Restaurants in Jupiter

With swinging wood saloon doors, hanging lamps made from cowboy hats, and local ranchers' brands seared into each tabletop, Cowboys' Bar-B-Q & Steak Co.'s three locations make visitors feel as though they've just stumbled in from the Texas lowlands. Many of founder Jim McCoin's self-devised recipes come from years of careful cooking while on the professional barbecue-competition circuit, which regularly led his team "Big Daddy Q" to victory. Wings strut across plates dressed in up to 20 sauce flavors, compelling tongues to quench thirst with 10 draft beers or Western-themed margaritas. Beverages are served in mason jars, carried past decorations such as photographs representing local ranching families. For outside eaters, Cowboys' supplies its hearty grilled fare through take-out and catering each day of the week.

Chef Spiros Nerantzis may seem gruff, but—as his wife and partner, Jenna, explains—that's only because "his passion and his love all comes out in his food." Cooking since he was 15, Chef Spiros bounced around Europe until 2006, when he jumped across the pond to take over the then-24-year-old Olympia Cafe. Today, his kitchen expertly constructs traditional Greek fare, turning out plates of moussaka, gyros, and pastitsio, a Greek-style lasagna topped with béchamel sauce. A classically trained chef, Spiros is especially adept at fresh fish dishes, and concocts all his silky cream sauces from scratch rather than downloading them from the Internet.

If the kitchen is Spiros' domain, the rest of the restaurant is Jenna's. Jenna met Spiros six months into his tenure at Olympia Cafe, and a whirlwind romance saw them married before another six months was over. Friendly and personable, today she welcomes arriving guests into a dining room with white-and-blue-clothed tables and a bleached-brick bar. To further enhance the homey vibe, Jenna and her team adorned the space with authentic Greek trinkets, including painted platters, komboloi beads, and statues of titans arm-wrestling to decide who gets the bigger bedroom.

For more than two decades, Ebisu—named for the Japanese god of wealth and fortune—has fostered a passion for fresh seafood. According to the Palm Beach Post, chef Hiro Yamamoto infuses his traditional Japanese specialties with the local catches of the day, which are listed daily on a blackboard alongside several lines of I will not pretend to be avocado written by the wasabi in detention. Beneath the rustic, fish-print art dangling over the sushi bar, guests can watch the chefs as they bundle nigiri, maki, and temaki with fresh ingredients in classic arrangements. From the kitchen, plump udon and soba noodle soups join tempura veggies and teriyaki entrees as a steamy complement to the rice-rolled morsels. Guests savor the restaurant’s house sake or plum wine from wooden booths and floor-level tatami seating, which seems to ignite beneath scarlet walls and hanging paper lanterns.

Some chefs wake up to a steaming pot of coffee, but Glenn Cockburn’s morning fix is Maine lobster, which arrives at his fish house by 10:30 a.m. each day. Informed by his training at the Culinary Institute of America and more than 35 years in the restaurant business, Glenn steams the elegant crustacean whole to release its natural flavors. He unleashes his talents on other seaborne species as well, blackening yellowfin, grouper, and rainbow trout to form dinners as healthy as a jog through a field of wheatgrass. Non-seafood specialties, such as aged new york strip steak, pair nicely with staples from the wine list, including Don Gascon malbec and Beringer cabernet sauvignon. Guests flock to the outdoor patio on sunny days, where they can enjoy lunches of mahi-mahi tacos and desserts such as key-lime pie with raspberry coulis. Lined with ocean-blue accents and reef-themed tile mosaics, the interior summons daydreams about scuba-diving trips and sojourns at Poseidon’s lake house.

More than 15 locations of Sal's Italian Ristorante grace the Florida panhandle like pepperonis on a sizzling pizza slice. In dining rooms designed to evoke the atmosphere of a small Italian village, plates of penne and linguine steam with alfredo, pink vodka, or light wine sauces. Skilled chefs sauté salmon and veal and top gourmet pizzas with shrimp, basil, and gorgonzola. House wines can be poured by the glass or carafe for the thirsty, or by the eyedropper-full for the curious.