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Best Pho

Van Loc

Jeff Balke
You know the drill. Semi-fatty discs of medium-rare beef stewed with chicken broth, pork bits and glass noodles in a steaming bowl as big as your head. You're eating pho -- the incomparable Vietnamese soup that'll make you wonder aloud why those cartoon kids on the Campbell's cans look so friggin' happy. For real bite, throw in a few of the fresh jalapenos that come with the pho at Van Loc. Soup is good food, to be sure. Adventurous eaters choose to add tripe.

Best Breakfast

Gorditas Aguascalientes

Jeff Balke
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 cheese. Don't miss the machacado, a popular northern Mexican breakfast made with eggs and dried beef. Tejanos are also fond of the taco de barbacoa and the menudo. The antojitos here -- sopes, gorditas, huaraches and the rest -- are cooked to order with the fresh corn dough called masa. They come to the table piping hot and lovingly garnished with refried beans, lettuce, sour cream and the filling of your choice. Fresh-squeezed orange juice mixed half and half with fresh carrot juice over ice is the best breakfast beverage. But this taqueria also has smoothies, horchata and other aguas frescas, as well as fresh-brewed coffee. The cheery tiled interior make it a charming morning hangout. A little Spanish goes a long way here.

Best Sake

Zake Lounge

Warm rice wine isn't for everyone. In general, true connoisseurs like it cold -- especially on a hot Friday night in Houston while a DJ spins Japanese house music. The staffers rock at this ultra-hip sushi bar, and they won't mind letting you taste their many different types of sake. The top sake also has the best name, the Poochie-Poochie ($21). It's extra-smooth and, of course, served cold. The next best is the Momokawa Asian Pear ($11), which is infused with fruit and is super-crisp and light. The Poochie-Poochie is good by itself, but why not throw the whole "reserved connoisseur" thing to the wind and mix your own sake cocktail with Japanese Sprite and lime slices poured over rocks? The staff might look at you funny, but after a few glasses, you'll be looking at them funny, too.

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 service staff at some Houston restaurants explain things, stratospherically priced Barolos and Barbarescos are the only Italian wines worth drinking. That's what makes Da Marco's sommelier, Antonio Gianola, such a hero. He seems to be in the business solely because of his passion for Italian wine. And he is delighted to share his discoveries, which often include inexpensive and unusual wines from little-known regions. He will make you an expert on affordable Proseccos and turn you on to red wines from the Slovenian border that you can afford to drink every night. If only we could clone him.

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 as steak frites, a fabulous foie gras, mussels, croque monsieurs and a charcuterie platter with homemade pate. At the same time, by offering dishes like sweetbreads, Sheely courageously expands our culinary horizons. His modestly priced wine list comprises many sensational selections by the glass.

Best Tamales

Dona Tere

While the average itinerant tamale peddler charges five or six bucks a dozen, Dona Tere's go for $1 apiece. It only sounds expensive -- the tamales at Dona Tere are Mexico City-style tamales that are around four times as big as Tex-Mex tamales. They're also more imaginatively stuffed. The tamales filled with pork and green chile sauce are outstanding. So are the ones stuffed with chicken and mole. The dark, sweet mole sauce is as thick as Hershey's syrup and nearly as rich. The green sauce is an eye-opener -- tart and very hot. To make each one of these excellent tamales even better, you can buy an extra cup of sauce for dipping. For a hearty breakfast, order everything on the menu, which consists of four kinds of tamales, two sauces and one beverage, the hot corn drink called atole. On the weekends, this humble little stand produces a thousand tamales a day.
Readers' choice: Berryhill Baja Grill

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 pork-blood squares. And when it comes to Cantonese seafood, you can't beat the place. The whole ling cod are alive in the aquarium until the moment you order them, and so are the fresh scallops and oysters -- it doesn't get any fresher than that. Sure, the prices are higher here than they are at the noodle shops and dumpling houses a few miles farther down Bellaire. But Fung's Kitchen is different. It's an elegant Chinese restaurant, not a quick stop for take-out dinners. Take your own visiting dignitaries here -- you won't be disappointed.
Readers' choice: P.F. Chang's China Bistro

Best Shish Kebab

Cafe Lili

Photo by Houston Press Staff
Three different kebabs are available here: beef, chicken and kafta. The beef and kafta are the best. All are served with a rice pilaf, pita bread and hummus or a salad. The skewered beef kebab has small cubes of prime filet interspersed with onion. The chopped raw onions and cilantro, which sit on top of the kebab, add additional tastes, but the real flavor comes from the flame charbroiling the meat undergoes. The meat is so tender, there's hardly a need to chew it. The kafta kebab consists of minced beef mixed with parsley and onion, which imparts a wonderful flavor. The combination is then hand-formed around the skewer. Flame charbroiling creates a crispy exterior and a soft and tender interior.

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 drop a C-note per person with dishes including the jumbo lump crabcakes, the prime beef, the dry-aged 26-ounce porterhouse, sides such as creamed spinach or sauteed mushrooms, and the unequaled gooey pecan cake. However, it is with the beverages that you can really do some damage. How about a preprandial single-malt Macallan '46 at $350 a glass? Follow this with a bottle of 1899 Chateau d'Yquem for $30,000, and end the meal with a '63 Delaforce port for $400 a glass. Now, how big did you say yours was?

Best Stinky Tofu

China Gourmet

Close your nose and open your eyes. Served atop a flame on a silver platter, the "double spicy stinky bean curd" at China Gourmet is beautiful. A steaming tofu mountain flowers with mustard leaves, leeks, jalapenos and garlic slices, all surrounded by a red moat of pepper sauce. It's almost enough to make you forget that it smells just like a sweaty sock. And tastes pretty much the same. This is not a dish for denizens of the Whole Foods hippie section. But fans of stinky tofu, which is flavored with fermented mustard, will find plenty to choose from: "Fried stinky bean curd" and "steam stinky bean curd" also meet the exacting olfactory standards of die-hard Chinese and Cambodian foodies, who pack the place. For other adventures, try the snails with basil or the mysterious "four things soup."

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