3 Best Restaurants in Paradise Road and the East Side, Las Vegas

If you're looking for a type of place where the waitress calls you "honey," this locals' diner for more than 35 years has an old-fashioned, family-owned vibe. The food is better than most nearby chain places, serving up hearty Mexican specialties, fruit-topped pancakes and waffles, and senior specials. Blueberry Hill has four locations, two of them near each other on the East Side, a couple of miles apart on Flamingo Road. This one is closest to both the Strip and UNLV and is open 24 hours a day.

This chain of zero-ambience fast-food eateries serves Hawaiian-style barbecue to a heavily Hawaiian clientele (Las Vegas is known as the "ninth island" to Hawaiians). The plate lunch is the draw here, and considering that it comes with two scoops of rice and one of macaroni salad (along with whatever protein you'd like; the choices naturally include Spam), it's no surprise that there are so many guys walking around calling themselves the Big Kahuna. The former Taco Bell on Maryland was one of the first of now many locations in the Valley.

Javier Barajas, the congenial owner and host of this colorful cantina group, named this restaurant after his birthplace in Mexico, where he learned to cook while growing up in the culinary capital of Michoacán. Don't miss such outstanding specialties as the carnitas or cabrito birria de chivo (roasted goat with red mole sauce). Guacamole is made tableside, and the flan is a silken wonder. There's no reason to stick to Mexican-restaurant basics when the menu is so expansive—the lunch menu alone offers 37 choices. This local success story began in 1990 and now boasts three other locations—in Henderson, Summerlin, and in the Palace Station casino—but the original is a singular experience: a dense labyrinth of rooms (with a capacity of around 300) with arched ceilings and brightly colored walls covered in bric-a-brac, and table visits from strolling mariachis.