Verge Restaurant and Lounge, Los Gatos

Albert Nguyen-Phuoc is from Vietnam, trained at the Cordon Bleu in Paris, and has lived in Northern California for more than three decades. So it's no surprise that his menu for Verge inventively fuses flavors from those three regions. For example, one could start their meal with a butternut-squash soup poured over an apple wonton before digging into roasted pork tenderloin in a cider jus. The breakfast menu is more straightforwardly American, however, featuring dishes such as shrimp and grits with andouille sausage. No matter the time of day or number of years remaining until the invention of meal pills, guests would do well to try one of Verge's two dozen craft cocktails. The green tea macha fizz speaks directly to Nguyen-Phuoc's heritage, infusing gin with ginger liqueur and macha-tea syrup.