The Sycamore Inn

Travelers have stopped to eat on this exact spot since the 1840s — stagecoach, then Route 66, now you. The Sycamore Inn is the city's occasion restaurant: dark wood, deep booths, a proper bar, and a dry-aged steak program that takes itself seriously without the Vegas-steakhouse posturing.

It's expensive, and it earns it on the nights that matter — anniversaries, closings, the dinner where you're trying to impress a parent. Ask to hear the history; the staff know it, and the building wears a century and a half of it well. On a Route 66 crawl down Foothill, this is the white-tablecloth bookend to the Magic Lamp's neon a half-mile east.

Reservations are the move on weekends.