Nancy’s Hustle is the cool restaurant that gets better with every visit. The music is effortlessly curated and the lighting is set to the perfect hue of date-night amber. It's one of the hardest reservations to book, but Nancy's is worth the effort. The menu rotates with the seasons, but count on the mainstays like the fluffy Nancy Cakes, double-patty topped with briny pickles, and the delicate lamb tartare to be on the menu (which means they should also be on your table).

Houston (and Texas in general) is synonymous with beef, and no place epitomizes the final, heavenly form of a hunk of beef better than Pappas Bros. Steakhouse. Every cut gets dry-aged in-house for a minimum of 28 days, seared to form a crispy, salt-flecked crust, and served solo on a hot plate like a sizzling jewel. This is the best steakhouse in town, so expect perfectly butchered petite filets and prehistoric-looking tomahawks carved tableside on one of those fancy carts.

Dinner at Jūn is all hits, no misses. The Heights restaurant does the whole small plates thing better than the rest. Flavors and textures so blissfully fade one into the next—carrots with salsa macha and Salvadoran cheese leading into a bowl of savory grits with carne seca and tomato—that once dessert hits the table, the meal becomes personal, as though Jūn reached into your soul and created food meant solely for you.

The food at Katami is so good that we would voluntarily embarrass ourselves by wearing a Rangers t-shirt to every Astros game if that were the only way to eat there. If you’re looking for a high-end sushi experience, this is the one. Order a chef’s selection of sashimi and what arrives is a mountain of ice and glass dripping in flowers nestled around glistening cuts of silver-skinned gizzard shad, intense but sweet barracuda, and perfectly pink hamachi.

The tasting menu here changes every six months, and is a dissertation on the season’s Mediterranean region. Devote the first half hour to taking in the glow of Montrose restaurant’s sun-soaked lounge, housemade aperitif in hand, while servers wax poetic about silky uni tomaquets. After a round of bar snacks, the rest of the meal is spent in the main dining room—complete with front-row views of the kitchen—for a $185 six or $250 nine-course dinner.

Sheba could be named, “The Restaurant That Makes The Best Lamb Dishes You Will Ever Eat.” But we get that might have been difficult for the Yemeni spot in Gulton to squeeze onto a sign. When the roast lamb and saffron rice arrive, dump each onto the plastic tablecloth. Then, shove fistfuls into your mouth with your hands, as is both customary and irresistible. It’s fun. The Hanith lamb, slow-roasted on the bone, arrives so tender it falls apart at the slightest quiver.

At night, the dining room at Tatemó looks near pitch black, with only flickering candles and faint wall sconces to illuminate the corn-packed seven-course tasting menu. This tiny Mexican restaurant in a nondescript Spring Branch strip center is a temple of tortillas—or, more specifically, masa. The focus is on heirloom Mexican corn, nixtamalized in-house, the smell of which floats around the room like a faint puff of perfume.

Baso is a rarity in Houston. The Heights restaurant is stripped bare and serves Basque-Nordic-Japanese catnip for the Noma crowd. And while minimalist spots with a fondness for cuisine hyphens and dimpled glass bowls can be pretentious, Baso pulls it off with soul. Deceptively simple-looking dishes stand your tastebuds at attention, prompting you to ask, “What the f*ck did I just eat?”

This East End Thai restaurant’s crisp papaya salad gets crunchier and spicier with each bite and the acidic tom yum soup laced with shrimp and mushrooms only intensifies the burn. But the heat is all part of the experience and makes leaning in with a date over mango sticky rice for dessert sweeter. Mix in the neon signs, music that encourages seat shimmying, and the most serious Thai food in town and we’ve got one the best restaurants for a romantic night out, or a spot to catch up with friends.

At Afrikiko, each dish tastes like it was made for you because you have an in with the cooks in the back. In other words, this is Houston’s best Ghanaian food. The tiny Westwood joint’s jollof rice is slightly sweet with a little acidity from the tomato base, the mounds of waakye have been smoked to high heaven, and the flaky, fried tilapia dissolves into fluffy, house-made banku. Afrikiko is for a relaxed weeknight when you’re in the mood for jollof rice or to make friends with the regulars.

Kata Robata operates on a level most places only dream of. Despite its long sushi list, plus izakaya dishes like silken chawanmushi, and smoky grilled hamachi kama, the Upper Kirby spot never gets bogged down or skimps on quality. Everything runs like clockwork, as though it’s been pumping out sushi and grilled skewers since the beginning of time. Whatever you’ve come here for—a proper omakase at the sushi bar, or a simple bowl of ramen—Kata handles any situation with ease.

Reggae Hut quietly serves the best Jamaican food in the city. All of the classics are accounted for at this Third Ward spot—jerk chicken doused in scotch bonnet that’ll raise your basal temperature a few degrees, caramelized plantains that could pass as dessert, and oxtails served in a pool of rich, spiced gravy. Even making a sandwich of flaky patties filled with spiced beef and slightly sweet cocoa bread can inspire someone to take an extra long lunch.

