Booze Hound – Boteco

Ten things I really hate: 1) The insanity-evoking act of sitting in rush hour traffic 2) The Abelam Tribe of New Guinea (screw you and your giant, painted yams!) 3) The smell of chicken on my fingers 4) The Hills 5) Eating after midnight (because if I do, I tend…

Screw the Corkscrew

Baby, we’re through. Yeah, so, there’s Wall Street. There’s Sarah Palin. Hurricane Ike. The potential collapse of WaMu, the bank that controls my entire, very meager life savings. But then there are those little things that just make my wretched human existence feel soooooo worthwhile. I’m talking about my iGoogle…

Dinner on a Farm

Courtesy of Paradise Farms Organic The autumn season is rolling in, a time when crisp humidity fills the Florida air and we can almost smell the pumpkins and squashes and other odorless vegetables growing bountifully on our farms. It is a time when crunchy apples fall from trees — presumably…

WTF Is It?!? Round 8

OK, this is by far the weirdest, messiest edible I’ve ever kept in my kitchen, a thing that performs a sort of vegetal strip tease over the course of a week or so, spilling greenish dragon scales all over counter top and floor. You eat the part that reveals itself,…

Dine Out Lauderdale Preview: Trina

Preview with a view. Trina, Cero, Galanga, and Jackson’s Steakhouse started their Dine Out Lauderdale Preview on September 14, offering advance tastes on their $35 three-course prix fixe menus. Full details are at Open Table; make sure to check before you go, since they’re mostly offering the Dine Out menu…

Russian Candy and a Shot of Vodka

A friend of mine brought me a bagful of Russian candy from Brighton Beach, and after tasting it I’ve decided I’m going to save it for the Halloween trick or treaters. I never have candy to give away on Halloween, and I find myself more often than not cowering in…

YOLO Restaurant & O Lounge to Open on Las Olas

Heads up comes by way of a press release, so let’s head in: Proprietors Tim Petrillo and Peter Boulukos (also the chef) chose a 6,300 square feet space on Las Olas Boulevard to house the new YOLO Restaurant & O Lounge. YOLO is expected to open September 30 and will…

Lobsters Walking!

Your next free meal is crawling your way. The Florida Spiny Lobster is walking, thanks to the recent hurricanes that passed through the Keys. Our Keys lobsters are taking a mass holiday and sauntering up the coast close to shore — they’re expected to reach Miami today and Palm Beach…

Manny’s Steaks Served with Humor

Manny’s Steaks serves steaks, steaks, and more steaks, each thicker than Sarah Palin’s brain. It offers seafood steaks, too, and lobsters larger than Lindsay Lohan. Then there’s shrimp cocktail, hash browns, and creamed spinach — we all know the classic steak-house playbook by now. We’re also familiar with the formula…

Empanadas By Hand

Lee Klein Juan Zavala Jr. was sitting with relatives in his native Argentina when someone brought up the age-old question: “What should we get for dinner?” The choice came down to pizza or empanadas, and the latter was chosen near unanimously. That’s when Juan, thinking of the 40 million Hispanics…

Slow Foods Exotic Fruit Brunch this Sunday

Be honest: Does this look like breakfast? This Sunday, September 21, 2008: If you’ve never eaten a Mamey (tastes like a sweet potato crossed with a papaya) or a Jackfruit (juicyfruit candy crossed with bananas) you’ll have a chance this Sunday to give it a whirl, courtesy of Fairchild Tropical…

Hotel Biba Toasts Flavor Palm Beach

[ Biba: Haunt of the Hotties We’re officially halfway through Flavor Palm Beach, the only thirty dollar three-course meal you’re likely to get in the foreseeable future. Have you been to Forte yet? Solu? Strip House? I stopped in to Forte last week for cocktails, and before I could say…

Gay Speed Dating at Java Boys

I have so much love to give. Serious serial monogamy There have always been things to love about Java Boys in Wilton Manors. Besides the best mocha in the world (seriously: everybody else skimps on the chocolate), Java Boys has pretty good pound cakes, comfy sofas, a friendly clientele, and…

Booze Hound – Scully’s Tavern

Elyse Wanshel I’ve always felt like Kendall is a Chinese finger cuff of a suburb. It isn’t particularly interesting (other than some dude who drives around with a weather vane and a toilet seat glued to his car), it’s swarmed with identical peach colored strip malls pumped full of Staples…

Oprah’s Vegan Chef at Sublime

Dude comes with a price tag. Deconstructed Press Release: Ft. Lauderdale—Fresh from his stint as Oprah Winfrey’s chef for her 21-Day Cleanse… um, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the point of a “cleanse” to stop eating for a while? Don’t you drink a lot of juice and warm…

A Feast Through Eastern Europe, Part 7: Budapest and Paris

Lee Klein We loved everything about M Restaurant (Kertész u. 48), including the goose leg gobbled in the photo above. We’d arrived into the city at dusk, showered, and headed out a bit weary after a very long ride in a van (from Skopje). We were going to eat at…

A Feast Through Eastern Europe, Part 6: Budapest

Lee Klein We were in the city for just four days, but that was long enough to pick up an obvious vibe: Budapest is happening. It is young. It is hip. It is, along with places such as Berlin and Barcelona, part of a new world order of cities worth…

A Feast Through Eastern Europe, Part 5: Lake Ohrid

Lee Klein On this stretch of the trip, in a tiny fishing village tucked into a pristine corner of Lake Ohrid (one of the oldest, deepest lakes in the world), we ate almost every meal at “home” — meaning prepared on a small two-burner electric oven outdoors, on a patio…

King of Cacao

After almost six years, thousands of meals, and enough accolades to cause any normal person’s head to swell larger than Ohio, there’s only one problem with Edgar Leal’s Cacao. You want to eat everything on the menu. Let’s see, classic Peruvian corvina ceviche or wild boar antichucho? Corn soufflé with…

A Feast Through Eastern Europe, Part 4: Skopje Restaurants

Lee Klein It was half-past midnight, and folks in the photo above were lining up for late-night street snacks. Actually, they pretty much queue up day and night at this bakery that has been operating for over one hundred years, and now is one of just a few Macedonian-owned businesses…

Sit On It and Spin: Brunch at Pier Top

You could be here. Brunch at Pier 66. The Pier Top lounge on the rotating top floor of the Pier 66 Hyatt Regency hotel closed down some time ago, and it was too damned bad. With its ever-changing view of the marina, the port, downtown, and the beach, there was…

A Feast Through Eastern Europe, Part 3

Friends in Skopje, Macedonia, and in nearby Dracevo, are like family to my wife and I; we’ve been here quite a few times over the years. So many people invite us to their homes for dinner that it becomes a rare occasion to eat in restaurants. We did dine at…