Best Restaurant For a Power Lunch Maxwell's Chophouse.Best Natural-Food/Vegetarian Restaurant The Veggie Garden.Best Inexpensive Italian Restaurant Hot Tomatoe.Best Expensive Italian Restaurant Antonello.Best Burrito East Coast Burrito Factory.Best Restaurant/Broward Mark's Las Olas.Best Restaurant/Palm Beach Galaxy Grille.Best Place to Get Your Caffeine Fix From Your Car Expresso - The Gourmet Drive-Thru Coffee Shop.Best Restaurant When Someone Else is Paying Toni Bishop's Restaurant & Jazz Club.Best Restaurant For Gluttons Brazil Brazil Bar & Grill.Residents of Davie have long been grateful for the Armadillo's commitment to finely prepared fare. Specialty drinks lure the unsuspecting with their sweet descriptions - the black raspberry margarita, for instance, or the chocolate martini - but there aren't too many Armadillo novices here. They complement their hearty, piquant dishes with excellent wine and beer choices, including microbrews such as Bert Grant's Scottish Ale (draft) and Dixie Blackened Voodoo (bottle). Chef-owners Eve Montella and Kevin McCarthy have been running this cozy place for a decade, serving up locally grown hydroponic arugula salad with black beans, roasted corn, and honey-chipotle dressing fried goat cheese with yellow tomato salsa Southwest shrimp pasta with avocado, snow peas, and jicama and marinated leg of lamb with wild-rice pancakes. Southwestern cuisine is one trend South Florida could exploit just a little more, and Armadillo Cafe shows us why. Lingering beside the table, he speaks lovingly of his hometown, Montego Bay, where he runs another Cooke's Goose. Merton Cooke knows the power of his pie and plies it with charming persistence. But the pièce de résistance is the sweet-potato pudding, served in dense, sumptuous squares drizzled with Bailey's Irish Cream. Plantains are sliced to poker chip-width so they plunk, not sink, in your stomach. Complementary rice and "peas," red kidney beans, cut the spices with coconut. The piquant tenderness of a whole snapper belies its steely stare. Jerk chicken has the requisite spiciness while skirting stereotypes. Oxtail is marinated in soy sauce, garlic, and ginger for an unexpected delicacy. Even the flavorful sauces boost, rather than bury, the meats. But nothing detracts from the Cooke family recipes. Entrées arrive unadorned on standard-issue dishes. The décor is akin to a '70s diner, the color scheme predominantly brown. The visuals in this place are just as authentic, and some of them as aromatic, as the steaming mint tea and fish tagine. We appreciate even more the hand-washing rituals: warm water poured from a silver pot at the beginning of the meal, rose-and-orange-blossom waters sprinkled over your digits at the conclusion. We've never seen so many people squirm on the decorative pillows, the only cushions between them and the rugs, and eat carrot-raisin salad and Cornish hen pastry with their fingers (which, by the way, you can lick if you don't feel like wiping them on the thick, white towel the waiter has draped over your shoulder). But the real floor show at this tentlike restaurant - draped from floor to ceiling with silken, brilliantly hued fabric - is provided by the customers, many of whom are unfamiliar with traditional Moroccan décor and cuisine. ![]() And we certainly enjoy the belly dancer who prances around Kasbah, shaking her groove thang along with sequins and spangles. Technically a floor show means live, cabaret-style entertainment. In this shop there are plenty of employees to help you make the right choice, and while you're deciding, you can sample some of their excellent homemade dips, including a mean smoked-fish dip and one of the best clam dips you'll ever find. Just how much and what kinds of fresh fish the store stocks depends on the day and what the fishermen bring them. The Captain has an incredible variety of fresh fish: grouper, salmon, tuna, snapper, Okeechobee catfish, Chilean sea bass, and many others. It has a pool full of lobsters, and most of its fish comes on ice directly from the sea. But when you want a little bit of everything, Captain Mike's is where it's at. The Fish Peddler, which has stores in Sunrise and Fort Lauderdale, is the place to pick up cooked, peeled, and chilled shrimp quickly and at a good price. ![]() Captain Ed's Lobster Trap in Fort Lauderdale, for instance, often has fresh Florida lobster for an inexpensive $5.59 a pound. Most seafood shops will have a specialty of sorts. There's some great fresh seafood out there in South Florida, you just have to fish for it.
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