The White House Grill

This is the one that started everything. Raci Erdem, a native of Turkey who had cooked at Clinkerdagger's and the Spokane Club, opened The White House Grill in 1996 in a little white building on Spokane Street in Post Falls. By his own telling plenty of people laughed at the idea — and the building is exactly where the name came from, which in turn gave the whole family of restaurants that followed its government theme. Thirty years on it is still the anchor: Mediterranean cooking that pulls from Turkey, Greece, and Italy, and a reputation across two states for garlic. Not garlic as a background note — garlic as the entire premise, in the appetizers, the salads, and most of the entrees.

That reputation is the thing to plan around. Regulars treat the garlic as the reason to go and warn newcomers with obvious affection that you will carry it with you into the next day, which is either the appeal or the dealbreaker depending on who you ask. It is a small, long-established room that stays busy, and a restaurant running this long draws the occasional off night alongside the loyalty. For a place that has outlasted almost everything else that opened around it, and that spawned three more restaurants on the strength of one idea, it has earned the trip across the state line.