Pho is a little like Buddha: It invites nourishing contemplation. A Vietnamese beef-broth soup, pho is often described as the national dish of Vietnam. It's a fundamental part of the day, a mind-clearing tonic steeped in ritual, often served for breakfast. It's an arduous, labor-intensive thing created by simmering meat and bones for roughly eight hours to extract that soothing richness. To this are added long rice noodle strands, meat, scallions, and herbs. It's often floated with cuts of beef such as brisket, eye of round, and flank steak, as well as meatballs. But there's more yummy stuff to toss in. You can add gelatinous and chewy soft tendon (not so much a cabled ligament as a piece of knuckle) or bible tripe, a piece of ox stomach. The wide, steaming bowl arrives with a plate piled with knots of bean sprouts, Asian basil, a lime wedge, and tiny slices of green chilies that look like mag wheels, all for tossing into the soup. Pho Kim's pho is delicious: freshly light and perfumy with tender, separate noodles and chewy sheets of beef. There's nothing better to endulge in as the briskness of fall sneaks upon us.

How many times have you ogled the layer cake at your favorite coffee shop, ordered a slice of the vertical wonder, and then sunk in disappointment at its day-old taste and fridge-ridden frosting? Cake by the slice is a risky choice, but not at Dallas Affairs, the Lakewood-area bakery known for its stunning special occasion cakes. At the counter, Dallas Affairs keeps two cakes on hand for by-the-slice orders. One is an Italian cream with cream and pecan frosting; the other, a chocolate fudge with chocolate cream filling. For $3 a pop, it's a little slice of heaven--thick, heavy with flavor, and most important, fresh, fresh, fresh.

A friend asked us to make a Sunday lunchtime trek to this far north outpost. We weren't excited, as the word "Plano" and the phrase "sushi buffet" make us queasy. Of course, we were blown away by the quality of the food and the family atmosphere. The buffet at Osaka Sushi is huge, composed of not only cool, comforting sushi but a wide array of meats, fish, sauces, soups and vegetables. They'll even grill you up a bowl of goodies Mongolian style. When you leave, stuffed and wobbling, don't be surprised if you feel a little drunk on food--perhaps even yelling "shabu shabu!" at random customers as you giggle between belches. Sounds yummy, no?

Oishii mixes Japanese and Vietnamese with a little Chinese. The latter two are closely linked, while the former is more distant. Does this sound confusing? It shouldn't. OK, sushi is a little hard to square with kung pao chicken. There's lemongrass tofu, too, which is hard to square with anything. Yet the sushi is good. And the pork ribs in spicy salt and shaken beef are stellar, as are the Vietnamese spring rolls. But pho, that ceremonial, aromatic soup that's ladled for every meal among the Vietnamese, is how you test the spine of Vietnamese fare. And it's here where Oishii goes over the top. When pho is good, it's all minimalist guts and glory, the Dalai Lama of soups. Slurping pho is like having your soul breast-fed. Pho is loaded with feathery hints of lushly sweet aromas and carnivore brawn. Tangled there among slick and supple rice noodles are square scraps of beef as thin as pounded sheet metal plus beef tendon as tender as noodles (you can get it in chicken duds, too). From a separate plate heaped high with green and white flora, you add cilantro clippings, dark green basil leaves, bean sprouts, jalapeños and squirts from lime wedges. Pho is sense-surround soup: You breathe in billowing gusts of perfumed steam while spray stings your wrists from the splashes of noodles, sprouts and beef slipping off the spoon as you try to cram its addictive warmth into your mouth. Can your kung pao do that?

Readers' Pick

Green Papaya Cafe

3211 Oak Lawn Ave.

214-521-4811

Pretty much any event that combines two of our favorite pastimes--food and setting things aflame--will win our rapt devotion. Dislike bananas, like bananas Foster. Loathe the French, adore crêpes suzette. So, any dessert that brings a butane torch into the kitchen, namely crème brûlée, is tops on our list, especially when it's the coffee-tinged crème brûlée served at Cuba Libre. The rich, firm mocha custard mingled with the crunchy caramelized sugar topping is a smooth, luscious counterpoint to Cuba Libre's spicy entrées.

