Memorizing these winners, including such stalwarts as Best Burger, Best Burrito and Best Beer, would be enough to survive – no, thrive – for another 20 years in the 3,324 square miles that make up Monterey County.

PARKER LUSSEAU PASTRIES

Entering this Peninsula favorite is like secretly slipping into France at any time of the day. The tarts are picture perfect, topped with luscious glazed or caramelized fruit – try the chocolate ganache and almond caramel, topped with perfectly sliced pears, or the almost-too-pretty-to-eat fresh raspberry with almond cream. If you are salivating more toward the savory, there’s no going wrong with the quiches, including a hearty portabella mushroom and a classic quiche lorraine. The croissants are buttery and flaky, plain or ham and cheese, and the sandwiches range from curried tuna on a croissant to ham and brie on a baguette. One recent morning, a thick slice of bread layered with mushroom tapenade, goat cheese and grilled eggplant beckoned. They sell cake by the slice or whole, and offer cookies and petite fours and a daily soup. The smaller shop on Hartnell is near the post office. Think of it as a place to reward yourself after waiting in line to mail a package or buy stamps. Vive la France!

LAYERS

The strictly-from-scratch satisfaction that comes from this family-run hub is enough to send even the least literate frosting fiends tumbling into the throes of poetic explanation. A cake in point follows, its soul expressed in haiku:

It changes the way

You feel about life’s layers –

Death by Chocolate

WILLY’S SMOKEHOUSE AND ALL AMERICAN GRILL

Just over a year old, Willy’s has successfully filled a niche for fine Southern food backed by a blues soundtrack to be enjoyed in comfort and good taste. The bar and its menu of Southern-inspired cocktails adds a party atmosphere to any meal, even if it requires a little effort to imagine you’re swilling bootleg in the Ozarks. Never forgetting its own sense of place, nor its patrons, Willy’s incorporates hearty salads, south-of-the-border spice, tasty calamari and one of the best artichokes around. A Combo Platter is a great way to try the St. Louis-style ribs, pulled pork and dry-rubbed beef brisket, and there’s more. Much more.

IN-N-OUT BURGER

For a road trip, In-N-Out is the food of choice – even when that road is just across town. The lean burgers and soft fries are cooked fresh, without supporting crowded slaughterhouses or minimum wage bullies: In-N-Out uses quality beef and actually pays employees well. (How else could the young workers wear their dorky ‘50s-style hats with a smile?) But back to the road: Order up a Double-Double and try mastering the fold-back-the-paper-wrap play while steering. Next challenge: dousing your fries with ketchup while changing lanes.

CHIPOTLE MEXICAN GRILL

On any given day, there is a long, fast-moving line of burrito lovers loitering here around lunchtime. Their motivation is simple: Chipotle offers ample options at every opportunity, and natural goodies like hormone-free meats and fresh cheeses. As the architect of your own burrito, you get exactly what you want: black or pinto, chicken or carnitas (or fish or beef), corn salsa or spicy (or all), choice of veggies, cheeses, sour cream, guacamole. The significance of this collision of great ingredients and personal authorship means this: If you get a bad burrito here, it’s hard to blame anyone but yourself.

ABALONETTI SEAFOOD TRATTORIA

No local restaurant has been as true to the principles of serving great calamari for longer than this temple of tentacles. The evidence is pretty simple to swallow, the pure volume less so: Abalonetti measures the monthly amount of calamari it handles in tonnage – huge tonnage. It starts out with the freshest local-caught beauties (when available), cleans them properly, handles them delicately and frys them gracefully, presenting a delicious snack that delights locals and visitors alike. Calamari is actually very difficult to prepare correctly, with little room for error. At Abalonetti’s, error doesn’t enter the equation.

