Fodor's Expert Review Cafe Pasqual's

A perennial favorite, this cheerful cubbyhole dishes up Nuevo Latino and occasional Asian specialties for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The culinary muse behind Pasqual's is James Beard Award–winning chef and cookbook author Katharine Kagel, who champions organic, local ingredients, and whose expert kitchen staff produces mouthwatering breakfast and lunch specialties like huevos motuleños (eggs in a tangy tomatillo salsa with black beans and fried bananas) and the sublime grilled free-range chicken sandwich on toasted-chile corn bread. Dinner is a more formal, though still friendly and easygoing, affair: the double lamb chop with pomegranate-molasses glaze is a pleasure as is the Yucatan-style cochinita pibil. Mexican folk art, colorful tiles, and murals by Oaxacan artist Leovigildo Martinez create a festive atmosphere. Don't be discouraged by the lines out front—it's worth the wait (reservations are available for dinner only and strongly recommended). At lunch, go late morning or after 1:30 pm to (hopefully) avoid the crush.