Restaurants

The problem with Christmas, it has always seemed to me, is that once it’s over people seem compelled to take down the decorations. Is it some leftover Puritan influence or what? Here we have all these festive, twinkling, low-wattage lights that make our abodes feel like there’s a party going…

In an old New Yorker cartoon, two men stand in front of a luncheonette with these words emblazoned upon the window: “COOKED FOOD.” One man turns to the other and says, “It was the first theme restaurant.” Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook: Strategies, Recipes, and Techniques of Classic Bistro Cooking,…

So I suppose I’ll see you at the South Beach Wine and Food Festival’s “Tribute Brunch” this Sunday at the Loews Hotel. It’ll be great — Francis Ford Coppola in the flesh to accept recognition for his esteemed Niebaum-Coppola Estate Winery, and we, sampling those luscious wines while enjoying Tuscan…

Few restaurants are more associated with their chef/owner than Crystal Café was with Klime Kovaceski. The Macedonian-born charmer somehow managed to work the kitchen and dining room simultaneously — all night, every night, six days a week. For ten years. On Mondays, when Crystal was closed, he’d come in and…

It was literally only days after Lime Fresh opened last spring that people began asking me what I knew about it. This was surprising for a number of reasons, not the least of which was its location in one of Miami Beach’s jinx spots. Several quite respectable little eateries (including…

For lovers of authentic Southeast Asian cooking, discovering that Vatcharin Bhumichtir is chef at a neighborhood Thai restaurant in North Beach is akin to learning that Emeril Lagasse just opened a gumbo shack in Overtown. It’s not the caliber of the food at relatively humble places that’s in question. It’s…

When Andre’s Steakhouse on Marco Island changed its name to Tara Steak & Lobster House last year, it was a strategic gesture in advance of a planned expansion to at least four other outlets in South Florida. The basic steak-house formula is simple enough to replicate, which is probably why…

The word tinello, according to Tinello Cucina Italiana’s menu, translates as a “cozy dining room where friends and family get together.” There might be some positive adjectives we can summon for this place, but “cozy” isn’t one of them. The sparsely furnished, 70-seat restaurant sprawls in rather stark fashion across…

For people born toward the end of Twentieth Century, who are familiar with Lebanon mainly through horrific photographs of wartime Beirut’s bombed-out rubble, it’s difficult to imagine that not so much earlier (during a twenty-year French occupation between World War I and World War II) Beirut was known as “the…

Cocopelli Café is a curious name for a French bistro, not much better than calling your brasserie Vinnie’s Diner. An outdoor deck leading to the café is a concrete mess, with a few tables and some scraggly shrubs surrounding the periphery. The awning looks to be about twenty years old,…

Most restaurant reviews take no more than a couple of weeks to complete, even here at New Times, where the (responsible) policy is for critics to make at least two visits before making a judgment. This review has been in the works since last spring, about seven weeks after Harrison’s…

A deluge of rain cascaded over our car as we drove toward the Spanish restaurant Costa Mar. We were approaching Rascal House, which tempted me to pull over, grab some shelter and corned-beef sandwiches, and try Costa Mar another night. But we were just blocks away, and so continued past…

Pho! Phabulous pho! Phinally! Okay, apologies for being cute, but true phans of pho (pronounced like the French feu) will understand. Mediocre versions of this addictive Vietnamese beef-noodle concoction are so much the rule here in the Americas that when you come upon a worthy pho it seems to call…

Concerning culinary schools, I’ve been on both sides of the lectern. The moment I remember most vividly as a student occurred at the Culinary Institute of America, when my teacher picked up a bowl of hollandaise sauce I had just finished making and hurled it against the kitchen wall. My…

Suggesting as it does that the place is a one-and-only sort of joint run by a guy named Joe, the name “Joey’s Only Seafood Restaurant” is a little questionable for a chain eatery. And Joey’s Only is indeed a chain. Unlike McD’s, however, Joey’s is a Canadian chain, and so…

There are strong similarities in many dishes originating in Latin America and the Caribbean, but there are also differences, however subtle. It is a source of frustration for people who like to taste-test food analytically that so many Miami ethnic eateries supposedly specializing in the food of one country also…

For those who love to dine out, strolling along Giralda Avenue in Coral Gables is like being a kid again and traipsing through the aisles of a candy store — a global one at that, with alluringly packaged delights from Spain (La Dorada), Italy (La Gastronomia), Vietnam (Miss Saigon), and…

As we entered Chef Curtis’s Village Café in downtown Miami Shores, inattentiveness manifested itself immediately in terminal yellow roses on the tabletops, barely clinging to life in chintzy vases. A coffee-shop counter runs in an L-shape across one long and one short wall in this rather charmless dining room, stainless-steel…

It’s traditional to eat certain foods at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve to ensure good luck in the coming year. This lucky food varies from country to country. Cubans eat twelve grapes. In Germany, Poland, and Scandinavia the first bite is supposed to be herring. For those…

Caramelo Restaurant has beautiful plateware: elongated rectangles of red and clear glass, white teardrops and triangles, bowls that look like miniature Morris Lapidus sculptures. Weighty silverware sparkles atop meticulously crisp white linens, as does impeccably clean glassware. The two main dining rooms in the 200-seat Gables establishment are gorgeous too,…

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring — except the delivery guy from the Chinese restaurant. Each country has its own age-old Xmas Eve culinary customs. In Italy it’s a multicourse seafood feast for the extended family. In France, a reveillon supper…

Texas and Brazil are both sizable, sun-drenched territories inhabited by cattle, cowboys, and proud, beef-eating people with hearty appetites. Makes sense, then, that the Texas de Brazil Churrascaria chain would post its first restaurant in the Lone Star state. That was in 1998; there are now seven such Brazilian steak…