The Riviera is practically a Dallas Institution, distinguished by its suave continental food and sensibility. To that end, its service execution is tight and remorselessly efficient. While it embraces a level of formality that can leave you a little chilly, it's impressive nonetheless: attentive and well-orchestrated to the point of dizziness. Wine glasses are whisked away immediately after the wine is ordered and replaced to reflect the appropriate type of wine. The ensuing service is impeccable, right to the wiping of the dribbles from the neck lip of the wine bottle. Glasses are filled as soon as the supply in the glass gets low, as if a pair of eyes hovers over the table waiting for the wine level in the glass to drop below 2 ounces. Servers are well-briefed on the menu, answering detailed questions without so much as a brain-strained hiccup. It's the kind of professionalism and coddling you wish the IRS would employ. But then you'd have to tip them. And who could survive that?

The appetizer is traditionally a thing you eat before the headliner. You know, salad, foie gras, fried calamari, frog legs in aloe vera. But sometimes appetizers can be meals instead of just tongue-whetters or fodder for the grazing trough. This is what Café Modern's smoked mozzarella-stuffed risotto cake is. It's a bronzed baseball--with the bronzing provided by panko bread crumbs--resting in a bath of "light tomato sauce." This alone makes it a museum piece. But when you add that it tastes good, it makes it double-plus fine. It's layered with overlapping wilted leaves of baby spinach. That bath is smooth and brisk, crackling with delicate acids. The ball crunches when pierced, exposing a steaming network of risotto grains--not creamy but breadlike in consistency. Plumb further and you unleash a core of molten smoked mozzarella that flows like slag through the risotto webbing, turning the whole thing into creamy, messy goo that steams. Now you're ready to view the art at The Modern.

Readers' Pick

Snuffer's cheese fries

Various locations

Most beer gulpers don't have a palate that ventures much beyond leftovers found between the couch cushions. But Trappist monks have always enjoyed good food to go along with their beer brewing--or so we've been told. That's why the Old Monk, a pub rife with Trappist monk imagery, has a range of good nibbles such as delicious mussels steamed in beer spiked with garlic and herbs, cheese boards, and fried calamari sleeved in a light, airy batter. What we want to know is, do monks pray before the same altar the rest of us do when the brew gets out of hand?

The perfect chip is thin, lightly salted, freshly fried and devoid of translucent, grease-saturated blemishes. The perfect salsa is Cantina Laredo's tawny tomatillo brew, served warm and full of rich, smoky flavor imparted by chipotle peppers. And if that weren't enough, the restaurant has another version that, served cool, is a skillful complement: a bracingly fresh red tomato-based salsa with garlic, onion and cilantro. We've tasted plenty of fine salsas in Dallas, including those at Gloria's, El Ranchito and Cuquita's, but Cantina Laredo's is the most distinctive and remains the best.

You've probably never heard of the place, because it's the lone North Texas outpost of a Wisconsin-based chain known for its great malts, shakes, sundaes and frozen custard--so much better than the vaguely dairy, soft-serve substance extruded from machines at Dairy Queen and Sonic. But we'll travel a long way for the purest, tastiest, old-fashioned drive-in hamburger experience: fresh ground chuck seared on a 475-degree grill, served on a butter-stroked bun and accompanied by crinkle-cut fries in a paper sleeve. You can actually taste this meat, because it wasn't steamed on a grill (hello, McDonald's), nuked in a microwave (yo, Burger King) or entombed in a walk-in freezer. Your "ButterBurger" is always made to perfection, since Culver's maintains strict control of quality and vendors. And a regular cheeseburger costs only $1.79.

Why wings? Simple answer: Because it's the only part of the chicken that still tastes like chicken. We've had enough of boneless, skinless, lifeless, loveless chicken breasts; of chicken parts larded with slimy globules of yellow fat. So we've developed a taste for wings. We kind of get a kick out of pulling little strands of meat and crispy skin off the bones, as long as no one is looking. And while the Dallas area has some respectable wing outlets, such as M.D. Plucker's on Upper Greenville, where people actually wait your table, we settled on Buffalo Wild Wings in Grand Prairie, mostly because of the zingy sauces. Our favorite was a hot-and-spicy Caribbean Jerk sauce, but other winners included the super-hot (but edible) "blazin'" sauce and a mild teriyaki. They also serve up an excellent charbroiled hamburger and something called "boneless wings"--basically, small chicken tenders that kind of look like wings.

The Green Room, a small and very loud dining room tucked behind a Deep Ellum saloon, offers a variety of excellent fare, including the very best crème brûlée in Dallas. The perfectly balanced, deep smooth pudding beneath a crackly caramelized surface can make you oblivious to any amount of hilarity and mayhem around you.

This exotic confectionery serves up lots of enticing and imaginative flavors of ice cream such as rose geranium blossom, French lavender, red ginger and red port, and orchid vanilla. Palate-cleansing sorbets include margarita; peach and champagne with mint. Available at Whole Foods Markets. Go ahead. Lap a bloom.

So we're having lunch at Taco Diner in the West Village. One in our party--the one who is washing down his lunch with shots of Patron and bottles of Negra Modelo--says, "OK, who wants dessert?" We all shake our heads and moan. Who eats desserts these days? They're full of carbs and sugar and sin. We all want to be skinny when we die. Look good in the casket. This gentleman then likens us to female genitalia--not in a complimentary way--and proceeds to order slices of the pastel des tres leches (cake of the three milks) for the table. Not to go all metrosexual on you, but oh...mah...gawd. Moist, slightly sweet, creamy. With a cup of coffee, to die for. And he almost did, on the way home, but that's another story.

Late Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Westbrook Pegler once said that a martini was the meanest, no-damn-goodest mess of rancor ever concocted. More fights and more people get their glasses broken and arrested and divorced on account of martinis than for any other reason. So head on down to Parigi and recoil at one of life's great splashes of rancor. Parigi's martinis are smooth, balanced, and shivering cold with a barely perceptible layer of slush lurking just below the surface. Just make sure you have a good optician, a good lawyer, and enough money to post bond before the shaking starts.