It's big, smoky, voluptuous, and colorful--too pretty to be a cowboy. It's filled with typical stuff like egg and lettuce, but it also has roasted peppers, charred tomatoes, and bright, clean, creamy avocado. The whole thing is smoked and spiked with bacon, smoked chicken, and jalapeño jack cheese before it's stiffened with some tortilla strips. It's an articulate confluence of flavors and tastefulness, despite a color scheme worthy of a punk golfer.

Come for the fried cheese, stay for the coffee. See, this venerable Middle Greenville Avenue eatery is one of our favorite places to go for the Greek food--loads o' lamb, fistfuls of dolmas, that wonderful spinakopita stomachache (mmmmmm). But our favorite part of the meal is the cup of coffee that comes afterward. It may be small, no bigger than an espresso thimble, but it packs a Superman punch; you know the stuff's strong when you're halfway done and already down to the sludgy grains that cover your teeth and coat your tongue and have you tasting the stuff hours later. Starbucks ain't got jack on this place.

Readers' Pick

Starbucks

Various locations

Our 3-year-old was greeted enthusiastically at Café on the Green, and the staff really meant it. They immediately brought out a basket of colorful building toys and an Etch A Sketch, more than enough amusement to sustain the tyke through four courses of nearly flawless Asian-accented cuisine. Café on the Green has a surprisingly good children's menu with fare that's healthier than the usual, including a grilled chicken breast served with spaghetti noodles and marinara sauce. Café on the Green also has another attractive option, available for children 6 months and older--the Kids Club baby-sitting service at the hotel, which costs $5 an hour per child for up to two hours. The service is offered to Café on the Green guests with confirmed reservations every evening except Sunday.

Parked in the West Village, where the tanned and tucked preen and leased BMWs breed like lab bunnies, Patrick Colombo's Ferré is an impeccably dressed Tuscan feedlot--razor-sharp. It's a collection of well-organized shapes and colors (amber mostly) with warming wood struts tempering chilly contemporary gusts such as the back bar, a cubist flourish of blurred glass and metal. Service isn't stellar, but the food is. Perfect gnocchi (a rarity). Desperately tender pasta with give. Flake-frenzied salmon. Zesty tomato soup with a poofy-do milk froth. Ferré's kitchen physics are executed by Kevin Ascolese, the toque who turned culinary tricks at Mi Piaci and the defunct Salve! Except here he does it with an eye affixed to brutal cost-consciousness. And it's good to nosh Italian that doesn't gnaw at your credit limit.

Saturday morning at John's Café is a longtime tradition to nearly everyone in Dallas with basic motor functions. But it still deserves recognition from our panel of expert imbibers, who eschew Mueslix (doesn't mix well with a Crown and Coke aftertaste) for large helpings of eggs and sausage. The menu-board here bluntly advertises "omelets with meat" (why not just call it "animal carcass" and be done?), but what you really want is the breakfast special (a biscuit, sausage or bacon, eggs, and grits) or pancakes. It's the kind of place where hangover victims can amicably share space with sober families and older couples while poking over the morning paper.

We hesitate to point this out because Desperados, the longtime Tex-Mex hideaway on Upper Greenville Avenue, is one of our favorite weekend haunts. We hesitate because part of the reason we love it so much is that it never seems too crowded. Sure, it gets full, but it's not like one of those trendy Dallas spots where you know you'll wait an hour and a half every Friday evening. You may have trouble parking, as the lot is fairly small, but after that it's smooth sailing. The service is fantastic, the food is top-notch (everything from the "awesome nachos" to the puffy, crunchy Desperado tacos to the more expensive specialty dinners is worth putting in your mouth) and the desserts are sumptuous (the flan is worth the trip). Top-shelf 'ritas ain't too shabby, either. Desperados has fine North Dallas and Garland locations as well, but if you want to stay close to the Friday-night action without too much hassle, start your weekend here.

We've said it before and we'll say it again: Ifs Ands & Butts is the best place to wet your whistle without getting a buzz on. This shop sells specialty soda pop that you cannot find at the local grocery store, soda pop you've never heard of and soda pop your granddaddy used to buy you. We're talking about Nehi grape, Moxie cream soda and Frostie cola, the original recipe sold in the original 10-ounce bottle. That's just to name three of the more than 130 in-store brands. We recommend a trip to the store, located in the newly spruced Bishop Arts District, because the scarcity of some bottles requires on-site consumption. Also, it's a nice neighborhood. But if that doesn't work, proprietor Hamilton Rousseau has posted all his brands on the Internet, www.ifsandsbutts.com, and he'll ship your order to you wherever you are.

Steam injected or boiled? A debate rages about the proper way to cook a bagel. What's the Einstein Bros. method? Dunno. Don't care. What matters most to us is the taste and texture, and this chain scores on both points, offering a wide variety of flavors--from garlic to cranberries and pumpkin--and doughy pillows that are light and chewy without that dense, clay-like demeanor that afflicts lesser bagels. Plus, the bagels here are saucer-sized, so just one--with either a smear of cream cheese or dressed up with toppings such as smoked salmon--makes a full and filling lunch.

Readers' Pick

Einstein Bros. Bagels

This small casual upscale chain from Iowa with clean, fresh food is a big culinary mutt of influences including Mexican, Italian, Asian, and New American. It's all generated from a two-story kitchen consuming roughly half of the restaurant's 17,500 square feet, and it prepares everything from scratch including breads and pasta. Service is efficient and briskly gracious. It isn't the best food on the face of the metroplex, but the dishes are all priced in 99-cent fractions, so the menu has that Ben Franklin dime store feel to it.

There are a lot of bad apple tarts out there: sticky, dry, old and washed-out. It's gotten so it's hard to remember what the thing is supposed to taste (or look, or feel) like. Well, refresh your memories with Paris Vendôme's apple tart (not the only tart there, mind you) galette with caramel ice cream--a simple piece of lively resilience. The pastry is delicate and light but supple. It also has valor, leaving the apple to flaunt its sassiness without getting bogged down in the juice flood. And the caramel sauce is among the smoothest, richest and most satisfying we've tasted. Order two in case you've lost some short-term memory down a water pipe.