perhaps warm Wilcox goat cheese and tomato galette, petite herb salad and hazelnut pesto drizzle; then pan-seared sea scallops with wilted farm greens and gingered carrot sauce. We select our entrees: maybe pan-seared halibut fillet with green whipped potatoes and caramelized baby fennel; free-range chicken breast saltimbocca stuffed with prosciutto and fontina cheese atop wilted baby spinach and wild mushroom sauce; or asparagus and spring pea risotto with spearmint and shaved Reggiano. Next, it’s a cheese course, like Cyprus Grove Midnight Moon with glazed cipollini onions. Finally, it’s on to dessert, which might be lavender-scented crème brûlée alongside a strawberry-rhubarb tart. We bring our own wine, and cheer our good fortune. Such incredible vegetables sure do our bodies good!

We still remember the first time our mom brought home some hummus. She was on her health food kick, and had been frightening us small children with strange “foods” like tofu, bean curd, and soy milk. Really, she promised, this time we would like it. We wrinkled our nose at what looked like beige baby food, tentatively dipped a carrot stick in the goo, and tasted. The rest is history. Since then, we have hummus at every opportunity, dipped with vegetables, pita bread, toast, crackers, even on pizza.

Caspian has the best hummus we’ve ever found. The garbanzo bean dip is thick and silky like mousse, sprinkled with paprika and a joy to slather on warm pita. Why, we’ve even called in a takeout order of a pint, and then eaten it all by ourselves. After all, if mom says it’s healthful, more must be better than less.

We were standing in line, waiting for the clerk to wrap up our cake, explaining to a fellow customer that the decadent “zebra” confection we had selected was for our special someone’s birthday. Another customer nearby suddenly shrieked, “Oh my God! I just bought one of those cakes for my husband’s birthday last week! It was the most amazing thing ever!”

So true. Tammie’s pastries are nothing short of wondrous, pieces of edible art handcrafted fresh daily. They’re beautiful to look at, in swirling shapes of molded ganache, studded with fresh berries, wrapped with ribbons, and decorated with piping and florals so elaborate they almost look like pieces of expensively upholstered furniture. The flavors are incredible — like our zebra, white chocolate mousse layered with chocolate cake and raspberries, or banana pudding and chocolate sponge cake layered with chocolate Frangelico mousse and toasted hazelnuts. With 72 hours’ notice, Tammie will make a custom cake with all our favorite flavors, though we’re happy as can be with the standard stuff, like strawberry shortcake, a beautiful pink and white round with vanilla custard, strawberries and vanilla sponge cake. There are always tarts, bite-size cream puffs, cookies, scones, muffins and pop tarts, too. Such a sweet life!

Chef Giovanna Fox isn’t making money on volume. Not with just two ovens that bake only three cheesecakes at a time. But her fabulous creamy cheesecakes, each crafted with special care, are the best. We were believers after the first bite of her basic New York model, traditional and entirely decadent. But now we like to stop into her cute little cake parlor and sample slices of the more than 20 other varieties she sculpts. Try the white chocolate and amaretto, on a shortbread-almond crust topped with whipped cream, slivered almonds, and drizzled caramel. Or cookies ‘n’ cream (vanilla filling blended with sandwich cookies on a chocolate cookie crust, topped with whipped cream, crumbled cookies and drizzled hot fudge). Maybe the kiwi lime (real Key lime juice and sliced kiwi on a vanilla cookie crust topped with whipped cream and kiwi purée). Day after day, whatever the flavor, Giovanna’s takes the cake.

We’re thinking the reason Crackers is located in such an odd spot — in an industrial park hidden behind a Holiday Inn and a Home Depot — is that its owners need warehouse space to inventory the huge selection of desserts offered at this charming breakfast and lunch hot spot. On any given day, the Victorian-ambiance restaurant serves up at least 16 mouth-watering marvels of sugar. They’re all homemade, too, so we imagine fork lifts of carrots coming in for the dreamy carrot cake, kegs of Kahlúa for the brownies, and swimming pools of sour cream for the praline cake. Of course there would be pallet after pallet of chocolate for the fudge cake, German chocolate cheesecake squares, German chocolate cake, chocolate bread pudding, and éclairs. Perhaps these guys have their own farm as well, to provide fruit for delights like strawberry cheesecake, coconut-chocolate cheesecake, orange rum cheesecake, lemon coconut cake, lemon bars and raspberry cheesecake. We’d have to be crackers to go anywhere else for our sweet-tooth fix.

