Little’s Oyster Bar

Little's Oyster Bar comes from the Pappas family hospitality group, the same operators behind Houston's steakhouse empire, and the room makes no secret of the ambition. It's Hollywood regency crossed with a coastal resort, the kind of space where a drink called the Golden Martini sits at the top of the list and nobody blinks. Expensive, glitzy, a little theatrical. The instinct is to write it off as style over substance.

That instinct is wrong. The seafood underneath the spectacle is genuinely excellent, plate after plate of food that could stand on its own in a room with none of the polish. The dining room stays packed regardless of the night of the week, which is its own kind of proof — people are coming back for what's on the table, not just the scenery.

National recognition has followed, landing Little's on a major list of the country's notable restaurants. That's confirmation, not the case itself. The case is a Pappas seafood room that spends money on atmosphere and still gets the food right, which is rarer than the fur coats in the dining room would suggest.