Cru: A Wine Bar (9595 Six Pines Dr., Suite 650 in The Woodlands) is putting on a three-course brunch, with offerings including brown-butter poached sea scallops, eggs Benedict, pan-seared ahi tuna and roasted duck breast, not to mention more than 300 wines. ($27.95.)

Fleming's Steakhouse and Wine Bar's (2405 West Alabama) three-course brunch offers a choice of filet mignon benedict, crab cake benedict, bone-in ham steak, and roasted turkey crêpes ($10.95.)

Hotel ZaZa's Monarch Restaurant (5701 Main) is offering up an enormous brunch buffet in honor of Mom. ($65.)

And both The Tasting Room Uptown Park (1101-18 Uptown Park) and Max's Wine Dive (4720 Washington) are offering all moms 20 percent off all wine purchases during Sunday brunch, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Actually, put between two pieces of bread with plenty of pickles it was great. Just like a lot of the other slightly more traditional burgers look to be in this ode to that most American of meals.

For two years George Motz drove around the country, eating burgers. (His wife is a vegetarian, he delights in telling us.) He’s written up 100 of his favorites and although recipes are few – Taylor’s being one of the few places not keeping secrets and secret sauces – just reading about these places and the hamburgers they serve makes for true entertainment.

Some states (Alabama) don’t have a single representative. Texas has eight, including two Houston spots: Christian’s Tailgate Bar & Grill (7340 Washington Ave.) and Lankford Grocery (88 Dennis St.) , as well as the Tookie’s in Seabrook (1202 Bayport Boulevard) with its famous Squealer. In the interests of full disclosure, Houston Press food writer Robb Walsh, himself a man who’s gone in search of many burgers and lived to tell the tale, is acknowledged in the book for steering Motz to some of the places he tried out here.

Tucked into the back of the book is a copy of the documentary film that Motz made, catapulting him to semi-fame on the Sundance Channel and, as his publicist points out, a James Beard nomination and a chance to teach a course on hamburgers at New York University. The film, also called Hamburger America, shows off eight places where Motz stopped. The people who run these places explain what’s special about their burgers and why they keep on doing what they do as they construct burger after burger. Motz never appears on camera. (You will have a chance to meet him, however, on May 7 when he’s at Brazos Bookstore.)

The DVD starts off with a deep-fried burger from Dyer’s Burger’s (205 Beale St., Memphis, TN) --just drop it in the vat of grease and fry it till it floats to the top -- and then does a 180 to a steamed cheeseburger at Ted’s Restaurant (1044 Broad St. Meriden, CT) – where the burger and the white cheddar cheese on top are steamed.

Along the way there’s the guberburger (which my daughter wanted to try but I did not) in which melted peanut butter is spread on top of a really thin hamburger before it’s put in a sandwich. Apparently its owner featured in the film wasn’t able to save his place in the path of highway expansion; the book notes that the Wheel Inn Drive of Sedalia, Missouri was forced to close in 2007 but that the burger was moved around the corner to a nearby store.

Just in case you can’t get there, the book includes a recipe. – Margaret Downing

Founded in 1950, Los Norteños looks like it hasn’t changed much since it opened. There’s about a dozen dark wood tables in the downstairs dining room patrolled by four mustachioed waiters in jackets and ties. The manager is a white-haired guy named Ignacio who everybody calls “Nacho.” He stands up front near the door at an old-fashioned wooden cashier stand that looks like a pulpit except for the big glass jars full of candy. There is a separate room that houses the mesquite grill where the cabritos roast, and you can see them from the street.

I ordered the riñonada portion of the cabrito, which included ribs, some tender loin meat and the kidney. First you get a bowl of bean soup and some tortilla chips. Then you get a huge stack of hot tortillas in a wicker basket, and a plate with lettuce, tomato and raw onions. Then there’s a bowl of hellishly hot pico de gallo with big hunks of raw serrano in it and another bowl of a milder cooked salsa. When you finish the soup, they bring your plate of cabrito.

If baby goat on a stick is not your idea of festive Mexican food, you are not alone. The kids in Mexico aren’t very interested in cabrito either. At the most popular snack bar in the Mercado, a place called Popeye’s on Calle 9, I saw teen-agers lined up four deep to buy snacks and the fruit drinks called aguas frescas. The most popular food order was molten yellow cheese ladled over round tortilla chips. A basket of nacho chips covered with bright yellow processed cheese went for 13 pesos, or around $1.30.

