Restaurants in La Grange

With summer barbecue season bearing down like an angry bull, this meatberg ensures July evenings scented with charcoal and satisfaction, no matter the size of your crowd. The imminent meat-ark of USDA-graded steaks includes four bacon-wrapped 7-ounce filets, four 7-ounce filet strips, four 8-ounce Black Angus New York strips, four 7-ounce flat-iron tenders, six half-pound pure chopped-beef steaks (81/19 lean), and two 17-ounce porterhouse T-bones. Kick back with a bottle of hickory barbecue sauce and brush up on steak facts while you wait for the two-week processing and delivery.

With churrasco steaks, grilled red-snapper fillets, and shredded flank steaks rubbed with Cuban spices, it's hard to tell which dish earned Papi's Cuban & Caribbean Grill the tile of Best Cuban fare in 2010 and 2011 from the readers of Creative Loafing Atlanta. It could have been owner Rey Regalado’s recipe for pork marinade passed on from his father. Brought to America in a harrowing tale of escape from oppression, the signature sauce now trickles beneath layers of smoked pork, ham, swiss cheese, and dill pickles on the cuban sandwich or traditional masitas de puerco made with tender cubed pork. Selecting from a stash of family recipes, chefs fill plates with bold flavors and cap meals with such sweet treats as coconut flan and rice pudding. As the sun falls out of the sky on Fridays and Saturdays, live salsa music populates the dining room with toe-tapping beats and digestion-aiding rhythms.

The Pecan Restaurant's head chef Tony Morrow collects ingredients from the recipes of his favorite chefs, finding ways to work each of them into his own cuisine. The first flavor he fell in love with was pecans, a staple of his mother's cooking. Later in life, he encountered the rich spices of Cajun and Indian cooking, the perfectly prepared meats in French recipes, and the delicate pastas of the best Italian kitchens. He took these culinary experiences and, inspired, created his own masterpieces with each one, blending and changing each until he created a type of southern cooking all his own.

He serves his fusion food in a classic southern-style dining room full of light woods and white tablecloths complemented by the deep red curtains that hang around the space. During the eatery’s remodeling, a giant Coca-Cola advertisement—first painted in 1917—was discovered beneath the room’s drywall. Now re-exposed and retouched, it emblazons an exposed brick wall and adds last-century charm to the dining room, reminding its guests of a time when life was simpler and cola poured from the drinking fountains.

Flashing knives and spurting flames dazzle diners as the chefs at Kuma Japanese Steak House & Sushi Bar theatrically sear entrees on the tabletop hibachi grills. Equally comfortable with cooking vegetables and meats, the chefs can shuffle a number of them across the grill's iron surface, including scallops, chicken, or filet mignon. Meanwhile, the sushi chefs gingerly slice pieces of fresh salmon and tuna behind their bar—unlike traditional bartenders, who rarely slice bottles into neat sections. Their work does not stop there, however, because they also carefully layer orders of salmon nigiri that can emerge alongside a familiar or inventive sushi roll, which arrives in either six or eight bite-sized pieces.

Live music regularly reverberates off Samba Loca Brazilian Steakhouse's bright-red walls, which bear festive decorations of ethnic artwork and wine racks crafted from gleaming chrome. Patrons sit under the full bar's flat-screen TVs, around tables, or in booths as the kitchen’s Brazilian recipes power entrees of 10-ounce strip steaks and salmon doused in Brazilian honey-dijon mustard. Customizable meals come in the form of five grill-fired meats, including filet mignon and red snapper, which don one of nine traditional sauces splashed with notes of curry, blue cheese, or passionfruit. To help them to decide, patrons not fluent in Portuguese can rely on the menu's English and Klingon translations or gaze at screens that feature photos of Samba Loca's signature dishes.

Long hailed for a mastery of ham far beyond the skills of mere mortal meat cookers, the meat mavens at HoneyBaked Ham invite you to put their newly honed turkey skills to the test with today's Groupon: a whole roasted turkey breast for $12 (an up to $25 value). Get your moist turkey breast unadulterated, or let the HoneyBaked masters finish your bird with crackling sweet glaze, which may or may not be cooled by having volunteer glaze-pixies fan it with their wings. Call one of HoneyBaked's participating locations (found here and in the sidebar to the right) to reserve your order, and pick up your juicy bird.