Restaurants >>

• Best Barbecue Restaurant
  Burns Bar BQ
  On Saturday afternoon, Burns Bar BQ is party central in Acres Homes. The crowds line up when the place opens, and they never let up until the ribs are gone. Burns Bar BQ serves their ribs well done under a sweet and subtle glaze of sauce and smoke. They're the best in the city. Patriarch Roy... More >>
• Best Cuban Restaurant
  Cafe Miami
  The huge awning outside this classic little joint on the southwest side announces that Cafe Miami is the "King of Black Beans." In this town, that's no mean feat, and the fact is, the restaurant deserves the title. Also, try a basket of fried plantains and some yuca relish bathed in lime and... More >>
• Best Place to Skip Dinner and Get to Dessert
  Ruggles Cafe Bakery
  Bruce Molzan has had a rough couple of years seeing his establishments at Minute Maid and downtown fold like...um, folding chairs or a deck of cards or something. But that doesn't mean he's lost it. We still think he has the best desserts in town. And while his hearty sandwiches and sweet potato... More >>
• Best Neighborhood Spot in the Heights
  Onion Creek Coffee House
  This is a pleasant, relaxing Heights-area spot that serves up tall cups of caffeine and pints of beer (not a short feat in this dry part of town) as patrons take in live music and DJs. At breakfast, loyal morning patrons inhale tasty croissants, bagels and kolaches, while lunchtime regulars wolf... More >>
• Best Neighborhood Spot in Montrose
  Brasil
  While many Montrose cafes and coffee shops attract a fairly intriguing array of customers -- students with laptops, poets with notebooks, artists with sketchpads, wedding planners with engaged couples -- few provide as comfortable a place to just "be" as Brasil. And the food is no slack job,... More >>
• Best Comfort Food
  Cleburne Cafeteria
  Dishes like roast beef, chicken-fried steak and mac 'n' cheese rarely grace the cover of Gourmet magazine, but they're at the epicenter of the collective American palate. And you'll be hard-pressed to find a place that serves better versions of these favorites than Cleburne Cafeteria. The lines... More >>
• Best Greek Restaurant (1 Comment)
  Mykonos Island
  With its big open windows and lush plants, Mykonos Island seems plucked from its namesake spot in Greece. Try the Greek sampler platter, which offers traditional appetizers like meatballs and stuffed grape leaves. True to Greek island cuisine, psari (seafood) reigns supreme here, with fish like... More >>
• Best Mexican Restaurant (1 Comment)
  Hugo's
  Did Hugo Ortega know he was creating the most cutting-edge Mexican food in town when he opened his eponymous restaurant? Or was he simply paying homage to the diversity and culinary gifts of his homeland? Either way, he's at the forefront of 21st-century Mexican cuisine -- both locally and... More >>
• Best Middle Eastern Restaurant
  Fadi's
  Between the tangy Lebanese salad, fragrant tabbouleh, fluffy dill rice and creamy hummus, your plate is already full as you navigate the a la carte line at Fadi's. As you eye the offerings, you're given the choice of lamb, chicken of beef kebabs that arrive to your table sizzling, juicy and... More >>
• Best Neighborhood Spot in Rice Village
  benjy's
  With its artsy, brushed-aluminum tabletops, pastel walls and teardrop lighting fixtures, benjy's looks every bit the swank hangout -- and it is. There's a separate upstairs lounge, and downstairs there's Benjy Levit's serious modern American cuisine. Chill on the comfy booths while you spy on... More >>
• Best Place to Bring Your Dog
  Barnaby's
  The teacup toy poodles and rat-size Chihuahuas peer at each other from their owners' purses. Stately Dobermans and German Shepherds mingle with crack-addict-hyper Jack Russell terriers. Posh Weimaraners that could model for Wegman stare down their long noses at bandanna-clad, all-American golden... More >>
• Best Seafood Restaurant
  Clary's Seafood Restaurant
  The seafood at this Galveston hideaway is absolutely sublime. But it's the picture window in the dining room that elevates Clary's above its mainland competitors. Through the window you can watch the pelicans and seagulls circle a glistening shrimp boat tied up at a tiny dock on Offats Bayou.... More >>
• Best Breakfast (1 Comment)
  Gorditas Aguascalientes
  The breakfast tacos at Gorditas Aguascalientes include eggs with carne deshebrada, ham, bacon, chorizo and potatoes, and they're all built on handmade flour tortillas. The sensational chilaquiles, which are served on the side of the huevos rancheros, are made with dark chile sauce and white... More >>
• Best Sommelier
  Antonio Gianola
  Sommeliers are often judged by how much profit they bring in. And the way to turn a big profit is to sell expensive wines. So the average Houston sommelier loads up the wine list with overpriced bottles and then tries to sell them with snob appeal. Italian wines are the worst. To hear the... More >>
