Sage on Fifth opened in South Beach at the intersection of Washington Avenue and Fifth Street in August 2004, two weeks before Hurricane Frances blustered across Florida. Although the restaurant withstood the winds and rain, it couldn’t endure customer indifference and was soon boarded up for good. Fratelli La Bufala…
Have you ever eaten at a restaurant where a new convert to healthy eating plunks an unadorned ear of corn on your plate, raving about how much more flavorful it is without the distraction of all that melted butter? Well, I have, and it’s not a place I want to…
Madiba has come to South Beach by way of South Africa, with a stopover at Fort Greene, Brooklyn — which is where Mark and Jenny Henegan, with long-time friend Serge Jules, opened their first Madiba in 1999. Their new establishment made its debut this past September in the neighborhood once…
Wilma was on the way when we walked into The Press Room, a newish eatery on the butt end of Lincoln Road. The sky was ominously gray and full of foreboding. The restaurant takes its name from the collage of antique presses on the wall of its brick-faced, back-of-the-room sports…
In his recent documentary about Bob Dylan, No Direction Home, director Martin Scorsese portrays the singer as a quietly zealous man more concerned with the impact of his music on those listening than any media adoration. Executive chef of The Biltmore Hotel, Philippe Ruiz, radiates a similarly silent intensity; he…
Northeast 167th Street may not be a walkable strip like New York’s Mott Street, but with more than a dozen Asian restaurants and grocery stores, it’s the closest thing Miami has to a Chinatown. Covering the window of PK Oriental Mart is bright red graffiti touting housemade Chinatown-style barbecue. Sure…
Miami doesn’t boast a cheese store in the mold of the grand Old World type, where wheels, loaves, and slabs are stacked high on marble countertops and an intense, swoon-inducing stink is pervasive. What it does have is a smattering of specialty markets whose selections are ample enough to keep…
One thing you have to say about Miami diners: We know our retro. We might be seduced by celebrity chefs who assemble their dishes with tweezers and sauce them with eyedroppers, or distracted by bling-laden rappers flashing their grills in this week’s latest hot spot, but when a restaurant begins…
No average diner would ever mistake the traditional dishes of Denmark for those of France, or confuse Japanese cuisine with Indian. Much more difficult, though, is differentiating between the fare of Latin American nations. Onion, pepper, garlic, and tomato sofritos, for instance, are ubiquitous throughout the region, and doesn’t every…
Most restaurateurs aim to provide what they’re certain we’ll enjoy. For instance, they know we like Italian, and within that genre, pasta is always a favorite. It seems simple enough, but Klaus Frisch was the first in the Gables to figure this out — in 1985 to be precise, when…
Americans consume more than one million animals every day, only a minuscule fraction of which is devoured at Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse and Wine Bar in Coral Gables. Still, if I were a cow, I’d be a little nervous all the same, for a mere glance around the grand 6700-square-foot restaurant…
Taverna Pizzeria and Risotteria: conceptually genius or excessively ambitious? Although pizza and risotto are two pillars of Italian cuisine, they don’t have a whole lot in common. Pizza is essentially street food, a quick and inexpensive meal consumed by the slice at modest sidewalk cafés. Risotto is far more elegant,…
Bay Harbor’s new Asia Bay Bistro & Sushi Bar boasts nouvelle Asian cuisine, but apart from the sushi, it’s really a traditional Japanese restaurant with some token Thai tossed in for good measure. There’s nothing bistro-ish about the food; I suppose the word as it’s used here refers to the…
In the early Nineties, before South Beach rents became terminally stratospheric, there was no lack of fun-fueled, reasonably priced neighborhood eateries — like Lulu’s, a Southern truck stop on acid whose entire second floor was designed as a shrine to Elvis Presley. Then there was the Strand (the original one,…
The first Chinese restaurants in this country were opened with the intent to serve immigrants from China working during California’s gold rush. When American miners took an unexpected shine to the food, a new dining phenomenon was born. By the Twenties, Cantonese chop suey houses had become part of our…
If the road to hell is paved solely with good intentions, the road to heck is paved with good intentions and imperfect execution. Take Bella Cuba. The intentions of chef-owners Juan Carlos and Larisa Jimenez are clear: Serve contemporary Cuban-Caribbean food — inventive but not off-the-wall — stylishly presented in…
The idea of organic, nutritional, sustainable cuisine, first replanted in this country by Alice Waters, has since sprouted into a whole-food movement that has widely affected the American diet. Anyone who doubts this observation need only note the crowds strolling through the gargantuan Whole Foods Market. In recent years, raw…
If a restaurant closes at 8:30 p.m., one counts on being able to walk in and order food until 8:30 p.m. At Miami Juice, diners with such expectations will be disappointed. Arriving one recent evening at 8:14 p.m. with a hankering for MJ’s “Special Rice,” temptingly described on a menu…
It came down to the bottle from Gleneagle Estate, described as being “slightly tart” and “fantastic with seafood, particularly shellfish,” or the one from Germany, “perfect for bold dishes as well as foods from the grill or rotisserie.” We settled on the latter for an affordable $12, and after we…
Ambrosia is variously defined as the food of the gods and a salad of oranges, bananas, pineapple, and shredded coconut. I don’t know about you, but if I were a god, I’d be eating my weight in foie gras, slathering my body with fresh truffles, bathing in Cristal, and snorting…
A repetitious restaurant scene can only lead to repetitious reviews. I repeat: No, I’ll clarify: From the exterior it looks like a corner coffee shop, just the sort of humble, low-key space that hints at unpretentious home-cooked food — in this case, Vietnamese-style. Indeed that’s just what the friendly folks…
In a town where sushi bars are as common as crooked politicians, it’s hard to get excited about another one. This is especially true when the sushi operation is tacked onto a Thai restaurant, an almost sure sign that commerce, not quality, provided the motivation. A Thai/Malaysian combination would make…
