3. Season's Harvest Café

This tiny cafe is the epitome of "hidden gem." It's in a little house behind Soto's Cantina next to a small commercial office building. I'd never heard of the place until my friend Julie Long mentioned it to me. Season's Harvest only serves breakfast and a small but well-curated lunch menu. The focus here is on organic, local ingredients. Most produce items come from Rawfully Organic, a Houston co-op. For the super-health conscious, there is even a "raw entrée of the day." The menu changes daily; check its Facebook page for the current options.

Warning: The place only seats about 35 indoors and word is getting around about them. Get here early for lunch or be doomed to stand around waiting for a table. Expect to be there for at least an hour if they're slammed, but the staff and digs are so homey and charming, it's worth it. (Small place = small staff.) There's a lovely wraparound porch, so they're able to seat more folks when the weather is nicer. Season's Harvest opens for breakfast at 9 a.m., and offers hot breakfast dishes, pastries and espresso drinks. Bonus: they have wi-fi.

2. Indian Wok

I make no promises regarding the Indian Wok lunch buffet. I do offer advice: Don't show up there when they first open at 11 am. I make no guarantee that they'll be ready. I say this from personal experience. My friend George and I, hungry for Indian food and eager for lunch, showed up pretty much when they opened to a buffet of items best served hot...that were still cold.

Dinner, on the other hand, is everything you could ever want from this Indo-Chinese establishment. It's spicy. It makes no apologies. They make the kind of curry and vindaloo that makes you want to have leftovers, because you want to find that little plastic container in your fridge the next day, make some more rice and revel in its left-to-sit-overnight goodness.

1. 1252 Tapas Bar (Vintage Park location)

This stylish, classy tapas bar is a demure establishment by day that turns downright clubby at night. There's always some sort of drink special going on, but don't let that turn you off if you're more the quiet type. The food never suffers for all of 1252's youthful vibe, and lunch and early dinner times tend to be quiet. Look for spicy beef empanadas with flaky dough and gambas a la diabla (shrimp in a red pepper tomato sauce that will make you grab the bread to soak up the sauce).

Here's the kicker. It may be geared to attract the young and cool with its various vodka martinis, but it also has a lovely little wine list that keeps the rest of us happy. In fact, my sweetheart and I recently took his elderly parents there and they had nothing but nice things to say about it. My 17-year-old kid likes this place, too, and if you can make this big range in ages that happy, you're doing something right.

Check out Katharine Shilcutt's recent review of the 1252 Tapas Bar location at Uptown Park.

Check out our other Top 10 neighborhood lists:

Top 10 in Montrose Top 10 in the Heights Top 10 in Rice Village Top 10 on Washington Avenue Top 10 in the East End Top 10 in the Galleria Top 10 in Midtown Top 10 in Memorial Top 10 in Upper Kirby Top 10 in Greenway Plaza Top 10 in The Woodlands Top 10 in Spring Branch Top 10 in Little India Top 10 in Chinatown