Restaurants in Frisco

On any given day, Sarah Halterman can be found making handbags, corsets, baseball jerseys, or guitars—out of cake. Once an elementary schoolteacher, she founded Sweet Art Bakery in 2007 as an outlet for her love of custom baking. Today, she leads a team of five design assistants who help her turn 10 cake flavors such as dark chocolate, red velvet, strawberry, and spice into works of art suited to her customers' specifications and interests. She breathes life into her treats with 10 types of filling and icing, which include raspberry preserves, peanut-butter mousse, and chocolate buttercream. When not crafting custom cakes or their miniature cupcake cousins, Sarah fashions butter-citrus sugar cookies into the shapes of hats, owls, and snowmen, rolls cake balls and profiteroles, and dips strawberries in chocolate. She also leads monthly cake-decorating classes which, though geared toward beginners, also teach experienced bakers how to execute advanced kitchen moves or protect cakes from impatient guests by disguising them as scary predators.

IHOP's first pancake was flipped in Toluca Village, California, in 1958. More than 1,500 locations later, IHOP's kitchens still grill their signature pancakes next to a surfeit of omelets, stuffed french toast, and inventive breakfast creations that rival the government's WiFi-compatible biscuits and gravy. Though syrup is IHOP's condiment of choice, diners can squirt ketchup onto an assortment of meaty burgers or french fries that share plate space with country-fried steaks and french-onion pot roasts made with USDA-choice beef. The Euless, McKinney, and Ardmore locations serve their smorgasbords of sustenance 24 hours a day.

Ferry yourself to international flavors with today's Groupon: for $10, you get $20 worth of Italian drinks and dishes at Fortuna Grill, a homey Frisco eatery specializing in unpretentious eats that, despite its name, does not offer any sort of fortune-revealing dessert.

Inside Main Grill’s kitchen, a French chef infuses new life into classic American dishes. Burgers with the diner's choice of a quarter-pound or a half-pound patty come in 10 forms, including the Texan, topped with bacon, fried onions, cheddar, and barbecue sauce, and the bison, whose lean meat supports pickled onions, danish blue cheese, and smoky red-pepper sauce. Chicken breasts arrive at tables between slices of bread, grilled and blanketed in creamy garlic sauce, or snuggled inside of pot pies. For breakfast, diners can dig into sweet or savory crepes, or reminisce about the ocean breeze with a seafood omelet and a tableside fan.

Though Luna de Noche's menu doesn't stray far from its Mexican roots, the restaurant’s chefs introduce nuanced flavors in all their dressed-up versions of Tex-Mex classics. As staff members make guacamole tableside for patrons, they may add unique ingredients such as pecans, creating a dish that is as distinctive as it is traditional. Even the margaritas—served frozen, on the rocks, or from a hose—build on the classic recipe by incorporating ingredients such as Kahlúa, fresh jalapeño juice, or housemade sangria.

Executive Chef Tommy Simpson pulls inspiration for his menu from 18 years of traveling the world—he's studied at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, bustled about kitchens in South America, and experimented with recipes in Europe. Today, he crafts innovative American dishes at One2One Restaurant and Bar, which took four bronzes, one silver, and one gold in Plano Profile's 2012 Best Eats Restaurant Survey. Simpson's creations include steaks topped with wasabi mash, blackened chicken sliders smeared with chipotle mayo, and rock shrimp paired with sriracha. He also stacks a wood-fired oven with crispy pizzas and brushetta breads that are speckled with gourmet toppings of lobster, prosciutto, and fig.

The kitchen looks out onto the restaurant’s cavernous dining hall, where light trickles down onto rows of black booths and stone-tiled walls. Blue lanterns surround the granite bar, spotlighting bartenders as they uncork bottles of fine wine and whip up cocktails. An awning stretches out over the outdoor patio, where diners can admire the front lawn’s fountain, which erupts with majestic streams of water and grants three wishes to those who’ve never cheated on a math test.