Robb Walsh

It kind of makes you wonder: If cabrito is turning into a tourist dish, and the kids are more interested in fast food nachos, what’s the authentic Mexican food of the future going to look like? – Robb Walsh

Recently the Internet in my apartment went out, and I felt this was the perfect time to try my experiment. There were two requirements - one, the restaurant had to serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and two, there had to be Internet access available.

The two places around the corner from my house competing as healthy and healthier were the obvious choices. Let me start by saying that I have the same concerns about the word “healthy” in my eating as I do a PG-13 rating in most movies: good, maybe; great, not likely. In order to find out once and for all, I put down my Cheetos and went to work.

Everyone in Ziggy’s Healthy Grill on Monday morning seems to have just come from marathon training. All around me are people stretching and hiking up their gym shorts to reveal perfectly tanned and toned thighs. It’s certainly a good ad for the place. The guy behind the counter enhances this image by wearing an Abercrombie shirt that boasts, “Damn I’m chiseled.” And damn, he is, so when he tells me, “Go with the Santa Fe breakfast burrito,” I listen.

When I look up from my computer at 12:40 p.m., the line for lunch is almost to the door. Feeling quite at home, I leave my bag at the table and head towards the pile of menus at the back. I decide to skip the buffalo burger, even though Muscles behind the counter says, “It’s really, really good,” and go with the pizza. To be fair, as a native New Yorker, healthy pizza doesn’t really stand a chance in my world, but I was there to work, and work I did. The cheese on Ziggy’s personal pie hardened by the time I was done swallowing the first bite. Why Ziggy’s doesn’t offer the turkey sausage that I had with breakfast as a pizza topping is beyond me. Turkey pepperoni, for those of you who couldn’t guess, doesn’t live up to the real thing, and frankly, the place was cheap with the olives. To be fair, if I didn’t think about it as pizza, it was slightly more edible.

While I chewed through the pie, business meetings began all around me. After an hour of this, I decided to head to the back room where a younger crowd, consisting of what looked like med-students and hipsters, converged with their computers ready to study. I’m not sure if Ziggy’s is trying to conserve energy, or if healthy people are just less interested in lighting, but the back room is lit like a bat cave. This actually did not bother me, and instead made for a quite serene environment.

At 2:30 p.m., less than satisfied from lunch, I decided to go back for a snack. Ziggy’s veggie platter gives you a choice of three sides, and for eight dollars, is divine for a mid-afternoon treat. The butternut squash with pecans, apples and honey is beautifully plated and significantly sweeter than many desserts. A bowl of edamame and some pita chips with Ziggy’s distinctive top-notch hummus are perfect to split with friends.

By 3:00 p.m. the back room where I was hiding started filling up with other people looking for a place to sit with their computers. The next three hours felt like some kind of study session, and with the “work vibe” in full effect, I was able to get a remarkable amount done. At around 5:00 p.m. the doors to the back room started to shut. “We’re actually having a meeting back here,” said an employee. “Do you think you could move?” I grabbed my computer, Styrofoam cup and crumbs and headed back to the main room for dinner.

The desserts at Ziggy’s sit unappetizingly wrapped in cellophane in a basket at the front counter. Had I not seen them sitting there throughout the day, I might have been more excited to give them a try. “Everyone loves the carrot cake cookie,” I was told. This seemed hard to believe, looking at the misshapen orange mass with some sort of white goo sandwiched inside it. Instead I opted for the simpler, “low-fat brownie.” Although it was nowhere near as delicious as any actual brownie I’ve ever eaten, the chocolate flavor was there and the nuts sprinkled throughout were a nice touch. After polishing off a second brownie (I’ll teach them to take away fat…), I even felt slightly satisfied.

Day 2 – Field of Greens

The cover of the menu at Field of Greens shows a heart made entirely of fruits and veggies. Beneath that it shouts, “So good….and so good for you! Vegan!! Raw!! Organic!!” I needed to be cheered on, since I am not accustomed to eating in any of these ways. My dietary cheer is more along the lines of “Sugar!! Fried!! Steak!!”

For breakfast, Field of Greens offers a small variety of veggie add-ins for the omelets, putting cheese in its own category for an additional 75 cents. I went with “the works,” and was happily surprised by the flavor and quality of the eggs. The veggies and cheese also had that fresh from the farm taste, and I didn’t even feel that healthy until I started in on my Ezekiel toast, which needed to be dipped in water to choke down. For a mere 50 cents, Field of Greens will slap down a multigrain pancake, but those two quarters might be better spent at the arcade, since the flavorless cakes leave a lot to be desired, especially when paired with the “syrup,” which had the consistency of skim milk; hardly Vermont’s finest.