Hugo’s is a rite of passage—the historic stunner was built in 1925 and has high ceilings and chandeliers that look like they’re on loan from a castle. At this upscale Mexican restaurant in Montrose, the details matter, including margaritas that get shaken tableside, or personal tableside handbag racks. The place operates with the quiet confidence of an institution.

At first, Neo is hard to find. The exclusive, 10-seat counter is located inside a Montrose townhouse behind a clothing couturier. You might wonder what the hell you’re doing in a store with clothing somehow even more expensive than the meal you are about to eat. But once you’re whisked behind a closed door and handed that first piece of nigiri, any bit of confusion disappears. Dinner consists of sixteen-something courses of straight sushi. Each piece builds on the last.

Squable exists as a reminder to all why Houston should be considered one of the great food destinations of America. And that, as a city, we can achieve great things, like going to the moon or birthing Beyoncé. Come here for an incredible brunch punctuated by hashbrown towers dripping in hollandaise. Or a special dinner that starts with acid-punched oysters, moves into agnolotti pillows in savory broth next to funky raclette burgers, and ends with toasted pan de mie topped with ice cream.

Nobie’s is a farm-to-table restaurant we like to check in on periodically because they always do something new and unexpected. The menu rotates often enough that even familiar dishes feel exciting because you never know when you'll get them. But you can still expect mainstays like the chopped steak tartare topped with a dollop of deviled egg aioli, which reminds us that Texas is the land of beef prosperity.

You won’t ever want a meal at Bodard Bistro to end. This small Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown serves delicious, homestyle dishes that make your meal feel special. Like the canh chua cá trê, a Mekong Delta staple stew with a bright, tropical tang from tamarind and pineapple and green pops of okra and tomato sweetness. It’s like somebody planted a vegetable garden by the beach and then made a soup. There are also knockout, humble plates of bánh khọt and tangy nem nướng spring rolls.

Ema makes the most beautiful Mexican pastries and breakfast in town, remixing familiar dishes and flavors like horchata and blue corn into cream-stuffed donuts shaped like miniature curling stones or the topping on fluffy conchas. The bakery and cafe started as a stall at the Houston Farmers Market and quickly started selling out almost as early as the stand opened. Now a full-fledged cafe in The Heights, there are even more incredible pastries, horchata-spiked coffee drinks, and brunch options.

Sometimes you just want to be taken care of at a capital-R Restaurant, a place with pristine service and food. And that’s why you go to Bar Bludorn in Memorial. The attention to detail here is refined, down to fresh pea tendrils lacing the pasta carbonara, and the dark dining room that's set up like some classy mid-century jazz club with a kitchen for a stage. While no one’s wandering around selling cigarettes, someone is circling with a bread basket full of butter-golden Parker House rolls.

Nothing compares to the warmth emanating from a taco truck window. When you want to huddle around that warmth and get the best tacos pastor in the city, get in line at Tacos La Sultana in the East End. These tacos are delivered by an ethereal being (the taquero), made of an otherworldly substance (high-quality pork), and imbued with mystical powers (expertly roasted and lightly charred). You don’t consume these tacos, you experience them.

Everything at Fung’s Kitchen is larger than life. Like giant seafood tanks, banquet-sized dining rooms, and a dish literally named “Lobster Mountain.” This family-owned dim-sum powerhouse in Sharpstown specializes in everything bigger and better. Every staff member seems overjoyed to fill your table with food, to the point you begin accepting additional plates of crispy shrimp croquettes and beef-stuffed rice noodles so as not to disappoint anyone.

No one at Giacomo’s is out to impress you, outside of serving excellent cacio e pepe. Here Italian food is served en masse with a gigantic wine list. Everything is fantastic, like the thin-shaved brussels sprouts salad with lemon and pine nuts, or mozzarella-stuffed grilled radicchio with just a kiss of char. The somewhat aloof service gives Giacomo’s even more charm, as does the outdated kitschy interior and the explosion of wine boxes across the restaurant.

Whenever asked to imagine a dream meal, the nam khao from Sao Lao Thai Cafe comes to mind. The Northside spot’s nam khao arrives as a giant bowl of crispy rice, pork, and silky tripe that we all but launch into as if shot out of a cannon. It’s got this sweet, tangy, and acidic funk we cannot stop ourselves from inhaling until we’re scraping the last dregs with a lettuce leaf. Something about the bits of crunchy rice spiking the dish with ribbons of herbs and soft pork itches our lizard brain.

Whether you grab a seat at this counter-service spot or get your meal to go, you’re eating the best South Indian food in Houston. Shri Balaji Bhavan specializes in chaats, and every single one we’ve ordered is somehow better than the last. Like the samosa chaat, a large fried dumpling smothered in so many different spicy and tangy sauces you can barely see it. Try the pav bhaji, a simple tray of spicy vegetable mash with buttered, soft buns to dredge until the tray looks wiped clean.

Lifelong Houstonians who grew up going to rodeo cookouts or big country picnics will instantly recognize Triple J’s style of barbecue. It’s part country cookout and part East Texas potluck, all slow-smoked together into something uniquely Houston. This mostly to-go Trinity Gardens spot’s smoky, sauced-up pork ribs, fire-breathing boudin, and fatty sausage will expand your definition of what constitutes incredible barbecue.