Readers’ Choice: Cheesecake Factory

Okay, so sometimes we’re completely old-fashioned. We yearn for the days when we could order a meat dinner at a steak house and get . . . a meat dinner. Just a nice, normal cut of beef, with potatoes, salad, and maybe some veggies. None of these frou-frou 400-degree plates seen at high-end chop houses now, no sizzling butter splattered about, no impossible-to-manage half-a-cow portion, and no $40 price tag that includes nothing on the side but a fork and knife. At the Stockyards, cooks have been serving the same honest meat since 1954, culled from prime aged beef. Our favorite, prime rib, comes in a lovely eight-ounce size, or the more manly 20-ounce bone-in model. It’s exquisitely juicy, tender, and hits the spot with creamy horseradish, homemade jus, a relish tray, soup or tossed green salad, baked potato or cowboy beans, hot biscuits and honey butter. There are no surprises, and no sticker shock. At lunch, this prime rib sets us back just $13.95; at dinner, the priciest big cut is just $25.95. At the Stockyards, you can just brand us happy.

A salad bar is vegetables, right? Sure, unless you’re in Brazil, where it’s everything and anything that a creative chef can fit onto a long, self-service table. Or unless you’re at Fogo e Brasa, a Brazilian restaurant where the lavish salad bar spans more than two dozen exotic dishes. Yes, there’s traditional lettuce and such. But there are also king crab legs, shrimp, octopus, mussels, crab, pastas, exotic cheeses (feta with red and yellow tomatoes, or expensive Parmigiano-Reggiano) and anchovies. Calamari are a marvel in themselves (they’re served in marinated rings, and as rolled steaks stuffed with peppers or tuna). When it does come to veggies, Fogo e Brasa doesn’t cut any corners. There are lots of high-end options, like artichoke hearts, vibrant wild mushroom salad, marinated and grilled Portobello mushrooms, marinated green beans, grilled asparagus and hearts of palm. Several hot dishes make this buffet a complete meal, changing per the chef’s whim, but perhaps including something like swordfish in coconut sauce, and always featuring a complimentary basket of fresh-baked mini-cheese rolls. The display is included with dinner, but now can be purchased separately, too. When it comes to salads, Fogo e Brasa is raising the bar.

Ice cream always sounds so good. But sometimes, the anticipation doesn’t live up to the experience. What’s with the thick, sugary, virtually tasteless artificial pastes some places dare to call the cold stuff these days? Not Flor, though. Here, the frozen treats are handcrafted with real ingredients, for real, vibrant flavor. These are Mexican recipes made with actual fruits and nuts, prepared in-store, and the result is dazzling. Consider creamy coconut, mamey fruit, papaya, dulce de leche caramel, mango, guava, watermelon and nuez (pecan cream). Some 42 flavors tempt, with sweet snacks like coconut cream, mango cream, banana cream and peach cream, or pineapple, cantaloupe and lime. Try the avocado, and the elote (corn) — you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Frankly, with Flor, we’re floored.

Readers’ Choice: Cold Stone Creamery

Zinc could send out merely decent smoked salmon. Lesser quality fish could be hidden when wrapped in such perfect, pillowy crepes as it is here, the feather light batter infused with fresh herbs. Less succulent fish might be forgiven, when dipped in such rich lemon crème fraîche created by Zinc’s chefs. Even only okay fish might seem fine when partnered with the most garden-gorgeous shaved cucumber, red onion slivers and aromatic, peppery arugula, hand-picked to best the best of the day. Yet Zinc takes its salmon to a pristine level, smoking only the finest swimmers in-house and presenting it in eyelash-thin ribbons. Silky, succulent, melt-in-the-mouth wonderful, this is the fish of our wishes.

We are so pleased to have found exquisite tortilla soup served at a most unlikely place: a restaurant inside the out-of-the-way Fiesta Inn resort at Priest and Broadway. It’s a business hotel, a very nice one, but tucked on the edge of an industrial park. That’s right, this is the best Mexican recipe we’ve come across. The rich broth is almost a stew, so packed is it with chicken, onion, bell peppers and chiles (spicy hot!), and capped with lots of fresh avocado, Cheddar and blue-red tortilla frizzles. It’s robust, soothing, exciting and in all ways excellent. Way to olé, Fiesta Inn!

Cyclo’s owner, Justina Duong, loves to chat with her guests. One of her favorite stories to tell is about her chicken noodle soup, a classic comfort food she used to consume by the bucket as a child. It’s one of the best sellers on her menu.

Except Duong is Vietnamese, her restaurant is Vietnamese, and her chicken noodle soup is Vietnamese, a dish called mien ga. We assure you, though, this is food that spans any culture. The chicken is tender breast, torn in toothsome shards and grilled. The noodles are delicate, opaque glass variety. The broth is aromatic brew, puffing steam, bobbing with chopped green onions, tears of pungent cilantro leaves and bean sprouts, plus a splash of fermented fish sauce and lime.

The bowl is huge, almost too much to finish, but so captivating that somehow, we always find the room. And at just $5, it’s as comforting to our budget as it is to our soul.