In order to access the Internet, you will have to ask one of the Field of Greens employees to print out a receipt out with the code on it. Although it’s a strip of paper no bigger than a box of matches, it was still a bit of a shock coming from a place that has a sign above the napkins asking you not to waste paper. Why not just write the code on the wall, or just allow codeless access as most places seem to?

“Actually,” she said, “We have both. But the tofu fries are super good.”

I wonder what that means about the regular fries, but, trying my best to assimilate, go with tofu.

“Good for you!” she says, cheering me on.

I sit down feeling proud and wait for my food.

The sandwich is gorgeous. A hunk of perfectly ripe avocado rests on each half of bread. The tofu fries are as salty as any I’ve had from McDonald’s, but the middle is juicy, helping to balance everything out. The tabouli could have used a dash more lemon (vegans eat that, right?), but was otherwise uncomplicated and delicious and I could almost tune out the constant chatter of save-the-planet discussions that surrounded me.

Dinner was more of a challenge. By 6:30 p.m. I was starting to lose it. I could not get used to the green walls, dispassionate art and half-fake greenery, but I took a cleansing breath and ordered the tofu quiche and salad. For some reason the salad at Field of Greens is chopped beyond an inch of its life, leaving you with a pile of lettuce that looks better suited for filling a piñata, or for use as fake grass in an Easter basket. That said, the quiche, which came in ball form and sat a top the greens, was eggy and rich.

Even the sound of chocolate tofu pie made my brain hurt, but because the place was out of the slightly more appetizing sounding vegan chocolate cake, I ordered a slice. Out it came, simply presented on a small black plate. Its density was a bit daunting. The consistency was closer to fudge than any other chocolate pie I ever had, but the chocolate still translated as creamy. I was impressed. – Sophie Rosenblum

When did South Post Oak go Salvadorean? I counted three new pupucerias south of 90A, including this charming pupusa trailer near the intersection of Tidewater.

A pupusa is a stuffed tortilla. My favorite combo is gooey queso and the tropical greens called loroco, although cheese and chicharonnes is the most popular filling.

The preferred condiment with pupusas is curtido, a chopped cabbage and chile slaw in vinegar. You get a little baggie full on the side.

A Salvadorean lady named Elisa churns out pupusas at an amazing clip. I watched her make a dozen in five minutes. – Robb Walsh

You can't miss the trailer -- just look for the funky chicken.

What $13 gets you: Some not-too-bad barbecue from the city’s biggest corporate chain of barbecue restaurants

I never much cared for Pappas Bar-B-Q. The barbecue sauce is thin, the links and ribs are nothing special and I still don’t get the appeal of sliced beef served atop a giant baked potato. Plus, the food there isn’t expensive but it isn’t cheap either. Add fries and a drink to that sandwich and you’re up to about ten bucks.

But there are things to like – it just took me a few visits to find them.

I haven’t been to all the Pappas Bar-B-Q locations, but of the ones I have tried the one downtown near City Hall is my favorite. Pappas took it over from Luther’s Bar-B-Q a couple years back, and the place is huge. There are three seating areas that hold more than 300 diners. And the thing about it is, it’s usually empty.

When I’ve gone in the mid- to late-afternoon, I’m one of only a handful of people in the joint. Sometimes I get to wondering how they afford to pay bills. So I decided to stop by on a recent Monday at noon to see if the restaurant ever got filled. And it does. It was humming mostly with government and corporate types in dark suits. Nearly every table was taken.

I got the chopped beef sandwich ($5.55) on jalapeno toast (add $.75), which adds some needed bite to the sweet, tangy meat. I passed on the fries and instead ordered the crisp refreshing cucumber salad, which includes shredded carrots and red onions in a tart vinegar dressing ($1.50). Other sides include spicy rice, ranch beans, yams and potato salad. With money leftover, I tried the excellent cantaloupe agua fresca ($1.95) and nabbed a big bland chocolate chunk cookie ($1.35) for the road.

I took a stack of papers to read through while I ate. By the time I looked up from them, it was almost two o’clock. And, wouldn’t you know it, the place was mostly empty.

Bonus point: Free toppings bar. –Todd Spivak

The fabulous rustic Alpino salami is $8.99 a pound, the Russian smoked ham is $6.49 a pound, and the ready-to-eat hunter’s sausage called kabanosy is $4.79 a pound. Pastry-filled meat pockets (pierohi) are $.70 each.

