While sitting at a table draped in a blue and white checkerboard cloth, in the Jerusalem Market & Deli (which is tucked into the same North Miami strip mall addendum as the Mexican restaurant Paquito’s), I came up with a “Road Map for Better Mideast Food.” What makes me so…
The street scene in Gili’s neighborhood may be super glam when the new Performing Arts Center a few blocks east is up and running someday, probably in our lifetime. It’s already somewhat hip during nightlife hours, with Club Space and I/O drawing crowds, and if rumors that crobar or Automatic…
Some may say it’s only sixteen words, but exaggeration, deception, and dishonesty are just plain wrong regardless of how few syllables are used. What’s that? Oh, no no no — this has nothing to do with Bush’s State of the Union address. I’m speaking about the menu at Pescado, a…
There are few desserts easier to prepare than key lime pie, which necessitates only the pouring of egg yolks, key lime juice, and sweetened, condensed milk into a graham cracker crust that’s really just crumbs mixed with melted butter. You don’t even have to bake the darn thing, although nowadays…
Of all the benefits Spanish conqueror Francisco Pizarro imagined might result from his midsixteenth-century destruction of Peru’s great Inca empire, a culinary revolution producing what many chefs consider the most sophisticated cuisine of any South/Central American nation probably was not foremost in the sword-swinger’s mind. Yet the cross-cultural criollo race,…
Citronelle is the latest of a number of new restaurants cropping up along the corroded corridor of upper Biscayne Boulevard. Situated in a corner location, its large plate-glass windows look out upon a mostly infelicitous street scene. Peering inward: a modern, minimally decorated 40-seat room with sleek, dark wood tables,…
When Biscayne Bar-B-Q opened last winter in the same building as the Cactus gay bar — with, according to its ads, an outdoor poolside cookout on Saturday nights till 2:00 a.m. — I was pretty intrigued, because friends had been telling me for the whole ten years I’ve lived in…
According to a note on the menu of Mapalé Colombian Grille, the folk dance for which the restaurant is named, which was originally brought to the north coastal city of Cartagena;a by African slaves from New Guinea, is considered Colombia’s most erotic dance. The one time I saw el mapalé…
Einstein Bros bagels are round, chewy breads with holes in the center, and tasty in tandem with sandwich fillings, but have little in common with true bagels. Mostly they lack the proper color and texture — bagel crusts should have more golden brown crunch to them than these pale softies…
It doesn’t intrigue me that much when people report excitedly on new Mexican restaurant finds that have great red or green salsa. Sure I love the stuff, but great Mexican tomato/tomatillo salsas don’t depend on the kind of precision, balance, timing, and educated know-how that a great French sauce does;…
The Park Central Hotel on Ocean Drive used to have a cool Deco lobby replete with pool table. Now, as a dining room for Quinn’s, it is filled with linen-covered tables that extend onto a comfortable outdoor patio and up the crowded street. Alfresco dining on this pedestrian thoroughfare always…
If you enter a restaurant in China and ask for “egg foo yung,” a puzzled look will most assuredly cross your waiter’s face. The term is meaningless in that country, the dish nonexistent, yet it’s long been a popular staple in Chinese-American eateries. At Sang’s Chinese Restaurant in North Miami…
On a recent evening at Pan-Asian restaurant Soco, all of the half-dozen nightly specials were Italian except for one appetizer. Which was Spanish. At the bottom of the regular menu — which features dishes like a Thai fish hot pot, a Chinese Peking duck spring roll, and a Japanese sushi…
The upside to our modern-day obsession with food is the increase in availability of all things culinary, from greenmarkets to green-apple martinis to green restaurateurs. The downside is that it is an obsession, and obsessions nearly always turn ugly. We are already dealing with consequences such as rampant obesity, the…
On the Website where I first found Le Petit Bistro, it sounded like a terrific concept. Categorized as French, the eatery touted itself as combining “the convenience of quick service with the tastes and selections found in an upscale bistro.” Since I subsequently noticed two other Miami-Dade Le Petit Bistros…
Tap Tap, South Beach’s only Haitian restaurant, has exhibited precipitous ups and downs since opening on Fifth Street nine years ago. What started out as a fun, funky, crowded joint with enchanting island fare turned into a not-so-happening joint with not-so-enchanting fare. Then the place enjoyed an upward tick, followed…
Upon hearing the name of Miami Beach’s new upscale Chinese restaurant, Pao, my Food TV-fan brother, who is professionally in sales, immediately attributed it to South Beach celebrity-identified public relations shrewdness. “POW!” he marveled approvingly. “So people think of Emeril’s ‘BAM!’ Clevvvvv-er! Commercial.” The bad news, for other sales-oriented folk,…
I recently poked gentle fun at Granny Feelgood’s for its pseudo-approach toward health food, so I guess you could file my experiences at Food Without Fire under “Better watch what you ask for because you just might get it.” There is nothing phony about this “gourmet raw market & deli”…
In terms of romantic ambiance, the location of this Italian-American eatery would initially seem best described as convenient; it’s in the supremely low-rent Redbird Mall, and except for some very cute 3-D paintings of Italian street scenes (similar to the Scull sisters’ playful old Havana constructions), the décor is basic…
It was a full decade ago that a few Argentine culinary pioneers like Prima Pasta’s Gerardo Cea began transforming Miami Beach’s rundown (often dangerously druggy, at best boring) eastern 71st Street area into a haven for lovers of Argentina’s Italian-influenced fun food in a festival atmosphere. Still the neighborhood didn’t…
There were crullers and beignets aplenty in New England circa 1803, but Elizabeth Gregory, of Portland, Maine, added nutmeg, cinnamon, and lemon rind to her batter and placed a nut in the center of each one. She called these “doughnuts.” Her aim was to create a pastry that her son,…
The post-9/11 climate, from SARS to orange alerts to worrisome economic conditions, has led to a dining trend toward affordable neighborhood restaurants that offer simply designed, well-prepared foods served with a friendly face — upscaled Happy Meals for nervous adults, if you will. Tim Zagat goes so far as to…