• Best Bistro
  Mockingbird Bistro
  Award-winning chef and owner John Sheely is back behind the stove of his self-dubbed American-Provencal bistro. Despite a gothic interior left over from the previous owners that doesn't give the place a bistro feel, the food is innovative and always superb. He is turning out such bistro staples... More >>
• Best Chinese Restaurant
  Fung's Kitchen
  When Asian dignitaries visit Houston, they are most often entertained at our finest Chinese restaurant, Fung's Kitchen. The palatial red-and-gold dining room can expand to accommodate over a thousand diners. The 400-item menu includes such exotica as thousand-year-old eggs, seaweed salad and... More >>
• Best Expense-Account Restaurant
  Pappas Bros. Steakhouse
  If you're into testosterone-induced bragging of the "mine is bigger than yours" sort -- referring, of course, to expense accounts -- then this is the perfect place to show what you've got. In a wonderful atmosphere reminiscent of the art deco era, you can impress that important client and easily... More >>
• Best Soul Food Restaurant
  Just Oxtails Soul Food
  Just Oxtails Soul Food is modestly named and modestly situated in a corrugated metal building next to a church and a biker bar. It easily lives up to its name, offering divine oxtails, which are tender and drenched in an addictive, slightly sweet gravy. But that's not the only reason the line... More >>
• Best Family Restaurant
  Lupe Tortilla's
  Kids can run rampant at this family-friendly Tex-Mex joint located in an old house just off the Katy Freeway, with a large outside seating area and open-air bar. Since the wait can be excessive, the owners built a sandbox for the little ones to play in, and they invariably bring the sand, toys... More >>
• Best Jamaican Restaurant
  Tropical Grill
  At this cozy little cottage, the chef is also the waiter, and all the food tastes homemade. Chef Neville Monteith grew up in rural East Portland, Jamaica, not far from the Boston Beach jerk shacks and the Port Antonio banana plantations. After training at the famous Trident resort hotel on the... More >>
• Best Neighborhood Spot in the Southwest
  Java Cup
  One of Houston's more intriguing shopping centers is located near West Bellfort and Chimney Rock, where Westbury Square tries, as it has for 30 years, to stay alive. The center's New Orleans feel -- brick paving, porches, a fountain -- is so strong that Infernal Bridegroom Productions once... More >>
• Best Thai Restaurant
  Vieng Thai
  The hot larb salad with lime-juice-drenched ground beef tossed with chopped chiles, scallions, onions, mint and cilantro is electrifying. The drunken noodles -- slick with lime juice, piquant with chiles and aromatic with purple basil -- are spectacular. The milky-looking tom kha gai is a... More >>
• Best Vegetarian-Friendly Restaurant
  Hunan Village Restaurant
  At Hunan Village, you can order veggie substitutes so amazingly similar to the real deal, you'll swear you're being fooled with. Take the sesame "chicken." We defy you to bite into a big chunk of its sweet, dark, chewy mass and deny it's the same stuff Colonel Sanders is serving up the road. The... More >>
• Best Vegetarian Indian Restaurant
  Madras Pavilion
  Madras Pavilion is popular with Gujaratis, South Indians and other vegetarian denizens of the subcontinent, but never mind the wisdom of Lord Krishna -- the real reason to go is because the food is heavenly. The palak paneer is the most perfectly spiced in the city. Filled with onions and... More >>
• Best Brunch
  Hilton Post Oak
  This one wins for sheer variety. One of the last all-you-can-eat brunch buffets, it's a feast for the eyes and the belly. With well over 100 feet of offerings, the Hilton Post Oak brunch should satisfy even the pickiest of eaters. A good strategy is to bring the Sunday paper and linger over the... More >>
• Best Creole Restaurant
  Brennan's of Houston
  Executive chef Randy Evans is putting his signature on Brennan's menu with some ambitious new dishes and a fresh spirit of inventiveness. The Creole food served here is a culinary subgenre that Brennan's calls Texas Creole. Derivative of New Orleans Creole cooking, the food here is the kind... More >>
• Best Drive-Thru
  El Rey Taqueria
  In the battle to rule the drive-thru, the best weapon is smoke. A rich, heavy cloud of it floats across Washington Avenue every afternoon from El Rey, a small Cuban/Mexican restaurant that attracts a fleet of loyal subjects. They come for the chicken, which is skewered and baked for hours to... More >>
• Best Greasy Spoon
  Dot Coffee Shop
  Why are the best greasy spoons always by the airport? Open 24 hours, Dot is off I-45 just down from Hobby. At times, it seems like the entire restaurant and everything in it -- including the hardworking waitstaff -- is covered in a thin layer of grease. Everything comes in hefty portions, and... More >>