COMPAGNO’S MARKET & DELI

The line often trails out the door at this longtime New Monterey fixture. Yes, the sandwiches are that good. Choose from among dozens on their list – the #27 (chicken breast, any cheese, avocado and bacon on your choice of bread) is a Weekly staff and community favorite – or ask for your own combination and they’ll make it. (And unless you have just run a marathon, a “half” sandwich is plenty. Simply put, the sandwiches are ginormous, and easily feed two.) Be sure to check out the extensive line of inventive salads (the broccoli-bacon is an institution), designer soft drinks and wide variety of chips, including the recently added Herr’s potato chips from Pennsylvania. And if you can resist the desserts – huge slabs of cake and luscious New York-style cheesecake (all $5.99, big enough to share and still have leftovers), you are a stronger person than most.

GROVE MARKET

Grove Market is a Norman Rockwell painting come to life. The surfers love the vibe, the little old ladies love the service, the hippies love the veggies, the squares love the New York Times, the politicos love the patrons and everybody loves the butcher shop. “Love of Meat,” of course, is the title of the 1969 tribute from the famed satirist Nils Erickson.

There once was a man from Nantucket

who loved the butchery at Grove Market

The filets trimmed by hand!

The wieners and lamb!

The appeal was too much – he couldn’t buck it.

THE CHEESE SHOP

There really are no other contenders for this award. Never have been, and don’t see how there possibly ever can be, given the 33-year head start The Cheese Shop enjoys on everyone else. The legend dates back to the days owner R. Kent Torrey and friends “had to get trucks from back East to make special trips to provide us the cheese [customers] wanted – the food distributors here didn’t have those kinds of products.” With all the relationships developed over that time, and with connections to artisan producers around the world, The Shop is not only the greatest cheese selection in the county, but one of the best anywhere.

TOMMY’S WOK

Tucked away from the street in a narrow by-the-sea alleyway, Tommy’s Wok is definitely worth finding. The one-room eatery serves a variety of healthy and flavorful Chinese dishes from an extensive selection that stuffs a list of lunchtime combination plates and superb entrees onto one menu (including the Mu Shu Pork, which features lean pork, cabbage, egg, green onions, mushrooms and bamboo shoots that you can roll up in a tortilla-like pancake and cover with a tasty hoisin sauce). With such a small dining area, it’s usually best to order Tommy’s Wok’s vittles to go. Weekly readers get that.

ACME COFFEE ROASTING CO.

485-B Palm Ave. (on the alley), Seaside 393-9113 • acmecoffeeroasting.com

A graphic novel could open with the intro on Acme’s website: “It was a cold November day that blew in on a tired, beat down, uninspired wholesale coffee roasting company where a hot, sweaty coffee roaster worked from dawn to dusk in a sooty, dingy outfit that didn’t care about him.” Automaton no more, Acme co-owner Larry Thurman now serves up fervently local coffee in resistance to “everything under the banner of Starbucks,” as he puts it. The uninitiated could easily miss Acme’s alley storefront in downtown Seaside, but the location is deliberate. “Our customer base is loyal and supportive,” Thurman says. “We’re doing better every year.”

ROSINE’S RESTAURANT

Rosine’s, as the name may imply, does breakfast, lunch and dinner the way a doting mom might: plentifully. But their sweet treats are what elevated them into the “best” stratosphere: Their diet-busting dessert menu dwarfs that of other restaurants. Cakes and pies reign supreme. They have three cake categories including specialty cream cakes (chocolate truffle, peaches and cream), traditional cakes (carrot, orange, chocolate chocolate… that’s not a typo) and cheesecakes (pumpkin, white chocolate). If those don’t inspire surrender, Rosine’s pies have rather ridiculous range: peanut butter, key lime, banana cream, pumpkin, Snickers and an orchard’s worth of fruit pies. And just to cover all the sweet urges people may bring through the door, they have “more sweet stuff”: apple dumplings, shakes, cookies, pudding…

COLD STONE CREAMERY

The Weekly housemother is a health fanatic, complete with a no-dairy policy and a no-sugar creed. Yet when faced with the daunting Cold Stone window, filled with ice cream and all the options, she melts down, forgets the sugar-free, dairy-free options, and orders the sweet cream with caramel and coconut shavings, without even a thought as to any prior promise to herself. She’s not alone – the power of this custom-made ice cream, with its endless gummy bear, peanut butter and Oreo options, mushed on a frosty granite slab right then and there, turns many ice cream lovers into, well, mush.