We hate to do this, if only because it seems so unfair giving this award to a chain (though that doesn't stop readers, who, until recently, were convinced that the best burger in town came from the Burger King "grill") when plenty of local coffeehouses serve their own brand of bean brew. But having lived here our entire lives and having sampled a good amount of coffee around this town, we keep returning to the cup of joe served at this bagel chain. (Speaking of which, the Bagel Chain on Inwood Lane serves a tasty brew, though they recently took away our favorite, Double Chocolate Chip, which is why it doesn't make the top of the list.) Einstein's is big on the seasonal flavor: Last week or so, it resurrected the autumn brew, which has a chestnut scent and very little acidity; it went down smooth. We're equally fond of the vanilla hazelnut: Unlike most other flavored coffees around town, the Einstein's variations aren't overwhelming--neither too sweet nor too strong. They are, in a word, perfect. When's the last time you saw someone get this worked up over coffee? (Maybe we had too much this morning: We stopped at Einstein's and had two large cups. We're still buzzing.)

Stadium food is a blessing and a curse. The best things about turkey legs at a ballgame are: 1. They are self-contained and easy to transport down steep steps; 2. They disgust large segments of the population, who are too squeamish to watch someone tear the meat on the bone like a cur, not to mention try it themselves; 3. There is no way to spill it on the people sitting in front of you; 4. They somehow make the overpriced canned beer taste better.

This is one of those no-win categories: Everyone has his favorite barbecue joint, be it some tiny roadhouse in Taylor or Sonny Bryan's on Inwood Road or even Sammy's, which is great but could be better if someone tweaked the sauce just a little bit. But we're sticking with this Highland Park hang, because the meat's as lean as a supermodel, the sausage is as smoky as our grandfather, and the ribs are as tender as a Gershwin ballad. The sauce, too, is as good as it gets, particularly the spicy variety, which doesn't cover up the meat so much as complement it; it's best when sopped up with a piece of Texas toast, of which we can never have enough. The sides are stars in their own right, particularly the cole slaw, but the real highlight is the fried pie for which you must save plenty of room. Or the bread pudding. Or both. At the same time.

Readers' Pick

Dickey's Barbecue

Various locations

"We eat here every Friday because Norma's is Oak Cliff," said businessman and community activist Ralph Isenberg. Norma's is that and much more. It's an archetypal Southern breakfast and lunch spot, a place that feels familiar from the first visit, and, best of all, it's a living time capsule of a long-gone Dallas. Opened in 1956, Norma's has defied modernization. As a result, the effect is that of having ventured into one of the black-and-white photographs that crowd the walls. As you wander around the two spacious rooms you see neither the crumbling Texas Theater of today nor the already seedy hideout for Lee Harvey Oswald, but a glamorous and spiffy movie basilica with Gable and Harlow on the marquee. The staff provides a similar window on the easy, unstudied friendliness of an earlier Dallas.

Yes, it's a chain. But when the quality control, selection, and freshness are this good, screw mom and pop. The blueberry and cinnamon-raisin varieties are some of our favorites--sweet and chewy, great smeared with copious amounts of butter. The coffee is on par with the garden varieties offered by those Seattle guys too. The one in our neighborhood is always packed on the weekends, but these kids are so well trained, the line is never as daunting as it looks.

Bagel chains come and go, but Gilbert's Delicatessen has weathered the onslaught, holding firm to its New York traditions and its conviction that Jason's will never be a deli. The Gilbert family runs this North Dallas institution with a sweet-and-sour sauciness, but their bagels cannot be denied. They're big, hot, doughy, plain, egg, wheat, sesame-seed, poppy-seed, onion-garlic, everything bagels. Try them with the scrambled eggs, lox, and onions. Or for the less Jewish, the link sausage is the best in town. What more could you ask for? Nothing, so eat.