The American butcher is dead. He was flattened by a cross-country truck packed with Boar's Head lunchmeat and buried under a pile of supermarket killhouse fare. And while you can brave the obnoxious foodie crowd at Whole Foods for a $9 organic porkchop, that's not what red meat is about. At Che, Tano, they know this. Swim through the sea of hard-to-find Italian coffees, fresh bread, empanadas, cheeses, pastries, and sandwiches to get to the monolithic meat section. There you'll find spirals of fresh salchicha, whole sides of prime churrasco, and piles of blood sausage. A friendly staff will assist you with gauging your needs ("Twelve peopleç" "Eight-and-a-half pounds."). They'll give you tips on preparation too. Grab a bag of hardwood charcoal and you're ready to mess with Texas.The Argentine carniceria has been in business for more than ten years, hidden in a little West Kendall shopping mall behind a Dunkin' Donuts. Prices are reasonable, if not cheap, with sausage and beef usually costing between $5 and $6 per pound.

We could mention the huge mondo-condo skyscraping towers across the street from Timo, and how, if the hurricane cooperated and blew its gales from east to west, they would buffet the friendly neighborhood restaurant in highly effective fashion. Or we could point to the brick wall in the back of the 120-seat eatery, by the open hearth that shoots out the crispest of wood-fired pizzas, and say "Solid as a rock — let's see a storm try to blow this baby down." But we know better than that. The real reason we'd like to dine at Timo during a hurricane is that we'd like to dine here any time. Plus if you're gonna get stuck someplace, why not in a cozy room with chef/partner Tim Andriola's comforting Italian-Mediterranean cuisineç Let the winds howl as you indulge in crisp oyster salad with white beans and pancetta, or confit of duck with roasted pear, red wine, and goat cheese. Laugh at the sheets of rain while filling your gullet with pappardelle, chicken livers, wild mushrooms, pancetta, and rosemary. Mock the cruelty of Mother Nature while munching on rustic meat dishes and grilled seafoods, and thank the lord for your good fortune while joyously clicking together glasses of Rustenberg Chardonnay, or any of the wondrously eclectic wines overseen by partner Rodrigo Martinez. Such scrumptious meals, with shelter included, won't cost much, either — small plates are all under $20, bigger main courses under $30. The cheese selection here is unusually extensive, desserts are peerless, and, for once, waiting around fifteen minutes for your soufflé shouldn't be a problem.

Your average Yucatecan wouldn't know a taco from a meatball parmigiana sandwich, but don't tell that to the owners of this neat and petite 40-seat restaurant, which specializes in cuisine from the Mayan peninsula. After all, if they want to sneak some fetching Mexican and Tex-Mex items onto their menu, it would be wrong of us to spoil things with regional quibbling — especially when among the non-Yucatecan delights are the most kickass tacos al pastor in town.The trio of corn tortillas come sumptuously plumped with nothing but pork, the smoky nubs of meat softly grilled and subtly sweetened with pineapples and onions. Refried beans, salsa verde, and guacamole are served on the side, which is downright generous for a plate costing just $8.49. Plus it leaves plenty of pesos for glasses of Dos XX on tap.

Oleta River State Park, the largest urban park in the state of Florida, offers the most picturesque of settings for lunch. The informal Blue Marlin Fish House is located where the original Blue Marlin Smoke House stood in 1938. It was a trading post back then, a place where people could anchor their boats and barter their catch. Now the grounds boast a nature center that details this history, a smoke house, and a breezy eating area with a view of the Oleta River rolling by. The menu is mostly composed, perhaps to no great surprise, of smoked fish specialties straight from that smoke house. Blue marlin, salmon, and mahi-mahi are the primary smokees, and can be sampled together in a tasting plate ($8.95); as sandwiches or wraps ($7.45 to $7.95); atop salad with walnuts, grapes, and creamy tarragon dressing ($10.95); or as entrées with rice or pasta ($12.95). Burgers, hot dogs, pizza, and other nonsmoked kiddie-fare is available, too. After lunch, you can walk a few yards, rent a kayak, and float away.

It might seem off the wall to say that the place to get great fajitas is an upscale, healthy-fast-food eatery in a traffic-choked Kendall shopping mall. Not if you've eaten at Off the Grille Bistro, though. This sleek little place proves that good-tasting and good-for-you are not morons of the oxy variety, whether you're grabbing a daily lunch or dinner of hearty salads, burgers, or juicy marinated pork. Or fajitas, which at Off the Grille are presented already packaged as wraps, but still deliver all the flavor of the more traditional version without adding a spare tire to your waistline. A whole wheat tortilla gets stuffed with tender chunks of smoky grilled sirloin and bulked up with sautéed onions, roasted peppers, cheese, and salsa. Like virtually everything else on the menu, it's less than $10. Now, that is really on the mark.

