What I learned from attending the twentieth annual Food & Wine Magazine Classic at Aspen: Festivals can make for some terrific all-inclusive minivacations. Once you pay for your travel expenses, lodging, and tickets to the events, you’re pretty much guaranteed no additional costs, simply because you’ll be so well-sated by…
Restaurant reviewers and spies have a lot in common. We work covertly, report our findings, and get to attend the occasional cocktail party. True, the life of a spy is more important, exciting, and rewarding, but, on the other hand, we eat better. This past week I spied on the…
For one thing I’ve never sampled one, so I didn’t know what it was supposed to look or taste like; baking blind can be as much of a gamble as an untried amusement park ride is for the motion-sick. More important I didn’t exactly want to be too closely involved…
Here’s some advice for The Bachelor — and all those seeking to emulate him: Instead of pretending to be a millionaire, learn how to cook. The Ritz-Carlton in Coconut Grove is happy to assist. For $55 per person on Wednesday, February 5, dudes have the opportunity to learn the art…
At the start of a new year everyone makes resolutions, 99 percent of which involve losing weight. Who makes these resolutions? Skinny people, like Miami’s models. Curse them! Because who needs these resolutions? Miami’s restaurant reviewers. Not that I’m complaining. Getting paid for eating out at least once a week…
There are highs and lows in the restaurant-reviewing world — a low, for example, being the week I got food-poisoned twice at the same South Beach joint. A high was the day I discovered Raja’s. Because even though Miami has many Indian restaurants, the cuisine is almost invariably Northern Indian/Bengali…
Besides all the other benefits conferred — such as never having to serve as designated driver — the number-one advantage to being a car slob is that it could keep you alive. Take the case of Robert Ward. The West Virginia man was trapped in his vehicle, following a plunge…
When Michael Schwartz jumped ship from Nemo last summer, this town’s foodies practically choked on their sushi in shock. After all, as co-owner and executive chef, Schwartz helped make that establishment a modern-day dining landmark on the Beach, while also successfully steering nearby sisters Shoji Sushi and Big Pink. Local…
As my companions and I walked through the front door at Madame’s Restaurant, three things happened in quick succession. First, the rather stern older woman at the maitre d’s desk, pointedly noting that we’d arrived at 7:45 for a 7:30 reservation, chided us discreetly yet firmly for our lateness –…
A four-letter word has been uttered in my home that I never want to hear again: diet. “What if,” my husband began recently, “we both followed different diets — like I could do Atkins and you could do The Zone or something — and then you compared them? Isn’t that…
Enter the Dragon — and I do mean that literally. China Grill has debuted its private seating area, called the Dragon Room, featuring traditional Japanese sushi spiked with local influences. In other words, we’re talking about the Havana Roll, yellowtail snapper with rum, coconut, avocado, and tobiko. Or crispy salt-and-pepper…
Chicagoans overwork their hot dogs with relish, onions, tomatoes, peppers, pickles, mustard, and celery salt. New Yorkers are more circumspect in sticking to mustard and either sauerkraut or sautéed onions. Those in Salt Lake no doubt prefer their frankfurters with mayo, but we won’t go there. Ever. Point is, our…
The 1990s were a heady time for the culinary stars in this town, as the creative talents of New Worlders, Pacific Rimmers, Nuevo Latinos, Mango Gangers, et al., catapulted South Florida onto the nation’s culinary map. Champagne corks flew, flashbulbs popped, puffy personality pieces appeared, heralding the unique fusion of…
Curse Continental Airlines for not telling the truth. The day my kids and I were supposed to fly home after spending Thanksgiving with my folks in New Jersey, the first snowstorm of the season delivered eight inches. But despite the still-falling snow and radio reports that delays were running from…
According to popular opinion, the wild goose is a modern nuisance. The U.S. is the current migratory destination for about half of the world’s twenty species, the most common of which is the Canadian goose or “honker” (also a derogatory nickname for Canadians themselves). But as natural predators and human…
“This is why we moved to South Beach in the first place!” exclaimed my companion. It’s something we used to say to each other frequently when we came from New York City almost a decade ago. It almost always involved a “shirtsleeve experience,” like lunching in lushly planted tropical patios…
There are three key components to Christine’s Roti Shop: 1) Christine. As you enter the small shop you may see a woman busily rolling out balls of roti dough. This is Christine Gouveia, from British Guyana. She is perpetually amicable, always eager to chat, and judging from all the people…
When Tango Beef Café folded last spring it was surprising that the closure was even noticed. The parrillada had featured an unusually varied selection of grilled meats, but it’s not as though North Beach doesn’t have a glut of other good Argentine grills, especially when, about three months ago, Tango…
It took a face-to-face meeting with R. Michael Mondavi, chairman of Robert Mondavi, A Family of Wines, to confirm a suspicion I’ve always had about myself — no matter how large, new, or luxurious the cruise ship, I will get seasick. It’s true that I operate under Kavetchnik’s Law: If…
The bright, minimalist, metallic-cool interior of Café 71 stands out in this grim, brown Biscayne block like a comic strip plunked smack-dab in the middle of a James Joyce book. Motorists going by the corner of 71st Street look over at the contemporary cafe with disbelief in their eyes: What’s…
It was not for food that I first, about a year ago, went to Wah Shing Chinese restaurant. It was for karaoke, which had suddenly become hugely hip among my younger friends. I’d never done this singing-to-vocally-zapped-recordings thang myself, maybe because I spent a young adulthood playing in actual live…
To my knowledge, I only cried twice on the job in the years I was a waitress. The first time occurred when my closest girlfriend, a fellow server at a certain deli in my hometown, informed me that she was sleeping with my then-boyfriend, who also worked there as a…
