As far as fatuous falsehoods go, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s contention that “there are no second acts in American lives” ranks right up there with “Mission Accomplished.” Just wait and see: Britney Spears will be staging her comeback tour faster than you can say “Al Gore.” People reinvent themselves all the…
For Florida foodies, the South Beach Wine and Food Festival is the year’s monster event. But spring brings an entire season of food festivals — smaller, to be sure, but revelatory in their own locals-oriented way. For instance: At last month’s Miami Wine and Food Festival — a sort of…
The thing is, the more simple, the more difficult it is,” Italian cookbook author Marcella Hazan once said, in regards to preparing food. “When you do a dish and you do two things, and one of them is wrong….” She didn’t need to finish the sentence. Italian cooking is about…
You have to admire Yankee ingenuity. Take some chewing gum, tissue paper, and a ball of twine, and pretty soon you’ve got a sleek aluminum sausage capable of flinging hundreds of drunken customers and surly flight attendants across the continent at 35,000 feet. Take a nitwit collection of wannabe pop…
Willie Mays, Barry Bonds, and Andre “the Hawk” Dawson are the only baseball players in major league history to hit more than 400 home runs and steal more than 300 bases. Mays waltzed into the Hall of Fame, and if steroids don’t get in the way, Bonds will, too. But…
Inside every food critic, it’s said, beats the trans fat-packed heart of a fast food junkie. Even serious foodies can consume only so much tomato confit before getting a yen for ketchup. This point was underscored just last month at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival’s first Burger Bash…
The Food Gang isn’t what it thinks it is. It thinks it is an informal gathering spot for gastronomists to enjoy simple, unpretentious meals at affordable prices. Yet witness the Maine lobster paella: a succulent tail and claw draped atop a pan-fried, puck-shaped disc of saffron rice studded with chorizo…
I want to slip French Kiss some tongue. I love this restaurant. The culinary ménage à trois of Marc-Antoine, Joanne Gimenez, and chef Keith Becton has created an absolutely ravishing little cafe in the nether regions of Coconut Grove, one that displays all the warmth and unpretentiousness of a neighborhood…
When Joe’s Stone Crab premiered on South Beach in 1913, it was the first classic American seafood house in the Miami area. Ninety-four years later, with the opening of the Oceanaire Seafood Room in Mary Brickell Village, we finally have our second. You are no doubt thinking that this can’t…
The beverages are totally different: At Hofbräu Beerhall, nearly every table is topped with glasses or mugs filled with golden or amber-hued fluid. At Cafe Maurice, only slightly more delicate stemware is swirled with liquids tinted straw or dark maroon. There are plenty of other dissimilarities as well, so many…
When you consider the career path of eight-time world freediving champion Yasemin Dalkilic, it’s not surprising that she and her trainer/husband, Rudi Castineyra, chose ungentrified downtown Miami as the appropriate neighborhood for their very gentrified wine bar. The pair is used to taking big risks and winning. Often referred to…
Chef Johnny Vinczencz made a name for himself during a star-making stint at the Hotel Astor from 1995 to 2000. He also made a nickname for himself, “the Caribbean Cowboy,” which he discarded after leaving town and riding off to other restaurants in Palm Beach (Sundy House) and Broward (Johnny…
Is there any animal more abused than the chicken? Most begin and live their brief existence in mammoth farm-factories under conditions so dire they make the black hole of Calcutta appear merely gray. Then it’s off to the poultry processing plants, Dante’s seventh circle of finger-lickin’-good hell, where they’re killed…
The most surprising thing about Martin Scorsese finally winning that long-elusive Oscar for best director is that he did it without the benefit of any soup scene in The Departed. What ignites the famously sensual eating orgy in Tom Jones (best picture, 1963)? Big, steaming pewter bowls of celery soup…
Since South Beach’s late-Eighties renaissance, when droves of fashion and film aficionados (plus other notably fitness-conscious people) descended, sushi has been one of Miami’s major food groups. By the mid-Nineties, Washington Avenue was lined with Japanese eateries comparable in quality to those in New York City. Unfortunately, like those in…
If you want to know why San Francisco is a great restaurant town, go to South Miami. Bear with me; it’s not really that big a stretch. San Francisco is a great restaurant town not because of its handful of uber-luxe, four-star establishments, but because just about every neighborhood in…
Chefs Clay Conley of Azul and Michael Bloise of Wish agree: Given the choice of being stuck on a desert island with either Martha Stewart or the Mondavi brothers, both would prefer Martha. Conley explains, “If anyone can make a deserted island feel like home, she could.” The same question…
David Bouley hails not from Paris or Provence, as his name, heritage, and repertoire of refined French cuisine might suggest. He grew up in Storrs, Connecticut. And while he trained under Michelin-starred chefs in France and Switzerland, and toiled away at landmark New York restaurants, he then served successfully as…
About three years ago, Miami’s midtown so-called “Arts District” was trumpeted, in a CNN real estate survey, as the most rapidly appreciating area in the country. National media hype that followed pictured Biscayne Boulevard as the gracious promenade it was to be, possibly within minutes — lined with cute cafes…
It’s all Starbucks’ fault. Coffee used to be the equivalent of regular leaded. It was cheap, strong, and uncomplicated; you poured it in your tank, revved up your motor, and were good to go. Then some boy genius got his fancy knickers in a twist and all of a sudden…
Rocky Aoki didn’t invent teppanyaki dining, but he did introduce the Japanese tabletop cooking concept to the States in 1964, when he opened his first Benihana in New York City. Rocky can also claim credit for revving up the crowd-pleasing antics of his hibachi chefs way before Emeril. Aoki so…
What’s the difference between a Valentine’s Day restaurant meal and the same dinner on a normal night? About $50 to $200. Something is clearly wrong with this discrepancy, yet the heart-shape box of Russell Stover candies doesn’t quite cut it as a romantic expression, either. Leave it to a French…
