Eating your way through the creations served in Miami’s restaurants is a lot like picking wild berries. Sometimes what you’re faced with are immature and not ready for consumption. Sometimes they’re plain rotten. Sometimes — Ouch! — they’re surrounded by thorns; just being near them hurts. But other times they’re…
Wine bars have quietly become big business in Miami. Among the better of our relatively recent arrivals are D’Vine District Restaurant and Wine Bar in the Design District, Vine Wine Shop on Biscayne Boulevard and 77th Street, and the cozy Xtreme Cafe in South Beach (which misleadingly sounds like a…
The plates placed before us each contained two thin, bloody red strips of duck magret draped over an ever-so-slightly sweet risotto, rife with cooked cubes of Granny Smith apple and teeny flecks of pancetta. “Pace yourselves,” I said to my dinner companions, for this was the first serve of a…
When in Rome, fourth-century Italian Saint Ambrose advised Saint Augustine, do as the Romans do. In terms of food, that would mean eating appetizers such as supplì al telefono (mozzarella-filled, deep-fried rice balls); entrées like abbacchio alla Romana (milk-fed suckling lamb sauced with garlic, rosemary, anchovies, and vinegar); hearty panzanella…
One of the things I like about Mexico is that the Eiffel Tower isn’t there. Nor is the Colosseum, Big Ben, or any other “must-see” attraction that might distract from a more immediate bonding with the country’s present-day culture — by which, of course, I mean indulging in the indigenous…
When you go to your typical local steak house, the beef isn’t the only thing that gets trimmed. Whether mammoth national chain or home-grown meat market, these places can bone out your wallet faster than an ambidextrous butcher with a head full of methamphetamine and hands full of razor-sharp blades…
“Ya can’t please everyone, so ya got to please yourself” — at least according to the lyrics of Rick Nelson’s 1972 song “Garden Party.” But the folks at Kafe Gol appear, for better or worse, to disagree. Although Gol’s goal may not be to please diners from absolutely every nation,…
Restaurants come and restaurants go. Some, like Prezzo Restaurant and Martini Bar, come, go, and come back again. It first opened in Loehmann’s Fashion Island in 1992, was rechristened Martini Bar and Grill a few years ago, and then in February, as if by magic — presto! — Prezzo reappeared…
Restaurants, like politicians, have to play to their bases. Two new Miami Beach dining venues — Sam’s Deli and Grill on 41st Street, and Clarke’s, an Irish-style pub located south of Fifth Street in SoBe — are doing just that, and both seem well suited to satisfying the distinctly different…
Is sushi the new sex? In the big, bad world out there — to which some refer as the real world — sex is the sizzle that sells the deodorant and hair gel and gas-sucking highway mastodons and watery, gruellike beer that has about as much taste and character as…
Miami is home to glitzy multimillion-dollar restaurants, a sea of sensational sushi spots, and more than its fair share of satisfying bistros, trattorias, and steak houses. Central and South American immigrants, as well as those from the neighboring islands, have blessed our area with a plethora of exemplary and inexpensive…
Sage on Fifth opened in South Beach at the intersection of Washington Avenue and Fifth Street in August 2004, two weeks before Hurricane Frances blustered across Florida. Although the restaurant withstood the winds and rain, it couldn’t endure customer indifference and was soon boarded up for good. Fratelli La Bufala…
Have you ever eaten at a restaurant where a new convert to healthy eating plunks an unadorned ear of corn on your plate, raving about how much more flavorful it is without the distraction of all that melted butter? Well, I have, and it’s not a place I want to…
Madiba has come to South Beach by way of South Africa, with a stopover at Fort Greene, Brooklyn — which is where Mark and Jenny Henegan, with long-time friend Serge Jules, opened their first Madiba in 1999. Their new establishment made its debut this past September in the neighborhood once…
Wilma was on the way when we walked into The Press Room, a newish eatery on the butt end of Lincoln Road. The sky was ominously gray and full of foreboding. The restaurant takes its name from the collage of antique presses on the wall of its brick-faced, back-of-the-room sports…
In his recent documentary about Bob Dylan, No Direction Home, director Martin Scorsese portrays the singer as a quietly zealous man more concerned with the impact of his music on those listening than any media adoration. Executive chef of The Biltmore Hotel, Philippe Ruiz, radiates a similarly silent intensity; he…
Northeast 167th Street may not be a walkable strip like New York’s Mott Street, but with more than a dozen Asian restaurants and grocery stores, it’s the closest thing Miami has to a Chinatown. Covering the window of PK Oriental Mart is bright red graffiti touting housemade Chinatown-style barbecue. Sure…
Miami doesn’t boast a cheese store in the mold of the grand Old World type, where wheels, loaves, and slabs are stacked high on marble countertops and an intense, swoon-inducing stink is pervasive. What it does have is a smattering of specialty markets whose selections are ample enough to keep…
One thing you have to say about Miami diners: We know our retro. We might be seduced by celebrity chefs who assemble their dishes with tweezers and sauce them with eyedroppers, or distracted by bling-laden rappers flashing their grills in this week’s latest hot spot, but when a restaurant begins…
No average diner would ever mistake the traditional dishes of Denmark for those of France, or confuse Japanese cuisine with Indian. Much more difficult, though, is differentiating between the fare of Latin American nations. Onion, pepper, garlic, and tomato sofritos, for instance, are ubiquitous throughout the region, and doesn’t every…
Most restaurateurs aim to provide what they’re certain we’ll enjoy. For instance, they know we like Italian, and within that genre, pasta is always a favorite. It seems simple enough, but Klaus Frisch was the first in the Gables to figure this out — in 1985 to be precise, when…
Americans consume more than one million animals every day, only a minuscule fraction of which is devoured at Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse and Wine Bar in Coral Gables. Still, if I were a cow, I’d be a little nervous all the same, for a mere glance around the grand 6700-square-foot restaurant…