• Best Indian Restaurant
  Restaurant Indika
  The food at Indika is on a par with the fare served at the most innovative Indian restaurants in the United States. And unlike imaginative Indian chefs like Floyd Cardoz at Tabla in New York, Indika's chef and owner, Anita Jaisinghani, doesn't do fusion. Hence her menu, while impressively... More >>
• Best Korean Restaurant (6 Comments)
  Green Pine Tree Bar & Grill
  Green Pine Tree Bar & Grill looks a little like a Korean speakeasy. There's a neon-lit sushi bar on one side of the room and a half-dozen dining nooks with semi-secluded tables on the other. The attractive dining room in between features two rows of tables separated by a room-length divider and... More >>
• Best Late-Night Restaurant (1 Comment)
  Late Nite Pie
  It's late, and you're shit-canned. You need something to soak up all the booze in your belly so you can get home. Do yourself a favor and skip the drunken lovefest at "House of Guys." Instead, head to this seedy Montrose eatery. We love Late Nite Pie for the simple fact that the menu lists a... More >>
• Best Taqueria
  Laredo Taco Place
  Laredo Taco Place isn't much to look at from the outside, but the inside is decorated with metates and colorful pinatas. The waitress will scoop out cups of red and green salsas for you from two large ceramic bowls. Order from a substantial, cafeteria-style spread of Tex-Mex taco fillings, which... More >>
• Best Pizzeria
  Romano's Italian Restaurant
  The fabled pizzerias of the East Coast -- the tiny smoky places with aged ovens and dusty pictures of wrestler Bruno Sammartino on the walls -- are nowhere to be found in Houston. But if you take away the bright, airy feel -- and, please, the "Take-Ah De Order Here" pidgin-Italian signs --... More >>
• Best Neighborhood Spot in Bellaire
  Nick's Pasta Place
  While Houstonians are lucky to have lots of high-end authentic Italian restaurants, we are equally blessed to have the free garlic bread and large Caesar salads at family-friendly little nooks like Nick's. The Italian-American cuisine here doesn't aim very high, but it seldom misses. The... More >>
• Best Neighborhood Spot in Galveston
  Leo's Cajun Corner
  Real Galvestonians don't give a damn about tourist restaurants in restored Victorians. They don't fret over finding a tabletop view of the beach. Their folk is bayou folk, and just about the last down-home, real Galveston spot left on this island ain't scenic. It's a red-and-white shack... More >>
• Best New Restaurant
  Noe Restaurant & Bar
  Celebrity chef Noe Robert Gadsby made the big splash of the year with the opening of the Houston Noe, the sister restaurant of the original in Los Angeles, which is located in another Omni Hotel. Gadsby runs both of his playful, challenging restaurants with a whimsical touch. He defines his... More >>
• Best Restaurant
  T'afia
  If your definition of a great restaurant is a posh dining room where airhead waiters suck up to rich people, try the new Tony's, or one of Tilman Fertitta's high-end swank-aterias. But if you want to visit the epicenter of Houston's food scene, go to T'afia, the minimalist restaurant in Midtown... More >>
• Best Salvadoran Restaurant (1 Comment)
  Sabor!
  An upscale Salvadoran restaurant owned by the same people who own the El Pupusaton pupuserias, Sabor! makes a wonderful first impression with its polished granite tables, cafe-au-lait tile floors and cheerful butter-yellow walls. The restaurant is comfortable, charming and clean. The luxurious... More >>
• Best Service
  Aries
  Aries owner Scott Tycer has been recognized as one of the nation's top chefs. His crew shops and forages for ingredients that no other restaurant can offer, and Tycer hires farmers to grow things other restaurants have never heard of. But his restaurant suffered early on from the Houston dining... More >>
• Best South American Restaurant
  Churrascos
  Self-taught, Nicaraguan-born chef Michael Cordua was the first to introduce Houston to South American cuisine when, in 1988, he opened his first Churrascos. This culinary pioneer showed us the flavors, aromas and dishes of lands such as Nicaragua, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Brazil, expanding our... More >>
• Best Steak House
  Vic & Anthony's Steakhouse
  Vic & Anthony's is a Houston steak house that doesn't bow to New York, Chicago or anyplace else. The food here is on a par with the very best in the country. The USDA Prime New York strips and porterhouses are cut two inches thick. The Maine lobster, which comes split and shelled with a bowl of... More >>
• Best Place to Eat If You're Bald
  Neptune Subs
  Being bald sucks. The sun burns your scalp, women burn your phone number, co-workers burn holes in their sides laughing about how you look like Dr. Evil. And after 12 easy installments of $19.95, you will probably still be bald. But at least you won't be hungry. On the first Monday of every... More >>
