Batty over Gotham

Gotham is a powerful word, concurrently connoting two potent icons: Manhattan and Batman. In the food world, it bespeaks a third force to be reckoned with: Alfred Portale’s Gotham Bar and Grill on New York’s West 12th Street, which nearly a quarter-century ago helped redefine the contemporary urban restaurant. Gotham…

Behind the Line at Wish

Chef Marco Ferraro from Wish, winner of Miami New Times’ “Best Outdoor Dining” award in 2007, one of four “Best of’s” we’ve awarded the hotel/restaurant, says “I’m Italian. Our cuisine is contemporary-American with a global influence. We do new-American food with an emphasis on fresh, local ingredients. Local is great…

The McDonald’s Rationalization

“Where you been, bitch?”Last week, I did something bad. Really, really bad. It was Wednesday, and I was very hungry. But I was also very busy, and short on cash. And so I decided, with a sorrowful resignation, to do something I hadn’t done in ages: I went to McDonald’s…

Slow Food Gets Maxed Out at 3030

This month’s Slow Food Glades to Coast dinner, on Thursday January 15, focuses on our local waters with a meal hosted by Chef Dean James Max at 3030 Ocean in Fort Lauderdale. Max, as we know, has a masterly way with anything that sports fins, scales, or claws, and his…

Andrew Zimmern Meets Jimbo

Andrew Zimmern, host of Travel Channel’s popular Bizarre Foods series, will be at Jimbo’s on Virginia Key tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday) in order to film part of the show’s upcoming Beach Special.  Be there at 4:30 p.m. or later if you want to take part in the party — and perhaps…

Molecular Gastronomy at Enso

                                                                                                                         Jacob Katel”The exciting part for us is when people break out their cameras before they eat,” says Chef Jacob Durham from Enso. “Food is the only artform made strictly for consumption. Cooking is the oldest profession in the world, so it’s…

Second Chance For SoBe Wine & Food Tix

This coming Monday morning, January 12th, a second block of tickets for previously sold out events will go on sale. So if you were bummed at being shut out of Rachael Ray’s Burger Bash or The Best of the Best at the new Fontainebleau, you’ve been given a second shot…

Mazie’s Soul Food Shines in Liberty City

Mazie’s Soul Food Restaurant and Take-Out is, at first glance, not much to look at. It appears to have once been a Dairy Queen-like operation — a stand-alone box painted orange-toned yellow and brown and fronted by an angled take-out window. This is a poor part of town, and some…

Food Stamp Nation – Florida Leads The Pack

The Miami Herald reports that “In the last two years, the number of Floridians on food stamps has increased more than 40 percent to 1.7 million. That increase is the highest in the nation, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.”The numbers read like this, 356,000 food stamp recipients live…

Jimbo’s Place – Smoked Fish In Pictures

                                                                            Smoked Tuna – Jacob KatelJimbo’s Place is a Dade County institution. If you like smoked fish, cold beer, bocce ball, redneck-rock-n-roll, fishing, manatees, graffiti, choppers, hot rods, kayaks, wave runners, nature trails, family outings, drunken brawls, feral cats, wild roosters, music videos, film shoots,  bikini models, chess games, sunsets,…

And You’ll Get Lobster in Delray

Linda Bean, granddaughter of Maine’s L. L. Bean, is bringing us lobster. Though new to the foodie business, she’s got her own warf, her own fishermen, and now her own concept: lobster rolls, each with a full ¼ of meat, fresh and perfect and dripping butter on your grateful lap,…

Tap Tap Sunday

This Sunday evening, recording artist Farah Juste will be at Tap Tap Haitian Restaurant on South Beach for “a CD signing and celebration”. Ms. Juste’s career as a passionate singer of Haitian folk songs took off with her debut solo album in 1977, and since then she has performed from…

The Audacity of Enso

“Enso is an evolutionary solutions workshop which creates the scientific study of deliciousness.” So begins the insanely inventive, thoroughly audacious menu at this new sushi/hibachi/Mediterranean deconstructionist establishment on Lincoln Road. I don’t mean to suggest the public isn’t ready for this, but when I told my wife we would be…

Lemoni Cafe – Little Haiti Upstarts

                                                                                                         Jacob Katel Assia Dahrouch and Eugenia Pelati opened the doors of Lemoni Cafe (4600 NE 2nd Ave), a  “fresh-Mediterranean-style” joint just nine months ago. They met at a restaurant on the beach where they worked together for four years. Assia, who worked there for 11 years before quitting said, “I’m…

Mix Your Own Damn Granola

People can talk all they want about the economy falling apart, but when you see an upstart Miami based company stackin paper off selling cereal on the internet (talk about grippin’ grain), you gotta say “hell, America’s back.” Check out this exclusive interview with one of three local cereal pioneers…

Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink

Get ready as Short Order takes you behind the line and into the kitchens of some of Miami’s top restaurants. Today we visit Michael’s Genuine Food and Drink in the Design District. Listen for the random quotes from the kitchen in this exclusive photodocumentary that gives you a one hour…

Revisiting Marumi Sushi

A couple months back, we reviewed Marumi Sushi, a small but very authentic Japanese restaurant hiding in the western wilds of Plantation. I loved it then: nowhere else in Broward can you get this kind of unfiltered, unapologetic view of the food that Japanese folks actually dig into, and nowhere…

Miami’s Dining Scene Goes Big League

This was the year Miami finally joined the big league of American food cities. A flurry of activity burst across our local restaurant world, delivering bistros, cafés, star-chef driven establishments, humble neighborhood hideaways, midscale chains, upscale chains, burger joints, sushi bars, wine bars, wine fairs, food fests, farmers’ markets, Whole…

Naked Sushi – Smells Like Fish

Nyotaimori, aka naked sushi, refers to the Japanese art of sushi served on a human body. Talk about your food looking at you while you eat — but hey, rich people gotta find some way to liven up their dinner parties. I recently set out on a mission to find…

Joey’s In The Wood

Joey’s is a modern Italian cafe that opened December 1 at 2506 NW Second Ave. It is the first restaurant in the Wynwood Cafe District, a 14-square-block area that city commissioners approved in July. Miami leaders hope it will transform the arts district into something much more. I spoke to…

Ebony, Ivory, and Plantain-Crusted Grouper…

 …is the answer to: What might you find at a Puerto Rican-owned piano bar/café? Merly Velazquez, niece of the late fashion designer David Fernandez, has partnered with Raymond Klein in opening Miami Arts Café across the street from the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts (255 NE 14 Street)…

2009: Food Network Says the Year is Greener

I Predict:You will recycle many BaggiesThis time of year we’re all clairvoyant: Everybody is summing up the past and predicting the foodie future, including moi (look for my column next Wednesday here). My inbox is full of this kind of hocus pocus and mumbo jumbo, most recently the Food Network’s top 10 predictions…