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…
The sign on the door of the little storefront window reads, “A Couple of Basketcases.” That’s the name of Caron Coles’s gift-basket company on 151st Street in North Miami that shares space and uses the specialty food products of her larger enterprise, Foodalicious, to fill those baskets. Upon entering the…
If Nobuyuki Matsuhisa’s name is less known nationally than Wolfgang Puck’s, it is only because the latter is easier to spell. And also because Austrian-born/French-trained Puck’s rep-building restaurant Spago had already established itself as the spot for rich-and-famous Angelinos years before Japanese-born-and-trained Matsuhisa arrived in la-la land, after a culinary…
When we heard the first explosion through an open bedroom window, my wife and I thought it might be thunder. This occurred the day of our arrival. Soon afterward military helicopters buzzed precariously low overhead, and every now and then a jet fighter would crack the silence of the city…
All over New Jersey this time of year, people brave parking-lot-type traffic jams to drive west to the Poconos to see the fall foliage. This is true even of those who live in tree-studded “garden” suburbs like Montclair, where there are plenty of leaves of all colors right at home…
Home Depot and the Latin-flavored bakery chain Don Pan are inextricably linked in my mind, and not just because I am an unabashed fan of both places. Whenever I pull into the Depot parking lot, I salivate with Pavlovian anticipation, knowing from habit that after stocking up on house supplies…
Would you compare Norman’s to Piola Pizza? Well, neither would I. Each is great at what it is. In fact the only fair way to judge restaurants is not by one scale but by trying to evaluate how well any given restaurant succeeds according to its own individual definition, which…
On May 29, 1913, as a string orchestra performed in the restaurant of the Savoy hotel in London, two diners rose from their chairs and began dancing. As others followed suit, tables were pushed aside to clear space, and social tradition was overturned. Previous to this night, dining and dancing…
There’s been much mention in recent weeks, by food writers, of comfort food. What there hasn’t been much of is scientific evidence that any such thing as edible anti-stress substances exist; even the New York Times could only come up with a few distinguished doctors pontificating that many people find…
Miami’s Mexican restaurants are, for the most part, utterly predictable: margarita, chips, salsa, burrito-enchilada-fajitas, and the bill, por favor. Usually the only question is whether they’ll make you suffer through a mariachi band. I wasn’t expecting much different from Javier’s Cantina Mexicana and was perhaps even less encouraged than usual…
It was mere weeks, not the usual months or years, after becoming Wish’s executive chef in 1999 that Andrea Curto began garnering national awards and great reviews as the hottest food thing in South Florida since Scotch bonnet peppers. And the very first national rave, a pick of Wish in…
I returned home hounded by two nagging questions: What is Zür New World Cuisine restaurant really all about? And what, exactly, is a zür? The latter query was answered easily enough by asking over the phone. Turns out zür means “nothing in particular.” As for the first, more relevant question…
“Astonish me!” the impresario Diaghilev commanded then-nobody writer Jean Paul Sartre on a Paris street corner back in the Thirties. And soon-to-be-somebody Sartre did just that. But according to my friend Robert, a lifelong Southern Florida native I originally met because he’s on the board of my life partner’s temple,…
South Beach, Sunday, 10:30 a.m. I walk into Tropical on the Beach, on Washington Avenue between Fourteenth and Fifteenth streets. It’s a massive space, with some 200 seats and 50 silver Deco light fixtures hanging from the lofty ceiling. The bulbs are muted now, as more than enough natural rays…
From virtually my first stroll down Ocean Drive in the early Nineties, it was apparent that one of the main foreign languages being spoken was Italian, and the stroll back up Collins and Washington avenues, past designer emporiums, made it immediately clear where all the Italian visitors were outfitting themselves…
The ability of a restaurant to surprise with hitherto unseen and unheard of concepts is becoming increasingly difficult these days, yet Jake’s Bar & Grill, a new eatery located across from the Shops at Sunset Place, recently succeeded in doing just that. While waiting for a table at a large…
An authentic version of chau mien as they do it in Canton would be reason enough to patronize any Chinese restaurant. And Gourmet Gourmet’s double-yellow gourmet version does largely qualify as authentic. Traditionally chau mien simply was pan-fried fresh Chinese egg noodles topped with quickly stir-fried seasoned meat or seafood…
As someone who has earned a living in two pretty damned privileged fields — writing about food and playing rock music — I’ve always felt as if I was getting away with highway robbery, even in months when I can barely pay the rent. One of my grandmothers, after all,…
The version of Thai food one encounters at the King and I restaurant is about as real as the vision of Thai culture one encounters in the Rogers & Hammerstein musical of the same name — which is to say, not very. Not that this is necessarily bad; it just…
A café, bistro, and brasserie are different from one another. In France that is. Here in the States we tend to blur any distinctions, choosing one term over another mostly by phonetics. An informal French restaurant opening in Okeechobee, for example, will likely go with Okeechobee Café rather than the…
Chien Chung Peng from Hong Kong opened the Chung Hing Oriental Mart on NE 163rd Street and Eighteenth Avenue ten years ago. I can’t imagine anything even vaguely Asian that isn’t on some shelf somewhere in the ten aisles of this sprawling, cluttered grocery. The diversity of foodstuffs displayed from…
