For Florida foodies, the South Beach Wine and Food Festival is the year’s monster event. But spring brings an entire season of food festivals — smaller, to be sure, but revelatory in their own locals-oriented way. For instance: At last month’s Miami Wine and Food Festival — a sort of…
The thing is, the more simple, the more difficult it is,” Italian cookbook author Marcella Hazan once said, in regards to preparing food. “When you do a dish and you do two things, and one of them is wrong….” She didn’t need to finish the sentence. Italian cooking is about…
Thunderstorms may have rocked much of Miami-Dade County last night, but the wet weather wasn’t enough to keep the winos from joining French-native Florent Blanchet in celebrating the two year anniversary of his W Wine Bistro . “Any excuse for a party,” grinned Blanchet between monster-size gulps of bubbles –…
Students from Johnson & Wales University’s College of Culinary Arts will commemorate the 95th anniversary of the last meal on the Titanic with a special dinner that will recreate the ten-course menu served in the first class saloon on the night of the tragic sinking. The dinner, scheduled for 7…
You have to admire Yankee ingenuity. Take some chewing gum, tissue paper, and a ball of twine, and pretty soon you’ve got a sleek aluminum sausage capable of flinging hundreds of drunken customers and surly flight attendants across the continent at 35,000 feet. Take a nitwit collection of wannabe pop…
Willie Mays, Barry Bonds, and Andre “the Hawk” Dawson are the only baseball players in major league history to hit more than 400 home runs and steal more than 300 bases. Mays waltzed into the Hall of Fame, and if steroids don’t get in the way, Bonds will, too. But…
Greener? Not so much After briefly closing its velvet-rope adorned doors to remodel, the Design District’s Grass Restaurant and Lounge is giving things another shot. To publicize the refurbished space and unveil chef Michael Jacobs’ new menu, promoters invited a bevy of media types and would-be hipsters to a complimentary…
www.gourmetcruelty.com Gimme a break Wolfgang Puck announced that he is removing foie gras, battery caged eggs, and crated veal and pork from all his menus, and adding vegetarian options throughout his restaurants worldwide. Puck’s continually expanding empire encompasses Spago, Postrio, Cut, Chinois, Grand Cafe, Gourmet Express, Lupo, American Grille, Bar…
The Dinner in Paradise series continues this Sunday, April 1, with the fifth in a series of six charity-driven, six-course farmers dinners served under the stars. Host/chef Michael Schwartz, of the just-opened Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink, welcomes what I think might be the best guest chefs of the year:…
Inside every food critic, it’s said, beats the trans fat-packed heart of a fast food junkie. Even serious foodies can consume only so much tomato confit before getting a yen for ketchup. This point was underscored just last month at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival’s first Burger Bash…
The Food Gang isn’t what it thinks it is. It thinks it is an informal gathering spot for gastronomists to enjoy simple, unpretentious meals at affordable prices. Yet witness the Maine lobster paella: a succulent tail and claw draped atop a pan-fried, puck-shaped disc of saffron rice studded with chorizo…
It is certainly good news that Miami-based Burger King announced this week that the company will begin buying eggs and pork from suppliers that don’t confine their animals in crates and pens. PETA has declared a victory, as has the Humane Society of the United States. According to the New…
The evening begins with a cocktail reception, at a fabulous home in Indian Creek, with ten or twelve of your favorite friends. After the requisite mingling with other guests, including Dr. Arthur “South Beach Diet” Agatston, you will pick a number from a hat. This number dictates which of the…
I want to slip French Kiss some tongue. I love this restaurant. The culinary ménage à trois of Marc-Antoine, Joanne Gimenez, and chef Keith Becton has created an absolutely ravishing little cafe in the nether regions of Coconut Grove, one that displays all the warmth and unpretentiousness of a neighborhood…
When Joe’s Stone Crab premiered on South Beach in 1913, it was the first classic American seafood house in the Miami area. Ninety-four years later, with the opening of the Oceanaire Seafood Room in Mary Brickell Village, we finally have our second. You are no doubt thinking that this can’t…
These figures were just released (only to Riptide) regarding the 2007 Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival: $2 MILLION (plus) — Record ticket revenue for this year’s festival. $1 MILLION — Amount raised to benefit the students of the Southern Wine & Spirits Beverage Management Center and Teaching…
The beverages are totally different: At Hofbräu Beerhall, nearly every table is topped with glasses or mugs filled with golden or amber-hued fluid. At Cafe Maurice, only slightly more delicate stemware is swirled with liquids tinted straw or dark maroon. There are plenty of other dissimilarities as well, so many…
When you consider the career path of eight-time world freediving champion Yasemin Dalkilic, it’s not surprising that she and her trainer/husband, Rudi Castineyra, chose ungentrified downtown Miami as the appropriate neighborhood for their very gentrified wine bar. The pair is used to taking big risks and winning. Often referred to…
Not a bad one in the bunch Local, organic, affordable, good. These adjectives rarely combine in Miami, despite our proximity to some of the most fertile farmland in the country. So rejoice, downtown office workers and anybody else who can find his way to Bayfront Park: An excellent farmers market…
Hot off the presses, a New Times exclusive: The Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival is set to announce that its 2008 honorees will be internationally renowned chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and the buoyant British chef Jamie Oliver. The former will be feted at the Tribute Dinner on February…
Chef Johnny Vinczencz made a name for himself during a star-making stint at the Hotel Astor from 1995 to 2000. He also made a nickname for himself, “the Caribbean Cowboy,” which he discarded after leaving town and riding off to other restaurants in Palm Beach (Sundy House) and Broward (Johnny…
Is there any animal more abused than the chicken? Most begin and live their brief existence in mammoth farm-factories under conditions so dire they make the black hole of Calcutta appear merely gray. Then it’s off to the poultry processing plants, Dante’s seventh circle of finger-lickin’-good hell, where they’re killed…