GIANNI’S PIZZA

Pizza, at its best, is possibility (“how many toppings do you offer?”), promise (“good morning, leftovers”) and pleasure (“did someone say, ‘double pepperoni?’ ”) all in one circular shape. At Gianni’s, pizza is all of those things – reminding us that locals who don’t know about this perpetual Best Of champ really can’t claim to know much worth knowing. But Gianni’s is more than great ‘za: check out the underappreciated bar, the private party space ideal for little leaguers to C-league softball and the ample pizza complements (lasagna, breadsticks, salads, picnic benching). However you slice it, Weekly readers have recognized the best.

CRAZY HORSE RESTAURANT

Crazy Horse Restaurant’s salad bar has all the usual food items people commonly need to accessorize their greens, including croutons, coin-shaped beet slices and three different cheeses. But the establishment, located in Monterey’s Bay Park Hotel, probably won this award because of its unexpected offerings: freshly grilled chicken, baked potatoes, a soup du jour and a whole tray of cold cuts. And with the salad bar open from 11:30am to 9pm, these days a fully loaded salad is no longer just for lunch.

JAMBA JUICE

The act of drinking Jamba Juice’s select nectars is only getting healthier. First they added the boosts – protein, immunity and happy heart among them – then went more natural with their ingredients, abolishing bad sugars and empty calories. Now it’s getting better; we think our readers dig that. The company teams with nonprofits such as KaBOOM!, which builds parks and play structures around the country. And they also encourage the use of reusable, washable smoothie cups (OK, they sell some too) for the green-friendly crowd. In other words, an Aloha Pineapple or Razz and Red Tea smoothie can help your health, the kids’ health, and, potentially, the health of the environment.

PESSAGNO WINERY’S PINOT NOIR

Pessagno can do what few can: make good Pinot that has a sense of place but doesn’t run more than the rent. With super-soft tannins, this wine can be quaffed like a cocktail or slowly savored with salmon and goat cheese. Pessagno is lucky to live in a climate conducive to growing one of the most fickle grape types in the world – and he’s good enough to use it to consistently produce a Pinot with pedigree. Lucky and good? Yes – illustrating why it’s no surprise our readers liked Pessagno’s Pinot best.

BERNARDUS WINERY’S CHARDONNAY

There are plenty of ways to ruin a perfectly palatable Chardonnay. In California, most winemakers are guilty of cutting costs by stirring oak flour into their underwhelming wine. Such Chardonnay is so nasty that it’s capable of inspiring otherwise happy drunks to switch over to spritzers. Across the pond in France, Chardonnay can be lean, green and reminiscent of rotting cheese. No such extremes here. Though this wine falls into the “buttery and oaky” category, this fine fermented juice balances richness with freshness and enjoys a crisp classiness reminiscent of Bernardus owner and local legend Ben Pon. Like people, wines can be either superficial and one-dimensional, or complex; this fat pleasure-ball displays all the complex tropical fruit nuances typical of Monterey County, and butterscotch hints representative of Chardonnay that our readers want.

ENGLISH ALES

It’s almost like having a stalker – the more and more places you go, there it is. Only it’s nothing like that, because no one likes a stalker remotely as much as any one of EA’s most popular pours: the EA Pale Ale, Monk’s Brown Ale, Fat Lip, Big Sur Blond or Dragonslayer IPA. All the benevolent brews are born in Marina and, thanks to a phenomenon called flavor, are now found in a rising number of spots as far off as San Francisco. Look for the silver knight handle (which corresponds to the most ubiquitous, and most delicious, of the group, the EA Pale Ale) at any bar worth its pints, and of course at the EA epicenter off Reindollar. There’s a reason EA hasn’t relaxed its tap-tight grip on this Best Of category in years – hint: it rhymes with beliciousness.