Sometimes people do the right things for the wrong reasons. For instance it would have been nice if the owners of the new SoBe restaurant/lounge 6 Degrees had kept the locals of the community in mind when drawing up plans for their venture. They didn’t. Instead, like so many others,…
When you play in bar bands, as I have my entire adult life, the possibility always exists that the club’s patrons will dislike your music so much they will throw tomatoes. But this is not an entirely unwelcome experience; at least it means we get something decent to eat for…
The phrase novelty act usually is used as a diss, implying that the sole thing the entertainment entity in question has going is a gimmick rather than talent or any other kind of solid quality. But this show-biz term actually has respectable, or at least neutral, origins, as I discovered…
Although living on the Beach is fun, it’s a relief to get away occasionally during high season, especially the part of season that coincides with South Florida’s annual two weeks of cold weather. When we shivering goose-down-bundled Beach dwellers are even further chilled to the bone by the sight of…
As you pass by Romeo’s Café on Coral Way, the place appears to be your average neighborhood Italian restaurant, the type with straw-wrapped bottles of chianti on red-and-white-checkered tablecloths. There is nothing about the façade, in other words, that even hints at the unique and extraordinary dining experience lurking behind…
Since I first moved to South Florida in 1993, Ocean Drive has had a reputation as a great place to party but not a great place to eat. Not that there haven’t been notable exceptions. One of the main reasons I originally decided to move from New York to South…
It took a grueling telephone conversation with Lynne Wacholder to find out the name and location of Confiteria Buenos Aires Bakery & Café — I’m not entirely certain she’s even told her husband Victor about it yet. Apparently Lynne didn’t want hordes of people discovering her favorite neighborhood spot for…
With its red walls, checkerboard terrazzo floor, fabric-wrapped columns, fiber-optic lighting, and caped, oversize chairs, the two-level KISS Steakhouse and Lounge looks like the Mad Hatter’s tea party on location in Vegas. Which is an appropriate design for the late-night club that evolves at about 11:00 each night, when the…
Nothing made me realize more dramatically just how different living and eating in Miami was going to be than a conversation I had with a new Cuban-American friend shortly after I moved here; we were chatting about the main reason she could never live anywhere else in the United States…
Dining establishments are composed of innumerable components: service, ambiance, soups, entrées, wines, and so on. Certain restaurants end up being exactly the sum of their parts — some more so, others less. Generally speaking, though, if you are pleased with the individual aspects, you’ll most likely enjoy the whole experience…
Some people equate the Yucatán with Cancún or Cozumel, with lying on quiet white-sand beaches by day, guzzling margaritas in boisterous clubs at night. Mention the Yucatán to me, and all I think of is the town of Ticul (pronounced “tee-cool”), home of Gloria Del Socorro’s pollo pibil. Well all…
To judge by sheer number of outlets, sushi has long been South Beach’s favorite food (and I do mean outlets — one day on the beach, years ago, I encountered a guy selling maki rolls from a Jet Ski). And SoBe’s sushi has basically been darned good, too. But until…
It wasn’t long after chefs Jan Jorgensen and Soren Bredahl (from long-established Two Chefs restaurant) took over Scotty’s gourmet market a year ago August that they realized they had a problem: The addition of a top-end butcher operation was producing a lot of meat scraps. Fancy prime scraps to be…
The Incan word tambo refers to small inns that once populated the mountainous terrain of pre-Columbian Peru. Tambo, the new Japanese-Peruvian restaurant in Miami Beach, resembles neither a small inn nor anything you’d ever stumble across in mountainous terrain. In fact with its mosaic tile floor, sand-color walls, white tablecloths,…
Of the nine countries normally referred to as Southeast Asia (Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Laos, Indonesia, and, stretching it a bit geographically but not culinarily, the Philippines), the cuisines of the first two are by far the most well-known over here. But despite far more American contact with…
There’s been a lot of talk lately about airline security, but precious little about being able to secure a good airport meal while waiting through the delays that these defensive concerns necessitate. I wouldn’t mind having to bide my time at the Houston airport for an extra hour or two…
With a name like Jacky Chan’s Superbowl, what diners would expect is ramen. And in fact Jacky turns out quite a super bowl of this soup; unlike the cheap, packaged, supermarket ramens that got most of us through our impoverished student days, the broth tastes like real stock instead of…
A fresh piece of fish doesn’t require a lot of dressing up to be alluring. Salt, pepper, drizzle of olive oil, sprinkle of lemon juice, and smattering of chopped herbs are more than enough. For some people. Others like their seafood adorned with additional flavors and textures and sauces and…
Since September 11 diners have been holing up at home instead of going out to eat. Not that this survivalist homing instinct has necessarily extended to doing our own home cooking. While formerly hot-ticket restaurants may be relatively empty, many shops selling ready-made gourmet food have found a new market…
On the first day, Mark Soyka declared: “I am opening News Café on Ocean Drive, and a thriving beachside boulevard shall spring up around it.” And that came to pass. Soyka next declared: “I am opening Van Dyke Café on Lincoln Road, and a thriving pedestrian mall shall spring up…
South Florida tourist agencies are gauging where the local economy stands by reading lines on comparative graphs. I got to thinking that a more accurate way to assess the matter would be by studying a real line — like the one that forms at Joe’s Stone Crab. Or used to…
Its proper name may be the 1909 Café but everybody calls it the 1909 Sandwich Shop, for good reason — several, actually. One is that “café” is an awfully optimistic description for a totally unatmospheric lunch-counter space in a downscale minimall, with only four or five tiny tables lining one…
