Laotian food has long been overshadowed in Atlanta by the cuisine of neighboring Thailand. But with the early 2018 opening of insta-hit Snackboxe in Doraville, there’s now an excellent representation of the underappreciated cuisine right in our backyard. Inspired by the bright flavors they encountered on a trip to their native Laos, husband and wife Vanh Sengaphone and Thip Athakhanh craft street food–inspired dishes vibrant with heat and acid, including a peerless laap (a spicy and tart meat salad more commonly known by its Thai name, larb) and a sinus-clearing bowl of khao poon (its curry broth, rich with coconut milk, clings to long rice noodles).

Heirloom is a love story—between its co-owners, wife and husband Jiyeon Lee and Cody Taylor, and between the homestyle Korean cooking of her childhood and the homestyle Texan cooking of his. The restaurant did not start out as an intentional crosscultural melange of cuisines. In its earliest days, Heirloom was mostly concerned with straightforward, Texas-style ’cue. As with all great love stories, the passion between miso paste and collard greens or kimchi and coleslaw was almost accidental at first, but these pairings were clearly meant to be. Our only gripe is that the mostly takeout operation offers just a few standing tables; this food is too good to rush through while on your feet and too tempting to drive all the way home with.

Dave Roberts left fine dining in the mid-aughts to study the finer points of barbecue. Back then, hoity-toity chefs hadn’t begun to launch the kind of barbecue operations that source their meats extra carefully and support organic farms. Opened in 2009 with several partners in a tight little shopping center near Emory, Community Q offers moist and tender pulled pork that isn’t obnoxiously smoky, reliably robust St. Louis ribs, and ridiculously rich and creamy three-cheese mac and cheese. You may want to mix the vinegar-based sauce into the tomato and molasses one—but, as is true of the best barbecue joints, these meats are tasty enough to eschew the sauces entirely.

Eddie Hernandez and Mike Klank opened the first Taqueria del Sol on the Westside in 2000, cranking out crowd-pleasing $2 tacos. Two decades and six locations later, customers still line up for Hernandez’s Southern-Mexican mashup cuisine: fried-chicken tacos with lime-jalapeño mayonnaise, refried-bean enchiladas with a side of turnip greens, and shrimp corn chowder. Want to learn how Hernandez does it? Pick up his cookbook, Turnip Greens & Tortillas, which was one of our favorites of 2018.

In 2007, twin brothers Jonathan and Justin Fox opened their DeKalb Avenue restaurant. More than a decade later, you’ll still have to wait for a table. The brothers’ brisket is legendary, but just as epic are their over-the-top barbecue offerings: the camp classic Frito Pie served in the actual bag, hickory-smoked jumbo wings dressed in homemade sauce, and a nine-inch, smoked beef rib that looks like something a caveman might devour. The Foxes have built upon their success with a line of barbecue and wing sauce sold at Whole Foods and other stores, a partnership with the Atlanta Falcons, and a “Que-osk” location near SweetWater Brewing. The brothers might be from Texas, but they’re essential architects of Atlanta’s barbecue scene. A second location opened on the Westside at 204 Chattahoochee Row.

Growing up, Lis Hernandez spent countless days with her mother in the kitchen making arepas—stuffed cornmeal patties, crunchy from a hot grill—that they sold on the streets in their native Venezuela. Hernandez’s arepas first appeared in Atlanta at the Sweet Auburn Curb Market in 2012, and she still sells them there. Even more rewarding is a visit to her cheerful, stand-alone spot in Avondale Estates, where she also serves specialties such as pabellón (shredded grassfed beef with black beans, fried plantains, and queso de año) and avocado and heart-of-palm salad dressed with sweet corn juice. This is the Venezuelan food that Atlanta was missing.