If you’re looking for the latest issue of South Florida Gourmet, you might have to look harder, and it’s not because your contact lenses need updating. Editor/publisher Simone Diament has temporarily halted production. She says it’s not about economics or advertising but indirectly cites the World Trade Center attacks. Her…
Since September 11 diners have been holing up at home instead of going out to eat. Not that this survivalist homing instinct has necessarily extended to doing our own home cooking. While formerly hot-ticket restaurants may be relatively empty, many shops selling ready-made gourmet food have found a new market…
On the first day, Mark Soyka declared: “I am opening News Café on Ocean Drive, and a thriving beachside boulevard shall spring up around it.” And that came to pass. Soyka next declared: “I am opening Van Dyke Café on Lincoln Road, and a thriving pedestrian mall shall spring up…
Wearing nothing but a thong, a young woman lay on a table in a seductive pose amid a drift of red rose petals. The open bar was jammed with customers. An extensive buffet offered everything from corn dogs to caviar. So where were we? No, not Miami Gold. Not Porky’s…
South Florida tourist agencies are gauging where the local economy stands by reading lines on comparative graphs. I got to thinking that a more accurate way to assess the matter would be by studying a real line — like the one that forms at Joe’s Stone Crab. Or used to…
Its proper name may be the 1909 Café but everybody calls it the 1909 Sandwich Shop, for good reason — several, actually. One is that “café” is an awfully optimistic description for a totally unatmospheric lunch-counter space in a downscale minimall, with only four or five tiny tables lining one…
So it’s been just about two months since the terror attacks, and I’ve been doing my thing, eating and drinking and chatting up the food folks. And after hearing what the local restaurateurs and chefs have to say — at least until the wine impaired my listening skills — I’ve…
The sign on the door of the little storefront window reads, “A Couple of Basketcases.” That’s the name of Caron Coles’s gift-basket company on 151st Street in North Miami that shares space and uses the specialty food products of her larger enterprise, Foodalicious, to fill those baskets. Upon entering the…
From the Ocean Drive sidewalk, the Tides Hotel looks the way it always does: stately, sedate, reserved. Inside the lobby activities also progress in the usual way. A guest or two checks in. Some folks eat dinner. A few people sip martinis at the bar. The atmosphere is quiet and…
Billboard: Live or Dead. The reaction to my announcement last week that corporate chef Ephraim Kadish had been let go from Breez was intensely unanimous: Fellow chefs are up in arms. At least when their arms aren’t busy chopping onions, apparently. But a few insiders are crying strictly crocodile tears…
If Nobuyuki Matsuhisa’s name is less known nationally than Wolfgang Puck’s, it is only because the latter is easier to spell. And also because Austrian-born/French-trained Puck’s rep-building restaurant Spago had already established itself as the spot for rich-and-famous Angelinos years before Japanese-born-and-trained Matsuhisa arrived in la-la land, after a culinary…
When we heard the first explosion through an open bedroom window, my wife and I thought it might be thunder. This occurred the day of our arrival. Soon afterward military helicopters buzzed precariously low overhead, and every now and then a jet fighter would crack the silence of the city…
“Your restaurant! Your war!” wrote Troy Brackett, publisher of Restaurantnews.com, in an impassioned restaurateur call to arms following the September 11 attacks. “During these uncertain times, it is imperative that we understand where we are, what we are up against and what we must do…. Commit yourselves NOW to noble…
All over New Jersey this time of year, people brave parking-lot-type traffic jams to drive west to the Poconos to see the fall foliage. This is true even of those who live in tree-studded “garden” suburbs like Montclair, where there are plenty of leaves of all colors right at home…
Home Depot and the Latin-flavored bakery chain Don Pan are inextricably linked in my mind, and not just because I am an unabashed fan of both places. Whenever I pull into the Depot parking lot, I salivate with Pavlovian anticipation, knowing from habit that after stocking up on house supplies…
Would you compare Norman’s to Piola Pizza? Well, neither would I. Each is great at what it is. In fact the only fair way to judge restaurants is not by one scale but by trying to evaluate how well any given restaurant succeeds according to its own individual definition, which…
On May 29, 1913, as a string orchestra performed in the restaurant of the Savoy hotel in London, two diners rose from their chairs and began dancing. As others followed suit, tables were pushed aside to clear space, and social tradition was overturned. Previous to this night, dining and dancing…
Steve Cuozzo, restaurant critic for the New York Post, recently published his view on how to get back to the business of fine dining during these times of terror: “The mayor and the president urge us to get on with life. I’m ready to take the plunge. You come, too…
There’s been much mention in recent weeks, by food writers, of comfort food. What there hasn’t been much of is scientific evidence that any such thing as edible anti-stress substances exist; even the New York Times could only come up with a few distinguished doctors pontificating that many people find…
Miami’s Mexican restaurants are, for the most part, utterly predictable: margarita, chips, salsa, burrito-enchilada-fajitas, and the bill, por favor. Usually the only question is whether they’ll make you suffer through a mariachi band. I wasn’t expecting much different from Javier’s Cantina Mexicana and was perhaps even less encouraged than usual…
I admit I was one of the doubters — no surprise there — when I first heard that celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse had been cast as the lead in a television sitcom that would debut this fall. My concern didn’t spring from the proposed plot (a gentle sendup of Lagasse’s…
It was mere weeks, not the usual months or years, after becoming Wish’s executive chef in 1999 that Andrea Curto began garnering national awards and great reviews as the hottest food thing in South Florida since Scotch bonnet peppers. And the very first national rave, a pick of Wish in…