If you speak Russian, you’re all set. You can also muddle through by pointing at the cold cuts, as the counter help does speak a little English. But if you want some culinary advice in English, ask for the owner’s daughter, Sasha Kogan, 23. She is an aspiring classical music composer who sells salami by day -- let her compose the picnic platter of your dreams. – Robb Walsh

The Russian General Store, 9629 Hillcroft, 713-721-7595. Open 7 days a week, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

The book even recommends recipes based on the season, time of day, or stage of the relationship. Not sure if we're buying that last part, but bring on the oysters and, um, the libations/alcohol.And by the way, you can find many of those ingredients - fresher than fresh - at the Midtown Farmers Market at Monica Pope's t'afia each Saturday.

The restaurant is offering limitless glasses of Dom Perignon champagne, served in gorgeous stemware with their own twin holders, for $99.95. (Have you priced a bottle of Dom recently?) Everything on the buffet is first class, from the three types of caviar to the incredible handmade desserts.

$99.95 too expensive? You can still get the same incredible food and limitless glasses of Chandon champagne for $35.95. After a couple glasses, she'll never notice the difference. -- Paul Galvani

Where: Candelari’s Pizzeria, 6001 Washington Avenue, 832-200-1474

What $13 gets you: We tried the lunch special which includes soup, salad, pizza, pasta, dessert and a drink for $10.50 (available seven days a week). We also tried two by-the-slice slices of pizza, salad and a drink for just under $13.

I had the sausage pizza and pepperoni pizza from the buffet, while my partner had two slices with feta cheese and red peppers. We also taste-tested the cold pesto pasta salad and hot noodles with meat sauce, both of which were about the right temperature, but lacking in flavor.

And while our pizza dough was supposedly made with a five-grain flour, the only notable difference between it and white crusts was a barely-there sprinkling of herbs.

Also, pizza crusts should be chewy – and browned. Our pizza crust (both from the buffet and by-the-slice order) was suspiciously beige. Ditto our grilled chicken soup. (Beige soup must be an acquired taste.)

The serving sizes and prices are great at Candelari’s, but somebody needs to go in the kitchen and roast some garlic or toss around some oregano.

Bonus point: Candelari’s has two great porches that seem perfect for a couple of beers after work, but we do warn you to watch for the flying umbrellas on the smaller porch – really. (Maybe Candelari’s secret marketing strategy is to have a great happy hour and get everyone so drunk they won’t notice the flavorless food.) — Olivia Flores Alvarez

Turns out it’s a franchise. The guy behind the counter told me they used an Old Hickory barbecue pit, which is one of those stainless steel virtual barbecue contraptions that cooks with gas or electric heat with a little bit of smoke.

I got a mushy brisket sandwich to go and ate it in my car. I couldn’t detect any smoke aroma or flavor. While I was sitting there eating my crappy sandwich, I stared into the adjacent parking lot. I watched a guy over there remove a blue plastic tarp from an outbuilding to reveal an honest-to-god Texas barbecue pit. He started loading it up as I watched.

H. Dean Hopkins was seasoning 24 briskets to cook overnight in anticipation of a big motorcycle rally that was taking place the next day. He said he cooked his briskets from eight to 12 hours, depending on how the firewood was burning. And he had a huge pile of oak ready to go.

“Go around back of Dickey’s and look at their woodpile,” he told me. “They burn one log a night.” He had no doubt that Dickey’s did a lot more business than Longhorn Bar-B-Que. But Longhorn was selling all the meat he could smoke, so there was no reason to complain.

The barbecue franchise next door

I assumed that the Longhorn had been there for a while and that the Dickey’s franchise had come along and ruined their business, but I had it all wrong. Karen Hopkins’s barbecue joint was the oldest in Buffalo all right, but it was originally on the other side of town. She moved her restaurant right next to Dickey’s shortly after the much-advertised franchise opened, she told me.

And her business has been a lot better ever since. – Robb Walsh

Longhorn Bar-B-Que & Café, 2636 W. Commerce St. (Highway 79 West), 903-322-4848

Local purists might chose to celebrate this momentous holiday with dried root from Té House of Tea or a whip from The Chocolate Bar, but we're heading to the nearest corner store to get a wonderfully heavy tummy all over again. -- Keith Plocek

The Bayou City Farmers’ Market, in the parking lot behind 3000 Richmond, is my favorite Saturday morning hang-out. There's live music, Katz's coffee and free samples from Susan Holle, a cheesemaker from Sealy who goes by the name of Cheesygirl.

There's a craft table for kids — on a recent Saturday, the ankle-biters were potting free tomato plants. They also had some ducks and chickens to pet.

I always buy some yard eggs and a sack of fresh produce (sorrel, beets and chard, most recently). Strawberries looked good. Flowers and herbs are a bargain.

Click here for a slideshow. – Robb Walsh