When Dubliners enter their local pub, the feeling is one of immediate comfort, like slipping into a pair of well-worn shoes. The spacious interior of the Playwright Irish Pub & Restaurant handsomely mimics the antique look that comes naturally to those ancient, tin-ceilinged, gas-lamp-adorned drinking establishments, but it’s still too…
Russia is not the best place to be right now, as we were reminded by the not-so-subtle sub metaphor for a nation sinking fast in an ocean of corruption and economic chaos. Still, I’d rather be there than in Colombia, that spot rife with right-wing paramilitaries, left-wing guerrillas, drug militia,…
Blame it on The Spitfire Grill. In that 1996 film, an ex-con persuades an aging restaurateur, whose eatery has been on the market for ten years, to run an essay contest. Entry fee: 100 dead presidents. Prize: the Spitfire Grill, a rustic diner in backwoods Maine. Four years later, thanks…
Seating prospects at the lunch spot we had just entered didn’t look good. I suggested we leave and eat somewhere else, though admittedly I was more put off by a sign on the window reading “Gourmet Sandwiches” than at having to wait for a table (I distrust any place that…
Marvin Woods, author of the recently released The New Low-Country Cooking, sounds mildly surprised when asked about his reception here in South Florida. “I’ve got nothing but positive writeups and warm welcomes from the people here,” he says. “My best book signing was in Pembroke Pines. I sold 55 books,…
If you’ve ever danced on a table at Mezzanotte, the Italian restaurant hailed for breathing new life into South Beach back in the late Eighties, consider it a treasured memory: The twelve-year-old Mezzanotte finally has closed up shop. But chair-jiggers shouldn’t despair. The new owner of the location is Tim…
Restaurateur Mark Soyka shocked just about everybody in the restaurant industry when he announced this past June that News Café, his inaugural eatery that helped revitalize Ocean Drive, would be moving from its location on Eighth Street and Ocean Drive. This fall the 400-seat News Café will be reinvented on…
Tom Tresh was a talented baseball player, but he was never able to live up to expectations that he could be the next Mickey Mantle. The same hopeful hype would haunt about as many other subsequent Yankees centerfield prospects as there are South Florida neighborhoods that have failed to become…
My most memorable dining experiences often have occurred outdoors, which doesn’t mean on the patio. There was that chardonnay and chilled oysters experience out in the Everglades one sunset; or the simple yet perfect taste of a sliced mango in a Puerto Rican rain forest following a light rain; or…
One of my editors recently wanted to celebrate a special occasion with his wife at a new, stylish restaurant. So he made a reservation at one of our celebrated chef’s outposts. But he was concerned about the noise level and the hustle and bustle. Perhaps, he asked me somewhat anxiously,…
My “Dish” column about why service is so bad in South Florida (“Shirt, Shoes, but No Service,” August 17) seems to have struck a nerve. Via e-mail I’ve received both complaints (think customers leaving restaurants with stains on their clothing) and compliments (try Basilico, and bring along those picky visitors)…
When I first moved to South Beach almost a decade ago, I was afraid to walk down Lincoln Road late at night. And by late I mean 10:00 p.m. Although the bohemian-style walking mall, with its cracked sidewalks and bizarre art galleries and fledgling cafés was full of character, it…
North Beach is hot. North Beach is happening. North Beach is the successor to South Beach. Since the late Eighties, when South Beach developers began to exploit the potential of the Art Deco district, the word on the street has been that North Beach, a section of Miami Beach that…
Restaurant service sucks in South Florida (see Opium review). It’s a given, almost part of the Miami mystique: Our restaurants are so hospitality-poor we’re darn near proud of it. At least some of us are — those who hate the tourists. Don’t like the way we treat you? Good. Don’t…
Looks as though the Denny’s at 19313 S. Dixie Hwy. in Miami lost something in lawyers’ fees but gained remuneration by way of reputation: A civil lawsuit filed last October by Ronald Flagler and Janet Jones alleging race discrimination has been dismissed by the U.S. District Court. The pair claimed…
The crowd that gathers at Opium is attractive and mostly dressed in black. Many talk on cell phones. Handsome bartenders and waiters also are clothed in black, while comely barmaids pretty much wear the same outfit that Gwen Verdon or Shirley MacLaine (take your pick) wore in My Sweet Charity…
Pulcinella’s Marketplace & Café is a large, bright, white gourmet marketplace, a “purveyor of fine foods,” as they put it. It also is a café, which, if you come in from the front as opposed to the side entrance, is what you’ll encounter first. The décor is casual: green marble…
Two women were seen at La Paloma last Saturday night. Both were so drunk they couldn’t utter a coherent sentence. Both clearly were in no condition to get behind a wheel, and both were headed for a doozy of a hangover the next morning. These two women, however, weren’t companions…
For the average food-oriented consumer, the Internet and Web-related technology have been a blessing for several years now. You can log on to read restaurant reviews, research recipes, order food, and even make reservations on countless sites: Food.com, Epicurious.com, Pheast.com, OpenTable.com, iSeatz.com, iDine.com, ireserve.com, Yougottaeat.com, ad nauseam. There’s so much…
He wasn’t a local but the South Florida food world will miss him all the same: William Garry, the editor in chief of Bon Appetít, died June 29 at age 56. The passage hasn’t yet been reported in the magazine; in fact the August issue features one of Garry’s tongue-in-cheek…
Alice Waters is the person most often credited with pioneering, in this nation, the notion of fine cuisine as fresh, high-quality, locally procured foods prepared as simply as possible. That’s just what she served at her Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, which opened April Fool’s Day 1980 and coincided with…
So how long does it really take a chef to open his own restaurant? According to fortysomething Pascal Oudin, who says he came to the United States from France when he was 24 years old to do just that, it takes two decades. And how much does it cost? “My…