• Best Tex-Mex Restaurant
  Los Tios Mexican Restaurant
  The owner of Los Tios, one of the city's best-loved Tex-Mex chains, retired a couple of years ago. Gary Adair, who owns Skeeter's and a couple of other local restaurants, bought the chain and made some changes. And Los Tios's loyal clientele, which includes people who have been eating there for... More >>
• Best Vintage Atmosphere
  La Tour d'Argent
  About a hundred years ago, a French-Canadian carpenter built a log cabin on White Oak Bayou. Various residents since have expanded the building using logs and other rough-hewn materials. Today, that old building houses the French restaurant called La Tour d'Argent. The name means "tower of... More >>
• Best Vintage Barbecue Restaurant
  Reid's Barbecue
  The wood parquet pattern on the linoleum floors is wearing off. The menu hanging on the wall has been slow-smoked to a light brown. Inside the old wall clock above the bar, the Budweiser Clydesdales have been frozen midstride since Reid's opened for business in 1968. Eddie Reid opened the place... More >>
• Best Vintage Breakfast
  Lankford Grocery and Market
  The eggs over easy at Lankford Grocery are cooked slowly so they stay tender -- the yolks are perfect, not too runny and not a bit hard. The patty-style sausage is a little spicy and a touch sweet. The home fries have lots of crisp corners. This place really was a grocery store when owner and... More >>
• Best Vintage Burger Joint
  Lockwood Malt Shop
  The malt shop doesn't sell malts anymore, but it goes through gallons of Kool-Aid every day. There is no sign on the building and no way to tell the address. In fact, the red building at the southwest corner of Lockwood and Mulvey looks abandoned. But if you pull into the two-car parking lot and... More >>
• Best Vintage Restaurant
  Felix Mexican Restaurant
  When Felix Jr. announced that the city's most historic Tex-Mex restaurant would close its doors for lack of business, he set off a near-riot. People came from hundreds of miles to eat one last meal at the restaurant they grew up in. Families who had been eating there for more than 50 years... More >>
• Best Vintage Steak House
  Brenner's Steakhouse
  German immigrant Lorene Brenner and her husband, Herman, opened the first Brenner's Cafe in 1936. When their original eatery was bulldozed to make way for the Katy Freeway, the Brenners relocated to a little house with a big garden and changed the format. From the beginning, Brenner's Steakhouse... More >>
• Best Atmosphere
  Strip House
  Designed by David Rockwell, the hottest restaurant designer in the country, the Strip House steak house makes a double entendre of the restaurant's name by using erotica as a theme. The banquettes are red leather. The ceiling is red. The sofas, carpets and throw pillows in the bar are red.... More >>
• Best Deli
  Kenny & Ziggy's
  If the phrase "Gimme some tongue" flows freely from your lips, then you're gonna love Kenny & Ziggy's, where there's more than just tongue. Here you'll also find the tastiest corned beef, pastrami and chopped liver as well as some outstanding smoked fish, such as sturgeon, sable and whitefish,... More >>
• Best French Restaurant
  Bistro Moderne
  Forty-two-year-old Philippe Schmit was born in Roanne, France, and apprenticed at several two-star restaurants in Paris before moving to New York in 1990 and taking a job as sous-chef at one of the best fish restaurants in the world, Le Bernardin. Schmit moved to Houston last year to open Bistro... More >>
• Best Neighborhood Spot Outside the Loop
  Japaneiro's Sushi Bistro and Latin Grill
  Japaneiro's is a fascinating fusion of Asian and Latino cuisines, with sushi, sashimi and tempura dishes living peacefully next to shrimp ajillo and churrasco steak. The tropical bar specializes in mojitos and caipirinhas but is equally stocked with sensational sakes, such as the... More >>
• Best Thai Seafood Restaurant
  Merlion
  While the former shrimping town of Kemah has been converted to an amusement park, crusty Old Seabrook, right across the channel, is still the home port of a small fleet of shrimp boats. Seafood delivery trucks are parked along the streets, waiting to take the fresh catch to Houston. And the... More >>
• Best Vietnamese Restaurant
  Jasmine Asian Cuisine
  Located in the beautiful space formerly occupied by Ba Ky restaurant, Jasmine is in full flower. Stop by for lunch, but don't let the short list of $4 specials fool you. Sure, the noodles are excellent, but wait until you see the gigantic dinner menu. Seafood is the specialty at night, and among... More >>
• Best Italian Restaurant
  Da Marco
  Chef and owner Marco Wiles is Houston's answer to Mario Batali. He loves to surprise you. He'll start you off with his own freshly cured anchovies served over a cream-injected fresh mozzarella called burrata. And while you're trying to figure that one out, he'll blindside you with something like... More >>