Amazing what you can learn about your own town just by leaving it. For instance I doubt I would have known that the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau has both a marketing partnership with American Express and a serious promo in the works: Miami Spice Restaurant Month. During August,…
In the interest of full, name-dropping disclosure, I suppose it’s time I made a confession: Henri Krug is my closest companion. That’s right, the venerable head of the House of Krug (established 1843), the fifth-generation winemaker whose motto is “More than just good champagne, Krug is a lifestyle,” is my…
•Of food and the law: Olive’s top pit boss Todd English, who cooked for the Tribute Dinner at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, has been sued by James Cafarelli, a business partner in the Olive Group Corp. Cafarelli claims English mismanaged funds intended for rent on their restaurants,…
The birthday dinner’s entrée had been prepared especially at the request of the honoree, a tri-coastal sophisticate who divided his time among Toronto, Miami, and the French Riviera. But all six guests plus the host qualified as educated and experienced international eaters, vera cucina italiana on top of most everyone’s…
Most workers, regardless of what trade they ply, will accumulate some “tricks of the trade,” the sort of insider shortcuts that only savvy veterans are privy to. One of my favorites in the restaurant-reviewing biz is “the hard-boiled egg trick.” Here’s how it works: Choose a restaurant, like, say, Café…
Located in the St. Moritz tower of the Loews Hotel, the elegant, slightly ostentatious 146-seat Gaucho Room wears its handsome cowpoke décor in a comfortable, cocky, quirkily romantic manner — sort of like John Travolta in Urban Cowboy. Western touches such as rawhide-and-rope table lamps, black-and-white photos of gauchos, a…
When the kosher Original Steakhouse opened this winter in my mid-Beach neighborhood, I was thrilled even though I’m not Jewish — because on 41st Street, nothing ever opens that is not another drugstore or bank. At least almost nothing opens that stays open; the steak house’s casually chic-looking space, for…
We’re always looking for the ideal restaurants to take our loved ones — naturally we want them to be impressed, feel cherished, and compliment our good taste. But what if we have to take someone we dislike out to dinner? Say, unwanted house guests? Meddling in-laws? Fussy colleagues? Where should…
Wood-burning ovens have been around for at least 6000 years, though their astonishing trendiness today could well fool diners into thinking the charismatic crowd-pleasers had come into being around roughly the same time as hip-hop. In Europe these ovens were communal, most often captained by the town’s bakers but shared…
The waiter spilled an entire glass of ice water onto the lap of one of my guests and failed to apologize — or even provide a napkin so she could mop up. Another server, attempting to change the soaking wet tablecloth, sent another glass crashing to the floor. The wild…
•Kenny Rogers is indeed correct: You gotta know when to fold ’em. Jeffrey Chodorow and his China Grill Management team (which again includes director of business development and guest relations George Slover, who had decamped for Touch and Kiss about a year ago) decided not to gamble any longer on…
Yup, it happened again: Miami was compared to New York unfavorably. This time, the comment was from a colleague’s wife, who noted while we were eating sushi at the newly revamped Doraku on Lincoln Road that New York had a much better weekend breakfast/brunch scene than Miami. Normally I’d argue…
At the end of a Coconut Grove street that boasts alfresco Indian and Italian dining, a giant log cabin-styled sports bar, and a Spanish restaurant lavishly designed to replicate the town of La Mancha, Red Lantern stands downtroddenly apart. The French-doored storefront is blockaded by banquettes on the inside, and…
South Beach’s reputedly favorite food may be sushi, and there are ample places to prove it, but let’s face it: Everyone’s real fave food is dessert — not the strong point in standard sushi bars. How many times could any discerning diner be satisfied by a one-trick pony like ice…
“Chick” as a slang word for “female-type person” has always annoyed me, for a reason that anyone else who’s ever lived on a working farm will instantly know — namely that the average chicken has the mental acuity of, roughly, Styrofoam. The corresponding term for “male-type-person,” “cat,” refers to an…
I ran into Ernie, an old acquaintance of mine, when he was recently down in Miami on some business. It was his pasty complexion and rotund figure that back in college days earned him the nickname “Dough Boy”; I hadn’t seen him in many years. Thanks to a daily gym…
Baja Fresh’s menu describes it as “next to Starbucks.” It is not. It is next to my dentist. Who does not believe in pain. Whose dental technicians therefore provide laughing gas even for routine cleanings. Whose dental technicians, I therefore figured, must’ve been testing the tank themselves when they began…
I have been told it takes awhile for contests to ripen into widely publicized, well-respected, duly recognized affairs — believe it or not, the first World Series wasn’t even televised! So I am neither disappointed nor surprised that the topic around South Florida’s water coolers this week hasn’t centered on…
Have you heard of the newest dance craze taking Miami’s most popular restaurant/lounges like a riptide? It’s called the South Beach Shuffle. Oops, silly me. Of course you don’t know about this hot trend yet, only those of us in the know know. But I never could keep a secret,…
•Blue Door’s looking pretty golden: The Delano hotel restaurant will soon be debuting a little sister in New York at the Royalton, where Blue Door will replace the current 44. Indeed 44 is already serving the Baby Blue prix-fixe menu, so change is not only imminent, it’s immediate, and The…
About halfway through my first visit to Coconut Grove’s Chart House, one of my dining buddies, a native Floridian, confessed that he and his family had tried to put the place out of business when it first opened in the early 1980s. Their gripe was not the food, which, he…
When we think of crêpes we think of France — the tantimolles of Champagne, the landimolles of Picardy, the chialades of Argonne, the sanciaux of Limousin and Berry. Well, all right, maybe we don’t think of that, but it is true that all of the really interesting crêpe traditions are…
