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…
Before even a short vacation in any foreign country, I always try to learn about the food of the place, in the language of the place — nothing really daunting in terms of grammar or vocabulary but enough to cover the basic amenities and practicalities of negotiating a meal. This…
Tony Chi’s interior design of Café Sambal is chic and sleek, with white walls, dark wood tables, and a black staircase in the center of the dining room leading up to the Mandarin Oriental hotel’s more haute Azul. Sounds coldly minimalist, but seashell-embedded terrazzo floors, woven off-white rawhide chairs, wooden…
Historical Miami, you might say, is a thing of the past. Sure, there are still rickety pockets of the original city to be found, but it’s not easy. Most old structures lay holed up in neighborhoods like bandits with high bounties on their heads. One of the best ways to…
There is nothing like a week in London, home to more than 1500 Indian restaurants, most specializing in dishes never heard of in South Florida, to make a grown-up restaurant reviewer feel as if she’s back in kindergarten. Which is why Imlee sounded so intriguing. Only a year old, the…
Breez currently is blowing a breath of cool fresh sushi and seafood into the northern reaches of Ocean Drive, but as the base of the not-yet-completed, four-level, 40,000-square-foot Billboard Live, it will be hot soon enough with frenetic overflow from the club-and-bars scene of that megaentertainment complex. Ephraim Kadish of…
Just as any Turkish travel guide will remind tourists that when Turks shake their head from side to side as if saying “no” it means “yes,” I believe Miami guides should likewise inform visitors that the word “gourmet” on storefront signs signifies “not gourmet.” As with almost every such eatery…
The first change you notice about the place is its name — part Chinese, part gay, all cute and commercial, as owner Chong Li (a former employee of the Chinese Restaurant Formerly Known As Charlotte’s) well knows: “Hey, that’s the neighborhood, right?” Right. Since opening barely four months ago, the…
A few years ago, while my wife and I were seated at an outdoor seafood restaurant on the island of Santorini, a seemingly frail and elderly lady astonished us by repeatedly rising from her chair and punting puddy cats further than one would have thought possible by someone even triple…
