It’s become cliché to describe a Latin restaurant in Miami as “reminiscent of an old-time Havana supper club,” but that is in fact the case at Samba Room in the recently renovated Bancroft Hotel on South Beach. Not too ritzy a club, mind you, the stylishly spare décor defined by…
Hans Viertz has gone from being corporate head chef of Club Med, a job that entailed overseeing 31.2 million meals per year, to proprietor of Estate Wines & Gourmet Foods, whose “Euro table” lunch service features a butcher-block table with communal seating for twelve, plus five additional stools at a…
The House Restaurant recently opened in a renovated 1930s residence, giving it an automatic built-in appeal — after all, one of the best things you can say about a dining establishment is that it makes you feel at home. The welcoming attitude of the staff here reinforces homeyness, although this…
Cautiously optimistic” is how I would have described my reaction, if anyone bothered to ask, after finding out that Suzanne’s Market in South Beach had been replaced by Neam’s Gourmet. Suzanne’s had been in my neighborhood for quite a few years, so I can attest that as an “upscale” food…
Dennis Max’s latest venture, Max’s Place, is now open in Bal Harbour Shops, in the space where Petrossian used to spoon out caviar. Things haven’t been altered much inside, which is fine, because the tall ceiling, neat cherrywood trim, and plush banquettes make for a handsome and comfortable dining room;…
It’s always a letdown when the waiter in a quaint picture-perfect café hands out a slipshod piece of paper that passes as a menu. First thing most of us do is turn it over to see if there’s anything else written on the other side. Artichoke’s is the antithesis: The…
Dining on Cuban food often dictates a choice between dirt-cheap dives dishing out decent fare and upscale establishments that serve nuevo Latino cuisine as incongruously overgarnished as Fidel Castro in a tuxedo. Havana Harry’s, a 200-seat family-style Cuban restaurant on Le Jeune, one block west of South Dixie Highway, falls…
It was while sitting at home, watching the presidential debate on TV, that I suddenly found myself seized by an insatiable craving for jerk chicken. Go figure. So I headed to Jerk Machine, located in North Miami (other locations include Sunrise, Opa-locka, Coral Springs, and Hollywood), a place whose motto…
Rodz of South Beach, a restaurant and lounge nestled in the center of Española Way, serves cuisine that is self-described as “Pan Asian, Continental, and Mediterranean, with an American influence.” Whenever I come across such globally ambitious concepts, a little warning flag pops up: cooks of all countries, masters of…
Back in the days when cars had tail fins and Elvis was a hound dog, the Morris Lapidus-designed Eden Roc hotel was one of the hottest celebrity hangouts in town. But cars got smaller and Elvis got fat and, like a lot of Miami Modern structures, the Eden Roc went…
Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant, which opened on Brickell Avenue just two months ago, currently is hosting downtown’s hottest Friday after-work party, drawing the same mass of young professionals as last season’s sizzling Firehouse Four shindigs. This is the sixteenth such microbrewery/restaurant that founders Dan Gordon and Dean Biersch have launched…
Manuel Martinez came up with a novel idea: to re-create the town square of La Mancha, circa 1605, as the setting for his Spanish Don Quixote Restaurant. Martinez, a fan and scholar of the Cervantes masterpiece (his production of the play runs at South Beach’s Colony Theater this month), forwarded…
When Dubliners enter their local pub, the feeling is one of immediate comfort, like slipping into a pair of well-worn shoes. The spacious interior of the Playwright Irish Pub & Restaurant handsomely mimics the antique look that comes naturally to those ancient, tin-ceilinged, gas-lamp-adorned drinking establishments, but it’s still too…
Russia is not the best place to be right now, as we were reminded by the not-so-subtle sub metaphor for a nation sinking fast in an ocean of corruption and economic chaos. Still, I’d rather be there than in Colombia, that spot rife with right-wing paramilitaries, left-wing guerrillas, drug militia,…
Seating prospects at the lunch spot we had just entered didn’t look good. I suggested we leave and eat somewhere else, though admittedly I was more put off by a sign on the window reading “Gourmet Sandwiches” than at having to wait for a table (I distrust any place that…
Tom Tresh was a talented baseball player, but he was never able to live up to expectations that he could be the next Mickey Mantle. The same hopeful hype would haunt about as many other subsequent Yankees centerfield prospects as there are South Florida neighborhoods that have failed to become…
My most memorable dining experiences often have occurred outdoors, which doesn’t mean on the patio. There was that chardonnay and chilled oysters experience out in the Everglades one sunset; or the simple yet perfect taste of a sliced mango in a Puerto Rican rain forest following a light rain; or…
When I first moved to South Beach almost a decade ago, I was afraid to walk down Lincoln Road late at night. And by late I mean 10:00 p.m. Although the bohemian-style walking mall, with its cracked sidewalks and bizarre art galleries and fledgling cafés was full of character, it…
The crowd that gathers at Opium is attractive and mostly dressed in black. Many talk on cell phones. Handsome bartenders and waiters also are clothed in black, while comely barmaids pretty much wear the same outfit that Gwen Verdon or Shirley MacLaine (take your pick) wore in My Sweet Charity…
Pulcinella’s Marketplace & Café is a large, bright, white gourmet marketplace, a “purveyor of fine foods,” as they put it. It also is a café, which, if you come in from the front as opposed to the side entrance, is what you’ll encounter first. The décor is casual: green marble…
Alice Waters is the person most often credited with pioneering, in this nation, the notion of fine cuisine as fresh, high-quality, locally procured foods prepared as simply as possible. That’s just what she served at her Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, which opened April Fool’s Day 1980 and coincided with…
He’s got the best rock-star name of any local chef: Johnny V. And the coolest dub: “Caribbean Cowboy.” Never mind that Mr. Vinczencz is from St. Louis, Missouri, the important thing is that he’s come back in the kitchen of Astor Place, where before leaving in early 1999 he had…
