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…
Steve Martorano, it’s fair to say, is not a patient man. If you call him during the day, the chef-owner of Café Martorano in Fort Lauderdale won’t even answer the phone, since he doesn’t take reservations. If by some miracle he does pick up, he’ll probably be curt, limiting your…
Diners, it appears, have too many choices these days. First we have to figure out what kind of cuisine we want. Then we have to decide where to get it. Once there we have to weigh options on just about every aspect of dining, from ordering wine to translating vegetable…
Suppose you’ve got a foursome from out of town here on a visit, and you’re taking them on the obligatory stroll of Lincoln Road. It is getting near lunchtime, so you’re at the right spot — there are approximately 800 restaurants to choose from, or so it would seem from…
Of all the American writers living in Paris during the 1920s, Ernest Hemingway was one of the few who had to work for a living rather than living on family wealth. This made him a genuine starving artist, hence the source of many of the famous stories of the period…
If the adage “you are what you eat” were true, the Argentine language would consist of just one word: moo. Cambalache, a new Argentine restaurant in Sunny Isles, features, as all Argentine restaurants seem to, the parillada, whose dual translation can imply “grill” as well as “many grilled meats, some…
When chef Fabio Rolandi first arrived in Coral Gables from northern Italy in 1989, Italian food still basically meant mushy spaghetti with meatballs, and similar stuff never seen in Italy. In Northern Italian restaurants, mushy rice was substituted for the mushy spaghetti. Rolandi’s Casa Rolandi restaurant reputedly introduced South Floridians…
Note to self: Stop attending charity food functions. The mortification factor is getting way out of control. For instance I’m awfully tired of being looked at funny when I give my name at the registration table. I know my last name’s a tiny bit of a doozy, so I make…