There's a miniature soccer team running toward your car and it looks like you're the one who's expected to feed them. Don't panic. Get all their seat belts tight and drive over to Bellante's. Kids age ten and under can eat all they want at this buffet for only $2.99, and adults pay just $4.89. Bellante's offers a pizza for every finicky eater. There's pepperoni, sausage, traditional cheese, chicken alfredo, ham and pineapple, barbecue chicken, and Mexican. They have cheese bread and pepperoni bites, breadsticks and cheese rolls. You couldn't find more cheese if you took the kids to a dairy farm. Pastas are good too. You have your choice of spaghetti aglio olio, pomodoro, or alfredo. Soup and salad are also included in the all-you-can-eat price, as are the desserts, like an apple pizza sprinkled with granola or a chocolate velvet cake. For those who can't sit still, a game room awaits in the back corner. Better yet, parents don't have to go running after their joystick happy kids — each corner of the dining room has a video monitor where you can see all the angles of the game room. So the kids will be full and entertained, and parents can relax and enjoy an adult conversation, if only for a brief time.

Native to Venezuela and Colombia, the arepa is a corn pone split in half and then stuffed with goodness, resulting in a stomach-expanding cornmeal sandwich. At this small Venezuelan strip mall cafe, they have every variety, each less than $5: There's the basic cheese-and-butter filling with traditional Venezuelan queso de año — a salty cheese that's white and crumbly. There's the arepa de perico, full of eggs scrambled with peppers and tomatoes. The reina pepeada has a filling of chicken salad mixed with potatoes, carrots, and avocado. And the best is the arepa de carne mechada, where the corn cake is stuffed with a juicy beef that's been stewed with tomatoes and onions — not unlike ropa vieja. All are served greasy and hot with a plastic bottle of garlic mayonnaise to squirt on top.

Diamond Jim Brady is often referred to as the greatest glutton in American history, but iconic food writer M.F.K. Fisher disagrees with this assessment: "That he ate nine portions of sole Marguéry the night George Rector brought the recipe back to New York from Paris ... does not mean that he gorged himself upon it, but simply had room for it." Which is what we remind those sitting to dine with us at the redundantly named New York's Big Apple Deli as we mull over the almost infinite menu. Excepting some desserts, all the food here is made on the premises, and there is simply so much one needs to try. Like the "world famous" matzoh ball soup. Stuffed cabbage, cheese blintzes, knockwurst (kosher, of course). Smoked whitefish. "Lower East Sides" like potato salad, cole slaw, and kasha (roasted buckwheat) knish. Mile-high sandwiches, including our favorite, the Rachel (pastrami reuben). Rugelach or rice puddingç Both! Sandwiches start at $6.95, a bowl of soup is $3.50, desserts are all under $4. With such reasonable prices, you will be amazed at how much room you have. So go for the New York cheesecake, too.

A nattily dressed postchurch crowd packs the Mahogany Grille (owned by Marlins player Andre Dawson) each Sunday, beginning at 11:30 a.m. The Sunday Supper menu contains the same Southern soul food favorites as that of the regular menu — oxtail stew, shrimp with grits, fried chicken and waffles, need we say moreç — plus a few low country and Caribbean dishes. But a few specialties tacked on, like baked, glazed ham, and braised turkey wings in giblet gravy, are tantalizing tasty, and the sumptuous banana pudding with crushed Nilla Wafers is reason enough to mark Sunday on your calendar. Prices are great — hearty main courses, with two sides of your choosing, are less than $20. The Mahogany Grille, for that matter, is a praiseworthy restaurant every day, too (although it's closed Mondays and Tuesdays). It's just got a little bit more soul on Sundays.

One would not ordinarily expect the top tapas in town to be tendered from the interior of a Citgo gas station. Or any gas station, for that matter. Yet enter the convenience store in the Citgo just off U.S. 1 and SW Seventeenth Avenue, mosey on by the motor oil and potato chips and stuff, and you will surely come across this quaintest of tiny tapas bars, designed like a faux courtyard. And just as thoroughly unexpected as the location is exactly how high Argentine-born, Italian-trained chef Luis Javier Cano raises the tapas bar with finger-licking finger foods such as garlicky gambas a la plancha (griddled shrimp); corvina ceviche; grilled sardines; and a must-order, show-stopping rendition of picadillo pepper puffed with bacalao. Tons of choices, all blessedly cheap ($5 to $18). There are also approximately 1500 bottles of wine on the shelves, many from Spain, any gladly opened and poured by an amiable waiter for a $10 corkage fee. The price on Halvoline Motor Oil isn't bad, either.