I’d like to offer a big warm welcome to all you frigid foodies flying in from afar for the second annual South Beach Wine & Food Festival this weekend, and at the same time ask that you please remove your galoshes at the door. Congratulations to those who’ve managed to…
It’s tough giving birth to two babies at the same time, especially when they’re not twins. Just ask Andrea Curto-Randazzo and Frank Randazzo, who have been in precisely that uncomfortable position for the past eighteen months or so. The former executive chefs of Wish and the Gaucho Room, respectively, became…
“Spin? There’s no spin. Things were not working out and it was a mutual, agreed-upon departure.” That’s the answer I got from China Grill Management reps when I asked about the replacement of Blue Door chef Elizabeth Barlow with chef Damon Gordon, who opened Saint Martins Lane in London for…
I was sipping a glass of Australian Shiraz at Vin Amante, a new wine bar on Española Way, marveling at just how many crummy dining establishments could be crammed into one short stretch of this quaintly sweet street. On the night of our visit Vin Amante’s tiny dining room contained…
Early one morning several years ago, speed-reading through the e-mail that had accumulated overnight, I found a long letter that appeared to be from a friend. It started like a continued conversation among people who knew each other well enough to totally dispense with formalities: “Here’s a story.” Though I…
Many moons ago (about 98, actually), I pulled a culinary prank for April Fool’s Day: I made up a restaurant called Tastes Like Chicken and wrote a review on it. In the text I tried to place as many weird and downright disgusting items as I could imagine — I…
It’s that time of year when the annual horde of houseguests descends from the north yet again, demanding to be schlepped out to the Everglades yet again. What they claim they want is to experience our region’s great natural wonders. What they really want is one of our region’s great…
So what exactly did the “First Annual Cheeca Lodge & Spa Food & Wine Festival February 2003,” held over the course of three evenings in the infamously laissez-faire Florida Keys community and attended by chefs from other resorts and spas around the country, offer the consumer? Aside from a wordy…
In 1991 Hectór Rolotti opened a modest little café in New York City called Novecento Soho. A few years later he instituted a more extensive bistro menu there, and since that time has added four more Novecentos in Argentina and Uruguay. Two months ago the sixth branch premiered on Alton…
To think of restaurant reviewing as an Xtreme Sport may at first seem overly dramatic to readers who are more accustomed to thinking of the genre in terms of, say, rock climbing without ropes, or racing down ice-coated mountains in unprotected vehicles that have no brakes and are the size…
Just when we think it’s gone and done it — little Miami has finally grown up — we get whacked in the baby teeth by yet another example of just how unsophisticated and clueless we really are. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been rallying for this town since I moved…
Most-asked question of the past two weeks: Why did Michael Schwartz leave the executive chef position at Atlantic in the Beach House Bal Harbour only four months into the job? Easiest answer: Personality conflict. “We just weren’t a match,” Schwartz says. “I went into it thinking about the future opportunities…
As the original supervising architect of Coral Gables, Phineas Paist established a board of review whose approval was required for any new construction or remodeling. That board is still in place today, but somehow The Village of Merrick Park shopping complex slipped past Paist’s precept, and sprawls luxuriously across quite…
It takes more than some gallons of blue paint and some gallons of white to make a Greek restaurant look authentic; you also need murals on the walls, preferably of white sun-bleached domes against blue ocean waters. A little of that tinkly Greek music doesn’t hurt either. Ouzo’s Greek Taverna…
After a weekend afternoon in the park with the family, there is nothing like ice cream. So it’s just as well that Tasti D-Lite Café isn’t open on weekends, because Tasti D-Lite “ice cream” is nothing like ice cream. Unlike its competitors in the field of low-fat desserts that attempt…
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…
