I’ve lately found myself insisting, to whomever will listen, that when it comes to dining in ethnic restaurants I’m no nitpicking stickler for authenticity; I simply wonder why those who serve watered-down, clownlike mockeries of such cuisines even bother at all. When those who will listen happen to be the…
The Palm premiered in Bay Harbor Islands in 1986, but it has the Joe’s Stone Crab, old-timey feel of an institution that’s been around forever. The original Palm in New York does go back pretty far — to 1926, which is when John Ganzi and Pio Bozzi, two immigrants to…
It was on the drive to Tequila Sunrise that one of my dinner guests inquired as to what sort of place we were headed. “Mexican,” I replied, though it turned out she had already surmised that. I really didn’t know any more, other than having been told by someone who…
Deborah Calderon is the “D” and Clare Kelley the “Clare” of I Do D’Clare, a cozy 65-seat breakfast and lunch spot on Ponce de Leon, just off South Dixie Highway in the Gables. The same location used to house another restaurant, Loffler’s, where Deborah cooked and Clare waited tables. Two…
Like many curious New Yorkers whose acquaintance with Cuban food was largely limited to the tasty but pretty basic mom-and-pop Cuban/Chinese joints that once sprouted on every block of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, I devoured the New York Times piece that came out shortly after Douglas Rodriguez’s Yuca first opened…
A civilized Latin supper club seems out of place amid the raucous scene of South Beach’s Washington Avenue, but that’s exactly the point behind Bolero Bar & Grill — a place on kid row for adults to enjoy. Apparently the mature elements of Miami have gotten word, as this 72-seat…
Icebox Cafe. 1657 Michigan Ave, Miami Beach; 305-538-8448. Open every day except Monday, 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. (lunch/brunch) and 7:00 to 11:00 p.m. (dinner); on weekends open till 1:00 a.m. for pastries.
Rarely has a restaurant in South Florida been so anticipated as pan-Asian Bambú, largely because of its co-owner, Cameron Diaz, who hooked up with her restaurateur/hotelier partners Karim Masri and Hubert Baudoin while shooting There’s Something About Mary in Miami. For months preceding the opening this past February, strollers regularly…
Countless adjectives can be used to describe the multitudinous restaurants of Miami-Dade. “Adventurous” is not one of them. Our ethnic-dining establishments seem particularly snakebit when it comes to exploring the more intriguing realms of their native cuisines, and Spanish restaurants reach even lower than the rest. Phillipe Restaurant, a 40-seat…
Fast food joints failed to deliver a knockout punch to diners, but they did have those American institutions on the ropes and looking hopeless for a while. That was back in the early Sixties, and one of the main attractions of the then-new national burger chains was their consistency of…
There are times when it’s awfully difficult to explain why one lives in Miami. Like now, during this period of embarrassing Elianmania, with the national media trumpeting the arrogant antics of one small but stupid-as-a-stump group of right-wing refugee residents as they loudly and proudly point out that our county…
When dining out we like to think of the fish on our plate as having arrived fresh from the market that very day, a harmless bit of self-delusion that somebody, in just about every city near water, inevitably capitalizes on by opening an eatery called “The Fish Market.” The Wyndham…
Maybe it was because I was alone, carrying a book, that the bartender at this joint in the Gables inquired if I was on my way to a lecture at Books & Books. It was strangely flattering to think someone thought I looked like the type who attended such events,…
In the mid-1800s, a huge wave of Chinese immigrants, approximately 100,000, most from Guangdong province around Canton, came to Peru to work. They worked in virtual slave-labor jobs — mineral mining, migrant farm work, railroad construction, and shit shoveling (literally: bat guano was a major Peruvian industry 150 years ago)…
The first impression was the worst. I’m not talking about the creamy white interior of the refurbished Nash Hotel. That was the second impression. The third would be the restaurant itself, Mark’s South Beach, and how the walk downstairs to a sleek, contemporary dining room, with outdoor seating by a…
The Pelican Hotel on Ocean Drive has 25 uniquely themed rooms, from the safari-designed “Me Tarzan, You Vain,” to the sparser “Jesus Christ Megastar,” which, if nothing else, is the only hotel room to ever advertise with the slogan “A man’s life consist not in the abundance of the things…
As a food writer, my best moment this millennium came during an interview with chef Andrea Curto last month, when I asked for the usual sound-bite definition of her dishes at SoBe’s Wish. “Fusion,” she declared immediately, “because that way I can cook whatever the heck I want to.” Honesty…
“Never give a sucker an even break” is, I believe, the philosophical impetus propelling the recent rash of “consulting chefs” that has been spreading rapidly in these parts. This public-relations ploy is akin to culinary karaoke, wherein one chef or another follows the bouncing boil and cooks along to a…
In SoBe it’s easy to get spoiled when it comes to sushi. Great grub of most other Asian nations isn’t easy to find in Miami, but visiting know-it-alls from New York, or even Asian food mecca San Francisco, are unusually impressed by my Japanese-food tour de force — a strolling…
There were two undying rumors about Big Fish back when I moved to Miami six years ago. One was that this renovated shack-complex-turned-restaurant on the Miami River had once dispensed the best cheapo fish sandwich in town. Wait: “Best”? Legendary! Mythic! To hear it told, neither Jesus himself nor even…
The small, cluttered, always crowded L’Entrecote de Paris debuted on Washington Avenue, just south of Fifth Street, in 1993. The restaurant seemed old from the start, in a good way, as though it had been there forever. That was part of its appeal. Much of the clientele was made up…
I have never dipped my feet into the cool blue waters of Portugal, but I did once put them in my mouth by suggesting to a Portuguese fellow that his national fare was pretty much the same as Spain’s. His brief but emotional lecture enlightened me as to a few…
