A Liberty City Breakfast with Basic Training Deliverance Academy

Liberty City Breakfast from Miami New Times on Vimeo. Gus Garcia’s feature story this week explores the world of Basic Training Delivery Academy in Miami’s Liberty City. Here’s a video detailing the Sunday breakfast ritual they offer free to the community. Click here to read the full article…

A Room with a View

A burgundy stream of Cavia Malbec cascades into a short-stemmed snifter and stops abruptly as our waiter snaps the bottle upright. Lifting the glass to eye level and looking closely at the lower, liquid-filled half, I see a convex reflection of Buena Vista Bistro’s 24-seat room: black-topped tables lining the…

Palm Beach and Broward Restaurant Closings

Your intuition is correct: Restaurants dropped like tasered protesters at a Republican rally last year. The not-so-bad news is that new eateries opened in many of the vacated spaces, offsetting our net loss. Read on for a partial and unofficial Short Order list of closings in Broward and Palm Beach…

The Inspector: 5 Restaurants That Started 09′ In A Bad Way

After a short hiatus, The Inspector is back to keep you abreast of current developments in the routine-food-inspection-report scene. The following information may shock you, but understand we are only providing it because it is totally public information that we all have a right to see. Here are 5 restaurants…

Girl Scout Cookies Hit Streets, Scared of Salmonella?

Cookie junkies across the nation simultaneously erupted in joy and floundered in despair when ’09 Girl Scout cookie shipments hit the streets and salmonella peanut butter reports hit the airwaves. But don’t despair, according to MSN Health & Fitness:”The drum roll for recalls of peanut butter products continued without letup,…

Cuban-Style Pig Roast Using La Caja China

Ah, the Cuban Pig Roast. There’s no greater cooking method than the outdoor-food-to-fire-method. And with the holiday pig we ate, we gotta start looking ahead to the next one. This kind of cooking is so basic, yet so delicious, it brings out the inner cave person in all of us…

Chocolate-Dipped Fairchild

This Thursday evening, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden will be hosting the Third Annual International Chocolate Festival Kickoff Party. No, I didn’t know about the first two either, but this year’s one-hour shindig (6 to 7 p.m.) features hors d’oeuvres from exceptional chef Edgar Leal of Cacao Restaurant — reason enough…

Behind the Line at Joey’s Wynwood

Chef Ivo Mazzon of Joey’s Cafe in Wynwood is from Roncade, Treviso, in Northern Italy, close to Venice. He studied there for five years at a hospitality institute and has been in Miami since April, 2003. He says “I love it here. We’re trying to make something special to create…

“Yes Pecan” – Ben & Jerry’s Launches Probama Ice Cream

Business-hippies Ben & Jerry know ice cream cross-branding is a powerful way to push a message and make people smile. Hell, their corporate language refers to the CEO as “chief euphoria officer.” With that in mind, they’ve chosen January as a month of change wherein their famous butter pecan flavor…

Bush Banishes Roquefort

Apparently even in its’ final moments, the Bush administration’s penchant for pettiness has not yet been exhausted. The latest victim is Roquefort cheese, which has had its’ import duty rate tripled to 300% by the lame duck government. According to an article in The Guardian, the move was taken in…

Booze Hound – DiLido Beach Club

After a hard day of filing my nails, receiving deep tissue massages, and ordering Manolo Blahniks from Neiman Marcus’s online store (THANK GOD for the plummeting economy – sales are faaaabulous), there’s nothing that I like more than grabbing my komodo dragon and baby panda-fur lined purse, driving my Hummer…

Christine’s Embraces Change

One of our favorite restaurants in Fort Lauderdale, Christine’s on Oakland Park Boulevard, rolled out a new menu this week featuring, in addition to entrees, a pretty delectable line-up of small plates priced between 10 and 14 bucks. A good idea, thinks us, especially because the joint is becoming known…

Arnold’s Royal Castle Reopens

There are few places in South Florida that have a more devoted following than Royal Castle. Its fans are so faithful that original mini-burger joint White Castle never found success here. Naturally, it was a grim day for many folks when Wayne Arnold’s Royal Castle was forced to close down…

Cindy Hutson, Waxy O’Connor, and Sierra Nevada

Waxy O’Connor’s South Beach, hitherto a humble pub, is getting all classy on us. This coming Wednesday, January 21st, marks the restaurant’s first foray into celebrity chef beer dinners. Cindy Hutson, chef/owner of Coral Gable’s beloved Ortanique on the Mile, will be cooking up a four-course dinner matched with appropriate…

A Restaurant Called Longevity

Hard to believe that A Fish Called Avalon has been reeling in diners on Ocean Drive for two decades, yet the Avalon Hotel’s seafood establishment is indeed celebrating its’ 20-year anniversary tonight. Congrats to the owners and chef Brian Cantrell for being able to achieve long term success in spite…

In Other Recession News…

Hey, you. Yeah, you, the unemployed guy sitting on your couch surfing the Internet for a job. I would change those boxers, man. Shortly after doing that, I would head to eponymous sports pub Beef ‘O’ Brady’s for what the Sun-Sentinel’s John Tanasychuk says is a sure thing. No, not…

Michael Wagner has a Beard (named Lola)

No, not that kind of beard. It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world these days fer sher, but at least we can take comfort in comfort food, and nobody does it with quite the panache of chef Michael Wagner of Hollywood, one of a handful of chefs invited to create…

Jamaica Kitchen On Food Network

In  “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” a Food Network original series, host Guy Fieri rides around  looking for  real-reality through specialty joints. In this episode he visits Jamaica Kitchen, an authentic Jamaican and Chinese-Jamaican establishment serving up pure fire. In 2007 the place won Miami New Times “Best Chinese Restaurant.”  Check…

New Restaurant at the Hyatt Regency

The Hyatt Regency Miami, which underwent a $20 million dollar renovation last year, has unveiled its’ new Pure Verde restaurant. Executive chef Michael Morris will be in charge of the snazzily-designed venue, which just months ago was a dull, aging sports bar. Morris, who previously helmed Hyatt properties in Tampa…

Batty over Gotham

Gotham is a powerful word, concurrently connoting two potent icons: Manhattan and Batman. In the food world, it bespeaks a third force to be reckoned with: Alfred Portale’s Gotham Bar and Grill on New York’s West 12th Street, which nearly a quarter-century ago helped redefine the contemporary urban restaurant. Gotham…

Closings: The Palm Beach Gardens Balloon Has Burst

What happened to Downtown At The Gardens? What was once a lovely dining destination is rapidly becoming a restaurant graveyard, staffed by people with bad attitudes and bunker mentalities. We called and spoke to someone in The Gardens’ marketing department about a wild rumor about the fact that four –…