By John Mariani

For 30 years I have returned again and again to Tony Vallone's namesake restaurant in Houston, and in all those visits I doubt I've ever had the same dish twice. Even back in the 1980s, when Tony's was a red-walled society and celebrity dining venue and Tony himself was in a tuxedo every night, the basic menu was always appended with new dishes based on what was to be found in the local market or flown in from Maine, Seattle, San Francisco, the Outer Banks, or the Adriatic.

Tony's began as a modest eatery in 1965, then evolved from a red sauce standby into a continental cuisine restaurant, and by the 1990s into one of the finest Italian restaurants in America, with one of the foremost wine lists anywhere.

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