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one category of cuisine begins to describe this kitchen’s boundlessly creative bent. Some of the choice things to eat are grilled pork tenderloin topped with peach and pepper glaze, crabmeat-and-shrimp-stuffed jalapeño peppers, a huge BLT sandwich made with grilled shrimp, and a boneless quail stuffed with cilantro-flavored grilled shrimp. Entrees come with a choice of down-home vegetables that include black-eyed peas, mashed potatoes, and buttered corn—or one of Round Top’s creamy pasta dishes. Among the available seafood meals are red snapper either grilled or “stacked,” the latter being a fillet crowned with a mantle of crabmeat and shrimp.

If you know Royers’ Round Top, then you know that we haven’t even mentioned the single item that has made it a beacon for food pilgrims from miles away. The moment you walk into the café and look at the counter in back, you can see what the specialty of the house is: pies. Lined up on that back counter are a few dozen country-style beauties with ribbons of baked fruit oozing out over the edge of knobby crusts. Royers’ café is a pie-lover’s paradise, with a repertoire that goes from classic apple to butterscotch Toll House and coconut chess. We believe the pecan pie, made with giant halves of Texas-grown nuts, is one of the best pecan pies anywhere—a perfect balance of toasty nut flavor and syrupy sweetness. Royers’ is so deeply into pies that the menu jokes, “We reserve the right to charge you for pie and Häagen-Dazs even if you don’t order it! It is a matter of principle…You don’t drive all this way and not eat pie!!!!!” If you are a small group of people (i.e., two or more), you can get a “pie sampler” for dessert, which is a choice of four kinds of pie with ice cream, for $16.95. And if you are not able to come to Round Top, the café is set up to mail-order pies anywhere in the United States.

Smitty’s

6219 Airport Rd.

915–772–5876

El Paso, TX

LD | $

Smitty’s is a kick-ass barbecue favored by soldiers stationed at Fort Bliss, and it makes an easy quick-stop for people on their way to or from the El Paso Airport. Take-out orders are a specialty, as is custom barbecue: “You bring it, we’ll BBQ it!” The spacious dining room smells of smoke from the pit; décor is a combination of beer signs and Wild West imagery, and the background music is just right for knocking back longnecks and engaging in full-volume palaver with tablemates.

The meat selection is vast: regular or lean beef brisket, corned beef or lean corned beef, ham, turkey breast and turkey sausage, chicken, sliced pork and chopped pork, pork chops, and pork and beef ribs. Most of these items can be had on a lunch plate or larger dinner plate (with German fried potatoes, slaw, and beans), in a sandwich or stuffed into a burrito, or on the “high protein special” plate, which is multiple meats accompanied by a Styrofoam cup full of Smitty’s opaque sweet sauce and a few slices of soft white bread.

Iced tea (unsweetened) is presented to each table in a large pitcher so you can pour your own refills as you dine.

Sonny Bryan’s

2202 Inwood Rd.

214–744–1610

Dallas, TX

LD | $ (other locations around Dallas)

Sonny Bryan’s signature sandwich is brisket bathed in hickory smoke until moist and flavorful and painfully tender. Piled high in a bun, it needs no condiment, but Bryan’s sauce happens to be marvelous—tangy and complex, a great beef companion. Turkey, ham, pulled pork, pork ribs, and sausage are also on the menu, available in a sandwich or on a plate with a couple of side dishes, and each one is superb: French fries, onion rings, barbecue-sauced beans, potato salad, black-eyed peas, fried okra, mac ’n’ cheese, coleslaw, and in-season corn on the cob. One plate can include three different meats, and you can add cheese to a sandwich. But if you are coming to Sonny Bryan’s for the first time, please have brisket—chopped or sliced, it doesn’t matter—and you will understand why Texans are passionate about barbecue.

The Bryan barbecue dynasty goes back to 1910, when Elijah Bryan, Sonny’s grandfather, opened